International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Volume 2, Number 2, July 2008

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Invited Essay

Excerpt

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning:
What is it? A Personal View

The scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education is an idea and a practice that is relatively new and still in its early stages of development. What it means, how to engage in it, what are its expected outcomes, etc. are still issues of debate. In this short essay, I argue that the scholarship of teaching and learning should be about individual and groups of academic staff within disciplines engaged collegially in working to improve student learning within the disciplines. It is not research in the traditional sense, its focus should be on better understanding our student learning experiences and outcomes within our disciplines, and on ways to improve those experiences and outcomes.

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Bio

Michael Prosser
The University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong, China
mprosser@hku.hk

I am Professor and Executive Director, Centre for the Advancement of University Teaching, The University of Hong Kong. My teaching, research and academic development interests are in the field of student learning in higher education, focussing primarily on students’ experiences of learning and its relationship to teachers’ experiences of teaching and research. My teaching experience includes 20 years teaching in first year university physics courses and 15 years teaching in graduate certificates in higher education programs. I have published widely, including a well cited book analysing research work until 1999 with Keith Trigwell. I have twice been an Editor of the journal Higher Education Research and Development and have been an Associate Editor of the British Journal of Educational Psychology. Presently I am an Advisory Editor of BJEP. I have been elected a life member of the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia for distinguished contributions to teaching and research in higher education, am Co-President of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and was elected by the Australian Research Council’s College of Experts as an ‘Expert of International Standing.’

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International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning is a publication of the Center for Excellence in Teaching at Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, Georgia, USA.