Man In India, 96 (1-2) : 433-446 © Serials Publications Address for communication: Narina A. Samah, Faculty of Education, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia, E-mail: narina@utm.my EXPLORING THE PERCEPTION OF SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING AND LEARNING (SOTL) AMONG THE ACADEMICS OF MALAYSIAN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS: POST TRAINING EXPERIENCES Narina A. Samah, Aizan Yaacob, Raja Maznah Raja Hussain, Nurahimah Mohd Yusoff, Ngeow Yeok Meng, Rohana Othman, Aishah Abu Bakar and Lim Chong Hin This paper reports an exploratory study on the perception of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) among the academics of Malaysian higher education institutions (HIEs) after they had undergone Level 1 of ACELLT Leadership Development Training Programme in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). The Higher Education Leadership Academy (AKEPT), Ministry of Education Malaysia, organized the training programmes from 2013 to 2014. This qualitative study employed a case study design. The main data set was generated from the collection of responses from the online structured interview emailed to the academics that had attended the training programmes. 25 participants responded to the online survey. The data set was explored using thematic analysis. The main and constituent themes suggested that the academics began to discover their teaching inquiry after gaining new insights and better understandings of the conceptualisation of SoTL that they developed during the training sessions. In addition the findings also revealed that the academics began to practice SoTL and learned to integrate the basic principles of SoTL into their teaching practice. Such findings indicate that the training provided by Level 1 of ACELLT Leadership Development Training Programme in SoTL managed to encourage participants to become critically reflective university teachers who are now more willing to re- examine their teaching practice as to enhance their students’ learning. Keyword: teaching inquiry; critical reflection; leadership in higher education; Malaysian academics. Introduction Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) In recent years, many scholars have given different interpretations to Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Hutchings and Shulman (1999) defined that scholarship of teaching is not synonymous with excellent teaching. It requires a kind of “going meta,” in which faculty frame and systematically investigate questions related to student learning—the conditions under which it occurs, what it looks like, how to deepen it, and so forth—and do so with an eye not only to improving their own classroom but to advancing practice beyond it. Their definition is equally shared by Darling (2003), who stated that SoTL refers to tasks that encourage an empirical examination of teaching related to students’ learning. This is different from scholarly teaching that goes beyond teaching, to participating in a