Man In India, 96 (1-2) : 255-265 © Serials Publications
1
Faculty of Education, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor, Malaysia,
*
E-mail: hadijahjaffri@utm.my
A SINGLE CASE STUDY ON THE PRACTICE OF
SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING AND LEARNING
Hadijah Jaffri
1*
, Narina A. Samah
1
, Lokman Mohd Tahir
1
and Sanitah Mohd Yusof
1
This study examines the conception and importance of the scholarship of teaching and learning
(SoTL) as perceived by a lecturer teaching in an engineering faculty in a local university in
Malaysia. A case study was used to explore the way SoTL is understood and the extent the
participant engages in research in teaching. Typical case sampling was used as sampling design
to investigate the conception and practice of research in teaching and learning which might influence
the effort and engagement in any activity related to the SoTL by lecturer. The qualitative finding
showed that the importance of SoTL is undervalued due to lack of understanding of SoTL and its
importance to students’ learning and development. SoTL is perceived as less important as compared
to conducting research related to one expertise. SoTL is also regarded as a distinctive form of
research that is commonly involved academics in social science fields especially education. It
was also found that the pedagogical practice of the respondent is adopted from the pedagogical
practice of his lecturers and senior faculty members that serve as his mentors. Even though the
pedagogy of a discipline is related to its content knowledge, yet from this study, it was found that
the respondent perceives that as long as one posseses the mastery of the content knowledge, one
will have the mastery of the pedagogical knowledge. This assumption indirectly undermines the
importance of pedagogical knowledge to be mastered as compared to the content knowledge.
Based on the findings of this study, it further actions are suggested be taken into consideration to
enhance the engagement of lecturers from scientific and technical based faculties in the scholarship
of teaching and learning to enhance their teaching practice and their students’ learning.
Keywords: scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL); practitioner research; research into
teaching; engineering lecturer; case study
Introduction
Among the main focuses of lecturers in higher education institutions are teaching
and conducting research. With regards to improving teaching practice and students’
learning, conscious efforts of conducting research to explore the effectiveness of
teaching practice is needed (Harland, 2012). This conscious effort is a part of the
scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) practice. According to Hubball and
Clarke (2010), SoTL involves active and continuous effort to conduct research in
teaching by academics which will be shared to others through academic publication.
Therefore, with the demand to conduct research in one’s field of expertise as well
as exploring one’s own teaching, lecturers are struggling to balance various
demands. In this regards, lecturers are left to make a choice to either engaging in
research of their own expertise as well as research on their teaching practice or to
focus their attention on research which relate to their own field of expertise.