A framework for the scholarship of learning and teaching

Abstract

Since 2021, one provider of vocational and higher education has entrenched in its Enterprise Bargaining Agreement a mandatory minimum of a five percent workload allocation to the Scholarship of Learning and Teaching (SoLT) for all teaching academics. This has seen a flourishing of scholarly activity, with respectively 89 and 91 per cent of academics in the first two years having produced quality scholarly outputs and reported annually on the impact of their SoLT activities on student learning and experience. SoLT activity sits within a three-year planning cycle and is governed by a framework that includes standards for scholarly practice, guidelines and templates, mentor support and professional development, blanket ethics approval for the use of student and staff natural data with an online mechanism for managing consent, small funding grants, and awards for scholarly practice. With the current three-year cycle drawing to a close, this paper briefly discusses some the elements that make up the Framework for Scholarly Practice, draws conclusions about its strengths and weaknesses, and foreshadows changes to come in its next iteration