“This has opened up doors”: University teachers’ experiences of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

• Published in: Netla
• Main Authors: Ólafsdóttir, Anna, Geirsdóttir, Guðrún
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Icelandic
• Published: Menntavísindasvið Háskóla Íslands 2022
• Subjects: scholarship of teaching and learning; university teachers; educational development; researching own teaching; fræðimennska náms og kennslu; háskólakennarar; kennsluþróun; rannsóknir á eigin kennslu; Iceland
• Online Access: https://ojs.hi.is/netla/article/view/3619; https://doi.org/10.24270/serritnetla.2022.88

In recent decades, universities have had to adapt to various policy changes and new demands. These demands have been explained by referring to changes in society, globalization, new technology and easier access to higher education studies, resulting in a much more diverse student population. One of these new demands has been to focus more on the quality of teaching, and teaching development within higher education institutions.The research reported and discussed in this article was carried out with university teachers who participated in a higher education diploma programme, organised by the Centre of Teaching and Learning during the years 2014–2016. Data was collected through focus group interviews with two groups, one consisting of five participants who had finished their diploma, and the other a group of five participants, still studying in the module at the time when the interview took place.A diploma in higher education pedagogy is a 30 ECTS line of study, located within the School of Education, at the University of Iceland. The diploma consists of three 10 ECTS modules and is organized for higher education academics. In the final module, participants design and carry out pedagogical research within their own disciplinary field. Based on the ideology of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), the aim of the module is to enhance disciplinary pedagogical research and scholarly practices within higher education teaching.The findings of the research revealed that the participants in the SoTl module experienced both empowerment as teachers in their disciplinary field, and various challenges when entering what they described as a completely new disciplinary landscape. Thus, our interviewees felt empowered, not only in their role as teachers, but also as leaders, both in traditional administrative roles, as well as when taking on a leading role as educational developers within their discipline. On the other hand, the challenges of entering this foreign landscape were of various kinds; mostly they had to do ...