The Journey to SoTL: Institutionally Supporting a Transition to Scholars of Teaching and Learning

The concept of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is now being increasingly used as a tool to evidence excellence in teaching (Hutchings & Shulman, 1999; Kreber, 2002), support for academic promotion (Hutchings et al, 2011) and professional recognition (UKPSF, 2011). However, SoTL is not yet fully embedded in the typical academic role. In an environment where research is often ‘king’ the recent survey by Pritchard &McGowan (2016) demonstrates that even with growing recognition for teaching in universities, SoTL is often seen as the poorer sibling of REF-able research, and poorly understood (Gunn et al, 2014). Despite this, the value, impact and esteem associated with SoTL is growing with suggestions that SoTL should become better defined, ‘REF-able’, supported and incentivised (Fanghanel et al, 2016). So how can SoTL capacity be grown within a research intensive university and to what extent can an shared understanding of SoTL, along with a sustained engagement with SoTL be successfully cultivated? This paper explores these issues by examining the perceptions of academic staff related to SoTL whilst undertaking a PGCAP programme and determining the impact of learning related to SoTL on sustained engagement in the activity