What brought us together to form a community for scholarship

Abstract

We are a group of teaching-focused academics who share a passion for learning, teaching and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in Higher Education (HE). In order to understand how practitioners from a diversity of backgrounds and disciplines came to be in their present LTS (Learning, Teaching & Scholarship) academic roles, we embarked on a Collaborative Autoethnography (CAE). This approach allowed us to use our personal narratives to explore what it means to be a SoTL practitioner in HE, and to analyse these narratives by using textual analysis. This paper unpacks these narratives, focusing on three themes: our rich and diverse backgrounds, influences on our routes to our current academic roles, and how we are loud and proud to be on a teaching-focused career path. It will be of interest to academics who are on, or contemplating, a teaching focused contract. It will also be of relevance to senior staff in HE who wish to understand the nature of these roles, and who wish to consider how to provide appropriate institutional structures to support and nurture these staff.

Keywords

• sotl
• collaborative autoethnography
• teaching-focused academics
• interdisciplinary
• scholarship
• academic career pathways.