The model of Certificated Courses in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education at University College Cork (UCC) is presented as a way of building a solid foundation for and pathway into SoTL. To date, 300 faculty have successfully completed one or more of these courses. An outline of the programme is first presented. The paper then examines the Teaching for Understanding (TfU) framework as a useful pedagogical and disciplinary lens, designed to make teaching and student learning visible. This model emanates from the work of the Project Zero Classroom at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, steered by Gardner (1999), Perkins (1998) and others. The paper will provide evidence from the work of UCC faculty in a range of disciplines to support the claim that TfU facilitates a SoTL process.
The presentation then focuses on the Course Portfolio as a vehicle for SoTL, recognised as such by Shulman (1999), Hutchings (1998), Bernstein (2006) and others who champion it as a method of investigation and documentation. It will indicate how course portfolio models are embedded in the programme as assessment modes and how faculty have used them to critique the planning (design) of a course, its teaching (enactment) and its student learning (results). Evidence from faculty portfolios will indicate the rigour of the course portfolio as a SoTL process and the use of TfU as a way of scaffolding the portfolio and developing a common language to interrogate and discuss practice.
In conclusion, the presentation will focus on lessons learnt and on how pedagogical approaches on a certificated programme can be strategic in opening up a SoTL pathway. (267 words)