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STEM PhD students doing and writing SoTL: What matters for academic development?

Nordrum, Lene LU and Löfgreen, Jennifer LU (2026)
Abstract (Swedish)
A key part of academic development work involves helping academic teachers develop a scholarly approach to teaching. One way to do this is to engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), which Felten and Chick (2018) have suggested is a signature pedagogy of academic development. For PhD students who are aspiring academic teachers, being exposed to SoTL while they are also developing as scholars in their own disciplines has the potential to support their epistemic growth. As novices in scholarship, teaching, and academic writing, PhD students doing SoTL could be advantaged by being less entrenched in conceptions of epistemology and what scholarship can, or should, be. At the same time, because of their limited experience, any... (More)
A key part of academic development work involves helping academic teachers develop a scholarly approach to teaching. One way to do this is to engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), which Felten and Chick (2018) have suggested is a signature pedagogy of academic development. For PhD students who are aspiring academic teachers, being exposed to SoTL while they are also developing as scholars in their own disciplines has the potential to support their epistemic growth. As novices in scholarship, teaching, and academic writing, PhD students doing SoTL could be advantaged by being less entrenched in conceptions of epistemology and what scholarship can, or should, be. At the same time, because of their limited experience, any dissonance that may exist between SoTL and their disciplinary conceptions of scholarship might present a significant challenge.

In this presentation, we will explore what matters when asking STEM PhD students, in our case in the Faculty of Engineering at our university, to write a team-based, SoTL-style project report as part of a compulsory pedagogical course. Combining content analysis and discourse analysis, we analyzed 100 reports from the past decade to answer the broad question: How do these novices in scholarship, academic writing, and teaching navigate this inherently interdisciplinary space of knowledge, inquiry, and writing? We will present some of our findings, invite discussion about them and related observations from their context, and explore some thoughts about what these findings mean for our context and academic development more broadly. (Less)
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2026-08-21 12:46:12
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@misc{4b8f4327-8ca3-4f8d-b44b-cf655288fb57,
  abstract     = {{A key part of academic development work involves helping academic teachers develop a scholarly approach to teaching. One way to do this is to engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), which Felten and Chick (2018) have suggested is a signature pedagogy of academic development. For PhD students who are aspiring academic teachers, being exposed to SoTL while they are also developing as scholars in their own disciplines has the potential to support their epistemic growth. As novices in scholarship, teaching, and academic writing, PhD students doing SoTL could be advantaged by being less entrenched in conceptions of epistemology and what scholarship can, or should, be. At the same time, because of their limited experience, any dissonance that may exist between SoTL and their disciplinary conceptions of scholarship might present a significant challenge.<br/><br/>In this presentation, we will explore what matters when asking STEM PhD students, in our case in the Faculty of Engineering at our university, to write a team-based, SoTL-style project report as part of a compulsory pedagogical course. Combining content analysis and discourse analysis, we analyzed 100 reports from the past decade to answer the broad question: How do these novices in scholarship, academic writing, and teaching navigate this inherently interdisciplinary space of knowledge, inquiry, and writing? We will present some of our findings, invite discussion about them and related observations from their context, and explore some thoughts about what these findings mean for our context and academic development more broadly.}},
  author       = {{Nordrum, Lene and Löfgreen, Jennifer}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{06}},
  title        = {{STEM PhD students doing and writing SoTL: What matters for academic development?}},
  year         = {{2026}},
}