Exploring the perception of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) among the academics of Malaysian higher education institutions: Post training experiences

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 reexamine their teaching practice as to enhance their students' learning.