Wisdom Wednesday: Let’s change our L&T nomenclature in 2025

It's Wisdom Wednesday so time for some hump day reading, and I thought we'd start out strong for 2025 with a call for a change to some of our nomenclature in Higher Education, speficially around what we call academics (like me!) that focus specifically on learning and teaching practice in the academy.

Specifically, I wanted to link to you to this piece by the Vice Provost of University of Sydney, Professor Susan Rowland, which she apparently wrote all the way back in October, but which only surfaced on my LinkedIn feed late last year. In it, Susan makes the suggestion that staff in this position should be called 'Education Focused' (EF), which is a term that is slowly being used across Australia, but sometimes also competing with the term 'Teaching Fellow' or something like it.

Importantly, she makes the point in her piece that when we say 'teaching intensive' or similar we shortchange the scholarly aspect of the role, and that EF perhaps more clearly articulates that we are all scholars, just that some of us focus on discipline work, and some of us focus on education work, and we should perhaps all be treated the same. And she finishes with the point that if we support that, then we need to explore as an academy what 'Scholarship of Teaching and Learning' (SoLT) means and how it might be action.

So there we go, for 2025 I'm calling that we drop 'Teaching Fellow/Scholar' and embrace 'Education Focused' (with the corresponding 'Discipline Focused') and start treating all scholars the same! How's that for a hot take? ;) Let me know your thoughts, really interested to see what others think about this.

https://educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au/teaching@sydney/research-for-education-focused-academics-a-current-conversation/