As an experienced researcher in the discipline of political studies I appreciate the importance of scholarship and generating new research. In my view the scholarship of teaching and learning is about:

·        Becoming knowledgeable about best practice in teaching and learning in your discipline

·        Reflecting on your own teaching practices

·        Using your knowledge of teaching and learning scholarship to write up your own experiences for peer review and ultimately publication in scholarly journals or books. 

At this stage in my teaching career I have published three peer reviewed journal article sin the field of teaching and learning (see publications list). I plan, in years to come, to engage more fully in this reflexive scholarship. I have found the task of writing a teaching portfolio to be highly beneficial. It has encouraged me to read about teaching theories and reflect on my own teaching philosophy. I have also thought far more critically with how I engage students, assess students and evaluate my teaching. The greatest challenge of writing this portfolio is that I am the research subject. I find it challenging to objectively research one’s own practices. I furthered my professional development by:

• Attending and graduating from the Professionalisation of Teaching & Learning Course at UWC in 2014. This was an excellent course that elevated my understanding and approach to teaching and learning.

• I have also attended several workshops and seminars on teaching and learning. In 2015 the South African Association for Political Studies (SAAPS) hosted a panel on decolonising teaching in Political Studies which I attended and found immensely useful. I have listened to experienced teachers such as Suren Pillay give keynotes on teaching and learning in post-apartheid South Africa and attended the UWC EMS colloquium on Decolonization of the Curriculum in March 2018.

• I completed an introduction to Xhosa course at UCT. In a private capacity, from the beginning of 2018, I attend an hour long Xhosa tutorial every two weeks in order to improve my ability to understand students. 

Although I write in the field of teaching and learning, I am also situated in the sphere Kreber (2002) calls ‘teaching excellence’. I aspire to be an effective teacher for my students, inspiring and capacitating them to the best of my ability. Alongside teaching effective courses, however, I also want to nurture a new generation of scholars who create knowledge which is published. As described above, I focus a lot of energy on post-graduates through research workshops, skills training and through working one-on-one with Honours and Masters students in the process of researching and writing their theses. This I see, following Brew (2003) as a contribution to scholarship through nurturing the next generation of scholars and promoting enquiry focused learning.

While I focus a lot of attention on research methods for post-graduates, I also do this for undergraduates. Here I help them understand how to read, that is what to look for in their reading, how to assess whether information is reliable and valid. I explain the peer review process for journal articles and book chapters and why we use these types of ‘academic’ writing in our teaching.  I also help undergraduate think about how to draw out key themes in their readings. A useful strategy I employed for 2nd years was to give a lecture (with opportunity to workshop ideas) on how to do comparative analysis. Together the students and I look at different ways of writing up comparative data. Students are also encouraged and rewarded for doing their own research and finding original academic articles. Through this approach, which supports students as ‘enquirers’, I hope to contribute to the development of a new generation of scholarship. 

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