Teaching Focused Academics in the Sciences – where do they go for training?

A report on the ASM Biology Scholars Research Residency Program, 2010-2011.

Susan Rowland,
School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences,
University of Queensland, Australia.
email: s.rowland1@uq.edu.au

All new jobs come with their own challenges, and academic positions are no exception. The new
academic is asked to develop a slew of teaching resources, build a competitive research program,
get grant funding, and publish in peer-reviewed journals.

For anyone acquainted with academic science, this isn’t news; but what if you were expected to
develop a whole new research program in something that wasn’t your field of research? What if
you had to quickly become an academic expert in something for which you had been only
minimally trained? This is the situation facing the new breed of “teaching focused” academics in
the sciences.

In keeping with the new focus on quality teaching at Australian Universities, The University of
Queensland1, Monash University2, and The University of Sydney3 have implemented a new type
of appointment – the teaching or education-focused academic (TFA). UQ was the first Australian
university to introduce a legitimate tenure and promotion pathway for TFAs (in 2007). It now has
approximately 160 TFAs out of a total of roughly 2600 faculty. This career pathway was enabled
by UQ senate resolutions that redefined the boundaries of an academic. UQ TFAs have an
equivalent status to the more traditional T&R and research-focused academics, but different
(although equally rigorous) criteria for tenure and promotion. These criteria are based on the
usual academic teaching and service loads with an additional requirement for meaningful
research in teaching and learning.

The formal recognition of teaching-focused academic pathways gives well-deserved value to

innovative, scholarly teaching. The Spellings Report of 20064, challenges colleges and
universities to produce evidence of their actual teaching performance and educational outcomes,
rather than trading solely on their reputations. TFAs are the key academics responsible for
providing evidence of impact and quality in the educational practices of their universities and I
feel privileged to be a newly-appointed TFA in the School of Chemistry and Molecular
Biosciences at UQ.

Becoming a teaching-focused academic is not a simple transition when your PhD is in

biochemistry (like mine), or some other equally traditional scientific field such as chemistry,
ecology, cell biology, or genetics (like some of the other teaching-focused science academics I
know). Although we are still expected to do research, it is not the type you do in a wet lab, and it
doesn’t use the same set of quantitative measurement techniques employed in the “hard”
sciences. The teaching focused academic has to quickly learn, and adapt to using, a new set of
investigative methods that are familiar to researchers in the social sciences. For those of us who
“grew up” using a pipette and a balance, this can be quite a shock, and most teaching-focused
academics are on a steep learning curve.
This new type of research is known as “the scholarship of teaching and learning”, or SoTL. (This
acronym is said “sottle”, or “saw’tl”, depending on your accent). Formally established in 2004,
SoTL is defined as the practice of “creation and dissemination of original work that makes a
useful contribution to knowledge and practice of other teachers.”5 Essentially, this means that
SoTL practitioners conduct research into student learning which is designed to advance the
practice of teaching via publication and dissemination of findings and methods. SoTL is similar
in ethos to scholarly teaching, in which a good teacher examines their practice and their teaching
outcomes, and thinks about how they can improve things for their students. SoTL takes things a
step further, in that it includes (i) reading and review of the teaching literature, (ii) experimental
design, ethical clearances, implementation, and rigorous assessment of educational outcomes, (iii)
publication of the results in peer-reviewed journals, and (iv) dissemination of findings through
workshops, books, reports, and conference presentations.

SoTL practitioners use the classroom as their laboratory, and to many scientists this kind of
research sounds like a soft option. Before I embarked on this type of research in late 2009 I also
had an idea it would be “easy”, but SoTL experimental design and data interpretation has to hold
up under rigorous peer scrutiny. SoTL weaves high-quality teaching practice with the
applications of psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience. The studies are challenging. It’s hard
to control for variables and the test subject changes from year to year. There is limited
opportunity to repeat experiments on the same group. There are ethical implications in studies;
these must be negated before work can proceed or be published. The study subjects have to agree
to be involved. The data has to “triangulate” the conclusion from multiple perspectives.
Sometimes the experimental question can be difficult to define6.

