by  SHANNON JOHNSTON and MICHELLE PICARD 

The SoTL (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) for academic educators is often placed last in the “what counts” standoff with other competing tensions. Research is clearly the gold standard: SoTL doesn’t count when compared with “real” disciplinary research, pesky research impact measures, and contribution to university rankings. Nor for promotion, though more recent signs of promise may be emerging.

Teaching quality also feels secondary to research output as a success metric. But the conceptualisation of learning and teaching can also overlook SoTL as a core component of quality, even though our institutions must evidence that “academic and teaching staff are active in scholarship that informs their teaching” and must demonstrate “systematic support for scholarship and… scholarly activities and outcomes that inform teaching, learning, and professional practice” (Higher Education Standards Framework 2021 Criteria for Higher Education Providers Standard B1.3).

Our individual experience of university work is a strong influencer too, with teaching workload, time deprivation, cognitive depletion due to stressful working contexts and sector uncertainty. There’s no room for scholarship.

What is needed in teaching and learning are ways to practice the subtle art of being the “everyday scholar”

As an everyday scholar, we don’t all have to be discoverers; we can be scholars of practical application, of synthesis and integration, or scholarly teachers who are well-informed and knowledgeable (Boyer’s model 1990). It’s all scholarship.

We can be everyday scholars who

* learn through communicating – problems, ideas, attempts, evidence; have corridor and coffee conversations; participate in department, university and professional events; do quick reads (CMM!), quick comments (twitter!) and quick sessions

* apply critical reflection to everyday data. Data from our systems about learners and their engagement; seek feedback from our students constantly – does this assessment make sense, is this rubric informative, how was today’s lesson; hold a critical reflective lens of data against practice

* foster a sharing economy, learning from and sharing with each other. Share to the staff news, your L&T community, share when you attend sessions. Any discipline, any approach.

* engage in a sharing culture. If formal scholarship rocks your boat – the everyday scholar doesn’t go it alone. Undertake team, even cross-disciplinary studies that discover and integrate and … share the load.

SoTL counts because it informs our practice and enhances the learner experience. The subtle art of everyday SoTL enables it to count.

Dr Shannon Johnston, Head of Professional Learning, Murdoch University [email protected]

Associate Professor Michelle Picard, Dean Learning and Teaching, College of Arts, Business, Law and Social Sciences, Murdoch University [email protected]

Murdoch University is a member of CAULLT (Council of Australasian University Leaders in Learning and Teaching)