ABSTRACT
This paper critically considers the attempt by a research-intensive university in Asia to draw on and make public the practices of teaching award winners in different disciplines through the use of narrative vignettes. More specifically, this paper examines what the vignettes suggest about the connection between award-winning teachers’ conceptions of teaching (CT) on the one hand, and scholarly investigations of practice on the other, and to what extent the vignettes meet the aim of using the scholarship of teaching and learning as an instrument of effective academic development. Content analysis of the vignettes revealed that award-winning teachers’ CT tend to focus predominantly on enhancing learning, followed by encouraging collective knowledge creation and transmission of knowledge. A two-dimensional framework was also used to analyse the vignettes along a tacit-integrated continuum and within an intuitive-reflective frame of inquiry. The findings are discussed in relation to teachers’ perception of their impact on students’ learning and ways to enhance their own practice, with implications for teaching awards, documentation, and dissemination of high-level teaching achievement.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Mark Gan Joo Seng http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8573-7156
Johan Geertsema http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6540-408X
Notes
1 We prefer the term academic (or educational) development to the American faculty development. This is to gesture towards an integrated view of academic work in that (1) teaching and learning support is not the only area in which the centre works (research is important), and (2) students and a student-focused orientation to development are as critical a part of the work of the centre as are faculty. In this paper, we use the terms academic, educational and faculty development interchangeably.