Distributed Leadership to Embed Scholarship in STEM Teaching Teams

In Australia, the Higher Education Standards Framework (HESF) minimum requirements include continuous evaluation that informs ongoing curriculum transformation; five threshold standards refer explicitly to scholarship.

The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), which regulates the sector in Australia, recently published a Guidance Note: Scholarship that states: ‘The intent of the Standards is that scholarship that is claimed to inform teaching (or supervision) must have a demonstrable relevance to the course being taught, including scholarship relating to the process of teaching and learning in itself.’ (TEQSA, 2018, p. 4).

Changes to national Learning and Teaching awards and grants suggests a signal that scholarship is in practice an undervalued and largely invisible activity that may be neglected altogether by academics and management in Australian universities.

Our fellowship is a response to minimum requirements for continuous evaluation informing ongoing curriculum transformation. It is a key driver for universities to identify mechanisms to engage and reward academics to engage in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). The whole team of academics involved in designing and teaching degree curriculum need to be engaged in SoTL; not just specialist teachers.