Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Resources to Support Pedagogic Research
Pedagogy is the art and science of teaching (Cannon, 2001) which can be explored in depth through inquiry and scholarship.
The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) involves pedagogic research inquiry and is systematic inquiry into focus on how to best supporting student learning through teaching practices. It is different from 'pure' educational research which is conducted by researchers whose discipline is education and tends to rely on more traditional education or social science research methods, often quantitative. In reality, many people practice SoTL uniquely and reflective of their discipline.
The scope is broad, for some people, this might look like using data-driven observation techniques to enhance their use of active learning in the classroom (e.g. how often did I ask my students questions during my lecture?). For others, this might be researching how to work with students as partners in their curriculum development and sharing their findings.
Scholarship is not about fixing something that has gone wrong. At its core, SoTL is about thinking, talking, reading, and writing about our teaching practices. There is a broad range of descriptions used in the literature, but one good definition is:
"There may be three ways of being scholarly {in teaching and learning}:
- Reflecting critically on practice
- Using ideas from the literature
- Contributing to the literature (Baume & Popovic, 2016, pg. 6)"
What does it mean for us?
Your scholarship, inquiry and curiosity are a set of habits and dispositions for meeting the challenges we all face as learners and practitioners in an ever-changing world.
SoTL also should include reflection on your own teaching and the resultant learning of your students with the implementation of subsequent improvements that better support your students' learning.
It encourages us to investigate what works and what does not and then reflect on this. It requires the researcher to engage with and familiarise themselves with the literature and available knowledge in the area of research interest.
Pedagogic research requires dissemination of teaching practices for public and peer scrutiny, This includes sharing best practice with Leeds Beckett colleagues but also with the wider sector through conferences and journal publication.
Getting started with SoTL is about engaging in the activities described in the introduction. For a more structured look at how to begin, this six-step, staged approach to scholarship outlined in Glassick et al. (1997) is useful.
For more resources and references on pedagogic research, visit the research into teaching in higher education reading list.
Many different methodological approaches can be used in pedagogic research and choosing the right one for your investigation can seem challenging initially. There are a number of resources to guide you in choosing a method and there are further links on the reading list about each method. Some of the common and most useful research methods you may wish to include (but are not limited to) are action research, appreciative inquiry, qualitive research and mixed method approaches.
You should design your impact and dissemination plan into your project- impact for pedagogic inquiry is measured through significance and reach (Evans et al, 2020).
First, how significant are the benefits of the SoTL inquiry and for whom? Second, how far-reaching are the outcomes of the SoTL inquiry?
You can share it with School and course colleagues within the university through meetings, workshops and internal conferences. You can also submit an abstract for your discipline specific conference or through external organisations that value T and L research.
Each academic discipline will have conferences and meetings that are best suited to sharing and collaborating with people in your field. Attending conferences can be an excellent way to enhance your knowledge of pedagogies and scholarly teaching.
You can submit it for publication to an external journal in the same way as all other research areas, the library have created a list of appropriate journals for publishing learning and teaching research and have highlighted those that are supportive of new researchers.
There are resources and support for research available across the university. To link up with others undertaking and interested in researching teaching in Higher Education, you can join the Centre for Research into Teaching in HE network.
Research and Enterprise also provide a training programme for all researchers and should be contacted if you are looking for some specific researcher training.
The library offer support around academic writing skills that can be accessed by staff and students. There are also guides around literature reviews and proof reading. If you have a query you should contact your school's Academic Librarian team.
