Distributed leadership to embed scholarship in STEM teaching teams

Abstract

In Australia, the Higher Education Standards Framework (HESF) minimum requirements include continuous evaluation that informs ongoing curriculum transformation. Significantly, TEQSA in 2018 released the Guidance Note: Scholarship and scholarship that is claimed to inform teaching must have a demonstrable relevance to the course being taught. Considering the TEQSA guidance note, it is essential to identify mechanisms to engage and reward academics to engage in SoTL. The HESF focus on degree-level curriculum implies the whole team of academics involved in designing and teaching degree curriculum need to be engaged in SoTL; not just specialist teachers. The value proposition for engagement in scholarship needs to resonate with academic goals and aspirations, rather than communicate administrative activities for 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 can be focussed on degree-level curriculum and can be made visible, monitored, measured and reported against TEQSA standards.