So how do TFAs with training in “hard” sciences like physics, biochemistry, or genetics (to name
just a few) transition to research in the more “social” science field like education? Many TFAs
complete additional graduate training in education at the certificate, diploma, or masters level, but
these programs don’t always provide training on how to research an educational “problem”. Even
fewer of them provide ongoing support for the newly-launched SoTL investigator, which means
that although a TFA might have the “book” learning to start a SoTL project, in practice they may
find it difficult to continue, finish, or write-up their work. As a compounding factor, many SoTL
practitioners work in relative isolation within their science department 7. Although other scientists
are often interested in teaching and learning studies, they are usually not trained SoTL
practitioners - this can make it difficult for novice TFAs to regularly discuss their ideas, methods,
and results with a colleague who has superior SoTL skills and experience. The value of a
“community of practice”, or group of like-minded individuals who can mentor, advise, and
constructively challenge a new TFA cannot be underestimated. Such a community provides the
support and collegiality that is usually found in a good research wet laboratory which is, of
course, the environment from which most science TFAs have come.

Communities of practice can be formed within academic departments or universities, but above
and beyond these localized organisations there are also more ambitious training and support
schemes that are designed to produce SoTL scholars. This year I am a fellow with one of them,
the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Biology Scholars Research Residency Program8.
This National Science Foundation-funded program (founded in 2008) is designed to educate
biologists in the practice of evidenced-based teaching and learning and provide mentorship and
ongoing support as we transition from traditional science academics to SoTL practitioners. On its
website (http://www.biologyscholars.org) the program is described as “a multiyear leadership
program for college biology faculty to bring about reforms in undergraduate education”. Once I
became part of the program I discovered what this really meant. As Amy Chang, the genial
director of the ASM education department said to me “Once we get our hooks into you, we never
let you go.”

The ASM Biology Scholars Program starts with an application package, due in February or
March, depending on your program of interest. ASM offers a Research Residency (for “starter”
SoTL practitioners), a Transitions Residency (usually, but not always, for those who have already
completed the starter program), and a new Assessment Residency that focuses on how to gather
data on student learning. Scholars in the Transitions Residency are regularly recruited as mentors
for Research Scholars. Each residency program takes between 16 and 24 scholars, and involves
them in an initial year of consistent, constructive online homework and a series of mandatory
attendances at residential workshops (at ASM headquarters in Washington, D.C. in about July),
and conferences (in your home country and in the USA). The workshops are a great way to get
some formal training in SoTL, meet other scholars, get acquainted with your “critical friend”, and
become part of a community of practice that stays in touch through the online forum.

You can see some details about the scholars and our projects at
http://www.biologyscholars.org/About-ScholarsListing.shtml. So far this year we have all been to
Washington, D.C. for our first workshop, defined our SoTL projects, gained ethics approval to
perform our studies, started gathering our data, and made plans to meet up in Baltimore next June
for the ASM Conference for Undergraduate Educators. We have to have our abstracts submitted
by February 1st – and this fast-approaching deadline is a great motivator to keep working!

Although we are only new scholars, we’re looking forward to eventually being mentors, because
ASM expects this of us. Apart from training new SoTL practitioners and producing an extended
community of practice, the long-term aim of the program is to develop a network of experienced
scholar-teachers who are able to take the Biology Scholars training model to their relevant
disciplinary societies. In our group of 2010 scholars this includes societies as diverse as the
American Society of Plant Biologists, the Paleontological Society, and of course the ASBMB.
After the first year of involvement, ASM scholars are expected to stay in touch with the program
members and directors for at least five years. Personally, I don’t anticipate this will be difficult,
since they are such a great bunch of people who are full of helpful ideas; it’s great to have this
collective wisdom at the other end of an email.

If you would like to know more about the ASM Scholars programs, SoTL, or just ask “what does
a teaching-focused science academic actually do?”, feel free to contact me. I’m also just an email
away.

References:
(1) http://www.uq.edu.au/teaching-learning/index.html?page=65733
(2) http://www.adm.monash.edu.au/human-resources/news/education-focused-roles.html
(3) http://www.itl.usyd.edu.au/awards/promotions_teaching.htm
(4) A Test of Leadership. Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education (2006)
A Report of the Commission Appointed by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings. Web:
http://www2.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/hiedfuture/reports/final-report.pdf
(5) http://www.issotl.org/tutorial/sotltutorial/u1a/u1a1.html
(6) Bass, R. 1999. "The scholarship of teaching: What is the problem?" Creative Thinking about
Learning and Teaching 1(1).
(7) Bush, SD, Pelaez, NJ, Rudd, JA, Stevens, MT, Tanner, KD, and Williams, KS. (2008)
Science Faculty with Education Specialties. Science 322:1795-1796.
(8) http://www.biologyscholars.org/About-GeneralInformation.shtml
Usyd:
http://sydney.edu.au/business/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/60347/Academic_Promotions_Summar
y.pdf