eSTEeM Thematic Seminar Series: From scholarship to pedagogical research: how can academics develop as HE pedagogical researchers?

Location: Robert Hooke Seminar Room, The Open University, Milton Keynes
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As part of eSTEeM's thematic seminar series, we are delighted to announce details of our second event which will focus on developing academics as HE pedagogical researchers. We will be joined by Corony Edwards and Anne Tierney.

To confirm your attendance, either in person or remotely, please visit the registration page by Friday 12 October 2018.

Corony Edwards, Independent Consultant

This part of the workshop considers how approaches to individual or small team teaching and learning enhancement such as reflective practice, exploratory practice and action research, relate to the type of pedagogical research that would be considered ‘REFable’. While educational explorations can draw on, or develop into, more rigorous studies, they are normally on too small a scale and often lack the methodological rigour to merit the term ‘research’ as understood within the context of the REF. Opportunities for developing scholarship and pedagogical research expertise within and beyond practitioners’ HE institutions are identified and considered, including the potential role of the SRHE (Society for Research into Higher Education) community in supporting colleagues as emerging pedagogical researchers.

Anne Tierney, Edinburgh Napier University

This session considers how in practice academics engage with the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) to improve both their teaching practice and their students’ learning within a research-driven culture. It explores the cognitive barriers to scholarship and pedagogic research faced by discipline based academics (particularly those who are primarily teaching focused) with an exploration of the threshold concepts which must be negotiated in order to become an expert in SoTL. These include getting to grips with methodologies outside one’s discipline and the tensions of being a novice in a second discipline.

Biographies

Anne Tierney: I am a Lecturer and Module Lead for the Professional Studies and Practice Module of the Postgraduate Certificate in Learning, Teaching and Assessment Practice in Higher Education at Edinburgh Napier University. As department link for The School of Life, Sport & Social Sciences, I work to support excellence in learning, teaching and assessment at School level. I am also involved in supporting educational scholarship, and am the contact for Curriculum for Excellence. My interests are wide, ranging from student entrepreneurship to co-creation of the curriculum. A former teacher of undergraduate biological sciences, I am currently researching how UK Life Science academics engage with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL).

Corony Edwards: Following an early career in further education (where I really learned to teach), I joined the University of Birmingham in 1992 to set up and run a new BA in English Language. I pursued a 13 year career as an academic in the School of Humanities, holding various strategic leadership roles, and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2004. I was appointed as the University’s Director of Educational Development in 2006. In 2012 I moved to the University of Exeter to take up the position of Head of Education Quality and Enhancement. In January 2016 I set up Corony Edwards Consulting so I could offer my services to the sector as an independent, freelance consultant.