A paper from the STEM Annual Conference 2014.
The professional lives of UK STEM HE academics are complex and multi-faceted and may vary depending on the local context. What is common to all however is the pressure to improve the student learning experience not least to improve institutional outcomes in the National Student Survey and university league tables. Increasingly academics have responded to such influences by attempting to re-orientate their careers away from a purely STEM and bioscience disciplinary focus to one that also encompasses expertise in the learning and teaching aspects of their academic practice. How does one begin to make such a transition though? This paper uses the methodological approaches of autobiography and self-study to investigate some ways in which such a transition might be attempted. Articulation of personal dilemmas and issues in this way can become a useful research tool by providing evidence and analysis of problems to illuminate the experience of and for others. The specific instance here will concentrate on how formal initiatives within universities and wider across the sector have sought to elevate the role of learning and teaching in HE and discuss whether this has been successfully achieved or not. Finally it will be concluded that the changing HE landscape while demanding ever more engagement on multiple levels by academic practitioners will probably result in a certain level of insecurity and anxiety amongst those practitioners.
