My journey as an education focused academic
Education focused (EF) pathways enable academics to build and sustain identities and careers that capitalise on their strengths as educators. I have found my own career as an EF academic, initially at the University of Queensland and now at Sydney, to be satisfying, enlightening, and full of opportunities to create positive change – in my own classroom and in the classrooms of my peers. Most importantly, I have been able to do what I love – teach, improve my teaching, and help others build their capabilities – while also challenging myself to be a better researcher, a bigger thinker, and a leader of educational culture. My EF role is intensely people-focused and very intellectually stimulating – both these things bring me joy (while also necessitating many cups of tea).
I was fortunate to begin my formal EF career, 14 years ago, in a university environment that valued and nurtured me as an academic. The university gave me opportunities for professional development, junior and then more senior leadership, and promotion. That same university also expected a lot from me as a committed education specialist, a researcher of my educational work, and a leader of change.
Education focused roles at the University of Sydney
The University of Sydney is now in a similar place, culturally, to the university where I started my EF work. We are investing in new and current EF staff. We are overtly valuing educational excellence through the Academic Excellence Framework (AEF). We are providing impactful EF career opportunities and promoting EF academics to more and more senior levels. We are demonstrating parity of esteem between EF and other kinds of academics. We are also preparing the University and its staff for a more diverse student body, the challenges around teaching quality outlined in the Accord, and a possible future legislative environment, that demands even more professionalism and skill from academic educators.
We are also clear that EF roles are not ‘teaching-only’ (TO) roles. TO roles are traditionally associated with very high teaching allocations, no research time, low status within the University, and limited career progression (Bennett et al., 2018). This fate is not desirable, or desired, for EF staff at Sydney. Instead, our EF academics present an opportunity for Sydney to build a community of change-makers who can evaluate, critique, rebuild, and reinvigorate our teaching and learning efforts and cultures.
An important part of this impact comes through EF research and scholarship. What, however, does this research and scholarship look like? There are two recent developments that have brought this question into focus. First, under the Enterprise Agreement 2023-2026 (EA), the minimum research and scholarship allocation for EF academics has increased to 20% of workload (clause 115) – a doubling of the research allocation that most EF academics had before 2023. Second, the AEF research pillar describes the University’s expectations around research and scholarship for all academic staff, including those in EF roles.
Since April 2024, the Office of the Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (OPDVC) has led a University-wide conversation about EF research and scholarship. Coupled with the significant feedback from the AEF co-design process, this conversation has helped us consider the types of research EF academics might do, the ways in which this research can have impact, and the support avenues the University might offer to EF researchers.
What does research look like for education focused academics?
This short article provides an update on the conversation and explores the possibilities in research for EF academics. Readers who seek more details about the conversation are welcome to view the original discussion paper (internal link) and a synthesis of the responses (internal link) from multiple stakeholders across the University. The AEF co-design papers and feedback (internal link) are also available.
Over the past year, the feedback and commentary from across the University has highlighted the importance of EF staff, with colleagues demonstrating a deep appreciation for the contribution of EF academics to our institutional mission. Colleagues support the idea that EF staff should be free to choose their topic of research and, like the academic community at large (Godbold et al, 2023), Sydney colleagues held no firm consensus on the type of research that EF staff should do.
Disciplinary research is always an option for EF academics, and for some fields there is significant benefit in EF academics continuing to research in the field they teach. EF academics also, however, have a uniquely valuable opportunity to pivot their research towards the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). By researching higher education and their own educational practice, EF academics can synergise their research and teaching to maximise their career progression while also improving teaching, learning, and the student experience. This type of research also marks an EF academic as a dedicated and scholarly educator, enhancing their ability to progress their education career and leadership at this, and potentially at other, universities.
Importantly, the discussion across the University has surfaced a communal need to better understand what SoTL is, and how we can recognise when it is being done well. To address this need, the OPDVC has written the paper “The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at the University of Sydney” (internal link), in collaboration with multiple colleagues across the University.
The paper gives a definition of SoTL, describes the ways it can have impact, and considers how we can recognise quality SoTL. Below, I have included a quick primer on SoTL. In the next blog article, I examine how to recognise excellent SoTL.
SoTL is underpinned by the idea that teaching is ‘complex intellectual work’ (Walker and Kettler, 2022); it has become key to universities’ efforts to improve teaching, learning, and the student experience. Drawing on descriptions from SoTL leaders, Potter and Kustra (2011), defined SoTL as:
the systematic study of teaching and learning, using established or validated criteria of scholarship, to understand how teaching (beliefs, behaviours, attitudes, and values) can maximize learning, and/or develop a more accurate understanding of learning, resulting in products that are publicly shared for critique and use by an appropriate community. (p. 2).
SoTL takes a ‘critical and research-based approach to teaching and learning’ (Tight, 2018). It can involve a broad spectrum of activity that includes scholarly and reflective teaching practice, conducting and disseminating pedagogic and educational research, and cultivating ‘cultures of continuous improvement’ through a variety of education-directed activities (Fanghanel et al., 2016).
There is no single, underlying methodological approach that characterises SoTL projects (Wilson-Doenges & Gurung, 2013), and practitioners often strongly link their SoTL approaches to their disciplinary research identity (Healey, 2000). Generally, however, SoTL tends to draw on disciplinary norms from the social sciences, while encompassing multiple different contexts, research problems, research designs, and study methods.
Tell me more
As noted earlier, there is no requirement for EF academics to pursue SoTL, but if you are interested, there are many ways to get started within the University and beyond:
- Our Educators Community of Practice is an excellent group to join.
- The Modular Professional Learning Framework (MPLF) is provided by the University of Sydney Educational Innovation team.
- HERDSA (Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia) has an excellent suite of SoTL training and support resources for members.
- Center for Teaching and Learning University of Georgia has a wide variety of free resources.
- Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research (SABER) has an excellent listserv.
- SoTL-Asia provides regular bulletins and an international conference
