EXPERIENCES OF A SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING AND LEARNING PROGRAMME AT A TEACHING-INTENSIVE UNIVERSITY

Literature and background to the study:
The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) can be described as an approach whereby communities of teachers who are committed to pedagogical inquiry and innovation meet to exchange ideas about teaching and learning and subsequently apply those ideas to address the challenges of educating students (Huber and Hutchings 2005). While there are accounts of SoTL initiatives at other universities (for example Buch 2008), at the (teaching-intensive) university under study there was an absence of an institutional SoTL programme, exclusively for its academic staff. In this regard, this paper reports on the feedback from candidates regarding the initial implementation of a SoTL programme as an initiative to shape academic staff development.

Methodology:
Activity theory (Engestrom 1987) was chosen as a theoretical framework so that the SoTL programme could be viewed as an activity system. Feedback was obtained through the application of self-administered questionnaires containing structured and unstructured items. Descriptive statistics was employed for the analysis of structured items while the structured items were analysed using data reduction techniques such as coding, categorization and the identification of themes that were in line with the principles of Activity Theory.

Results and conclusions:
Selected findings showed that candidates were satisfied with the tools that were used within the SoTL programme. A major constraint, however, was that many candidates did not have enough time to complete the programme due to their heavy workload which was mainly due to teaching. Therefore, a major contradiction identified was that at a teaching intensive university, efforts to promote research (even) in teaching were thwarted because teaching trumped research. The candidates who remained capitalized on the SoTL programme to embark on Masters and Doctoral degrees. They were using the SoTL programme to advance their careers and not simply to improve educational practice and publish; thus shifting the outcome. This will have implications for the objectives and duration of future SoTL programmes (rules) and the relevance of course materials (tools) used.

References:
[1] Buch, K. 2008. Faculty Perceptions of SoTL at a Research Institution: A Preliminary Study. Teaching of Psychology, 35: 297–300.
[2] Engestrom, Y. 1987. Learning by expanding: An activity-orientated approach to developmental research. Helsinki: Orienta Konsultit.
[3] Huber, M and Hutchings, P. 2005. The advancement of learning: Building the teaching commons. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.