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| view full non-refereed paper... | ...program | ||||
An institutional perspective on the University of Waikato, New Zealand
The premise that the development of tertiary teachers can be enhanced if they engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) increasingly underpins associated policies and programmes. This is reflected in the increased
• attention academic staff developers give to SOTL in the agenda for their work,
• place that SOTL has in criteria for teaching excellence awards, professional accreditation schemes and promotion policies,
• national and institutional funding schemes to support such scholarship, and
• opportunities for dissemination of SOTL through conferences and publications
An obvious outcome has been a rapid increase in related publications. At the same time, concerns have been raised about aspects of this scholarship. While the increase is heartening, there is concern that it still originates from a relatively limited number of strongly committed tertiary teachers: Parker refers to "the need to move beyond the cogniscenti" (Parker, 2004). Limitations in dissemination and actual use at institutional and sector-wide levels are also highlighted (e.g. Chalmers, 2003; Haigh, 2004; Parker, 2004). These concerns have prompted my investigation of such scholarship within my own institution. In addition to analyzing features of the scholarship undertaken by staff during the 2000 - 2004 period, I am investigating the scholars 'motives' for their scholarship, conditions that have helped or hindered the scholarship, the place of SOTL in their overall scholarship agenda, personal and institutional impact, and continuing scholarship. In this work in progress, I report on my development of a framework for analyzing SOTL and foreshadow the next phase. | |||||