What are they?
Recently there has been a trend for UK universities to create a new career path that extends to Professor level. This is typically called the Education and Scholarship track (e.g. at University of Sussex) but may also be known as Learning, Teaching and Scholarship (e.g. the University of Glasgow) or similar. The common theme is that these career paths require a degree of engagement in scholarship and provide allocated time within your workload to do so. This is different from teaching-only contracts.
What is scholarship?
Scholarship is an umbrella term and institutional understanding may vary but most base their definition on Boyer’s (1990) work in this area. Boyer identified four forms of scholarship: teaching, research, application and integration. His work is considered important as it raised the profile of the scholarship of teaching.
How do I evidence scholarship?
It is the case that the expectations of scholarship activity will change as colleagues advance through the career path. One useful tool is the DART model proposed by Kern et al (2015). This matrix helps to position the various dimensions to help evaluate scholarly activities and the various grades within the University career structure moving from private to public and from informal to systematic.
How do I develop my scholarship?
There are a multitude of ways to develop the scholarship of teaching and learning and in the UK typically colleagues would undertake a Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education upon moving into academia. This normally leads to Fellowship of Advance HE (formerly the Higher Education Academy) and the external recognition is viewed as important.
ICAEW supports scholarship of teaching and learning in accounting in many ways:
Sharing about teaching
- Academia and Education Community
- Annual HEI Conference
Scholarship of teaching and learning
- Sponsorship of academic conferences and interest groupings e.g. BAFA Accounting Education SIG Conference
- Scholarly teaching
A range of free resources and conferences which provide access to the latest thinking in the field
- Information for Better Markets Conference
- PD Leake Lecture
- Thought leadership publications
- Finance in a Digital World online CPD programme
How do I enter academia?
There are many routes into academia; some of these are outlined on the Pathways into Academia and Education diagram.
For Chartered Accountants entering academia it is important to position your contribution and define your own career trajectory.
The majority of those who enter academia from industry or practice will typically do so on teaching only contracts and will seek to develop their career path from there. The opportunities to contribute in areas that you are passionate about makes academia a fantastic choice for many.
Some will seek to undertake postgraduate study in a topic that is of interest either through PhD, EdD or DBA study. It is normally desirable to select an area of study that draws upon your prior career to develop new insights and access data sets or group participants that have not already been studied.
References
- Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. Princeton University Press, 3175 Princeton Pike, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648.
- Kern, B., Mettetal, G., Dixson, M., & Morgan, R. K. (2015). The role of SoTL in the academy: Upon the 25th anniversary of Boyer’s Scholarship Reconsidered. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 1-14.
The views expressed are the author’s and not ICAEW’s.
