This study explores the impact academic teachers' writing of a teaching portfolio can have on their professional learning. Through an open-ended questionnaire, 26 academics from three faculties reported on insights, effects on teaching practice, and effects on collegial exchange that the portfolio writing entailed. We discuss how the experienced…

With the growing interest in educational research across post-secondary campuses, it is useful to identify the specific supports that best enable Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) initiatives. This paper documents a picture of SoTL interests and supports at one institution through survey and semi-structured collaborative interview data.…

Pre-service teacher education is a spatialised enterprise. It operates across a number of spaces that may or may not be linked ideologically and/or physically. These spaces can include daily practices, locations, infrastructure, relationships and representations of power and ideology. The interrelationships between and within these (sometimes…

The aim of this guide is to stimulate professional reflection, dialogue and debate about learning. Education professionals in Scotland are already aware of the key issues relating to learning through the series "Curriculum for Excellence: Building the Curriculum," the recent publication "Learning Together: Opening Up Learning"…

The aim of this guide is to stimulate professional reflection, dialogue and debate about learning and how to improve it, at this time of important curriculum change. It draws together themes, features and characteristics of effective improvement through self-evaluation, and descriptions of good practice. It is a reference point for teachers who…

The quest for effective teaching remains a demanding, complex and daunting task. In spite of the wealth of research evidence on the nature of effective and ineffective teaching, there are still problems about spelling out what effective teaching really is. Most research efforts aim at investigating teacher effectiveness by probing the following…

This paper examines the evolutionary path of the university and its impact on the quality of education it provides to people, industry and society. The authors first analyse the (Kantian) paradigm of reason, the (German Idealists') paradigm of culture and the current dominant techno-bureaucratic paradigm of excellence. They then argue that the…

There are many different approaches to educational research. They include the efforts of those who hope to make contributions to educational knowledge and theory through researching their own educational practices as teachers and researchers. In communicating an educational epistemology of practice, it is intended that the document show a…