Distributed leadership to embed scholarship in STEM teaching teams

The Higher Education Standards Framework (HESF) requirements include continuous evaluation that informs ongoing curriculum transformation. TEQSA’s Guidance Note: Scholarship (TEQSA 2018) says, scholarship that is claimed to inform teaching must have demonstrable relevance to the curriculum being taught. This suggests mechanisms are needed to enable and reward higher education teachers to engage in scholarship focused on their curriculum. The HESF focus on degree-level curriculum implies the whole team of staff who design and teach degree curriculum need to be engaged; not just specialist teachers.

The value proposition for scholarship needs to resonate with academic goals and aspirations; not communicate administrative compliance. Our joint ACDS Fellowship will conceptualise leadership for active engagement in scholarship within teaching teams. It includes a curriculum evaluation research (CER) framework, tailored for STEM, to ensure team-based scholarship activities are aligned with institutional structures, processes and instruments, so that scholarship of degree-level curriculum can be made visible, monitored, measured and reported against TEQSA standards.

Project outputs: national workshops for institutional partners; STEM specific CER framework; CER STEM website for dissemination including sharing case studies and resources developed during the fellowship. Expected longer-term outputs are a greater percentage of STEM academics engaged positively in scholarship and improved curriculum.