The Division of Education and Scholarship

A network of individuals and groups undertaking scholarship of teaching and learning
DES Logo

Welcome to The Division of Education and Scholarship (DES), a network of individuals and groups undertaking scholarship related to teaching and learning.

DES was set up by core teaching staff from the Peninsula Medical and Dental Schools, as an academic home for those involved in education, who are undertaking projects related to their work. Since then it has developed as a thriving community that anyone can join. Together we have interrogated the meaning of scholarship, worked on ways to share and maximise the impact of our work, set up skill sharing courses and workshops and developed a comprehensive programme of scholarly work. Our work now reaches beyond our school, into our faculty, across the university and out to universities nationally and internationally.

 

What is scholarship?

The need for educational scholarship is based on the premise that teaching and learning is an intellectual activity that ‘shared with others’ can impact constructively not only on the practice of individuals and faculties but on the effectiveness of teaching and learning more broadly. Scholarship is not about fixing something that has gone wrong. Scholarship is a set of habits and dispositions for meeting the challenges that we all face as learners in an ever changing world.

Scholarship typically begins with questions emerging from involvement in the routine delivery of education. An understanding of the research process and research methodologies is key to the process of scholarship, helping ensure that work generated is academically rigorous. Understanding pedagogical theory also plays an important part, encouraging individuals to imagine their work from a variety of perspectives.

The products of scholarship include new practices, resources, reports, research articles, conference papers, textbooks, networks and collaborations. While scholarship contributes primarily to practice in Higher Education, because it often results in interventions that produce measurable change scholarship is also of significant value to researchers across a broad range of disciplines and professions.

DES - Journals

Areas of study

  • Anatomy teaching to health professionals
  • Applied medical knowledge testing
  • Biochemistry teaching and learning
  • Blended / hybrid learning (inc COVID response)
  • Competency vs capability
  • Critical pedagogies
  • Enquiry based / problem based learning
  • Equality and diversity
  • Formative assessment
  • Interdisciplinary teaching and learning
  • International students
  • Medical humanities approaches to teaching and learning in the health professions
  • Microbiology teaching in health professions education
  • Online assessment
  • Outreach - public understanding of science
  • Outreach - widening participation
  • Pastoral support
  • Patient inclusion in health professions education (PPI)
  • Professionalism
  • Reflection

  

  • Resilience
  • Scholarship of teaching and learning
  • Small group learning
  • Social constructionism
  • Social constructivism / cognitivism
  • Sociology in and of the health professions
  • Student destinations
  • Student feedback
  • Students as mentors
  • Student remediation
  • Student voice
  • Teaching careers in higher education
  • Teacher development
  • Teacher expertise
  • Teaching accreditation
  • The role of the student in teacher development
  • The flipped class room
  • The hidden curriculum
  • Threshold concepts
  • Transferable skills / generic graduate attributes
  • Ways of thinking and practising

Please contact us if you are interested in any of the above and we will direct you to the right person.

 

DES documents

Scholarship resources