How do university teachers apply scholarship to their teaching practice?

This paper reports on a small study of five groups of university teachers working in teaching teams and the ways in which the practice of these teaching teams reflected scholarly values and processes. The literature discussing the scholarship of teaching identifies values such as - reflecting on practice; talking practice issues through with colleagues; sharing knowledge gained through reading the research into student learning; and collaborating to enable the development and refinement of ideas in relation to teaching.

Fifteen teachers from five teaching teams were interviewed and the transcripts of those interviews provided the material studied. Variation in the ways teachers describe the different ways in which they experience and understand aspects of their teaching and its organisation is used as a mechanism to study teaching practice. Teaching teams were selected as the focus of the study because they provide an environment that would allow the development of reflective and collaborative work practices to emerge naturally.

The results of the study reveal a pattern of significant variation between the teaching teams. The variations have been mapped onto a continuum of scholarly teaching practice. This map of scholarly teaching practice enables teaching practice to be plotted onto a continuum of activities reflecting aspects of scholarship as defined above while at the same time demonstrating how scholarly teaching practice might be developed through a deliberate academic development program. Vignettes of the teaching teams are used to illustrate the points along the continuum.