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Published version of the paper reproduced here with permission from the publisher., This paper details the current state of play of an institutional learning and teaching community of practice initiative at Flinders University. The majority of Flinders University CoPs are cross-institutional and focussed on key learning and teaching challenges. Flinders University CoPs are voluntarily facilitated by staff and each CoP’s knowledge creation and outcomes are driven by members, with the University providing a framework and support for their activities without institutional expectations. In this paper, through four firsthand case studies, the authors reflect on the CoPs that they facilitate and consider how the CoPs are progressing by exploring lessons learnt, success factors and potential for future success. The paper commences with a brief review of relevant literature. Four case studies are then introduced and explored. The paper argues that considerable social learning and collective identity formation has been achieved, but that obstacles remain to future success.

Refereed/Peer-reviewed A coding guide based on the Interactive, Constructive, Active, Passive (ICAP) theory was developed and used to analyze the transcripts from filmed classroom observations. The analysis focused on the lesson tasks used by the 20 participating teachers to promote student cognitive engagement and the links between these tasks and student learning. The results showed that a) only 30% of the lesson tasks were assigned the Constructive and Interactive codes, and b) there were important teacher differences. About half of the teachers provided no or very few opportunities for Constructive or Interactive student cognitive engagement in their lessons.

In the last years, educators and policymakers have put a great deal of emphasis on the need to develop an education for the twenty-first century—an education that prepares our students to meet the economic, technological, and societal needs of our knowledge-based economies. There is wide agreement that the main characteristic of life and work in the twenty-first century is its changing nature. Changes are happening so fast that it is hard to predict the exact jobs the students of today will have over their lifespan. This creates a need to equip students with the capabilities of independent and lifelong learning; in other words, to teach them how to learn. Despite the broad recognition of this important shift in education goals, we still know little about how to teach students how to learn, and especially what this shift means about the way teachers teach in their classrooms. The need to develop students’ capabilities for independent learning has become even more urgent today as we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, which has seen unprecedented school closures and dramatic increases in independent online learning.

Uncertainty, overwhelmed, doubtful, anxious … and so the list of emotions of the doctoral candidate goes on. Yet, we can move from not just surviving emotional and cognitive challenges to thriving and embracing the challenges through the creation of a support network. While family and friends might be one supportive network, they often fail to understand the lived experience of doctoral research, so it is critical to establish a professional network early in the candidature. This may form naturally if you are researching within a laboratory setting, but for many doctoral candidates engaged in social science research, finding a place in a professional network may not be straightforward. In this chapter, co-written by doctoral students and their supervisor, the processes and power of creating a network are shared and explored in the hope of supporting others to achieve the same. The chapter presents ideas for creating or finding a place in a network but more importantly for recognizing the power of the network to ensure successful outcomes beyond the completion of the thesis. While completion of the thesis is a primary aim of the doctoral candidature, we argue the quality of the candidature experience can shape the future of the graduate and subsequently the next generation of academics.

In the current higher education environment, providing high quality teaching and learning experiences to students has moved beyond desirable to essential. Quality improvement takes many forms, but one core aspect to ensure sustainable improvement is the development of a culture of scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Developing such an institutional culture is surprisingly challenging yet essential to improving the status of teaching in higher education (HE), being successful in teaching and learning awards and grants, and, improving the student experience. The Australian Government’s Promoting Excellence Network initiative funds networks to foster collaboration between HE institutions to improve outcomes in national learning and teaching award and grant programs. Supported by this funding, the South Australian / Northern Territory Promoting Excellence Network (SANTPEN), a grouping of six institutions, formed. Bringing together a diverse network of institutions, similar only by virtue of geographic location is challenging. This paper describes the first three years of SANTPEN’s journey from the context of our own development with the concept of SoTL and how we applied this to build a culture of SoTL in and between our institutions. It also demonstrates how a modest budget can be put to effective use to benefit those immediately involved, institutional objectives and the aims of the national funding body. We provide evidence of this effectiveness and conclude with our collective aspirations for the future of SANTPEN and other likeminded and funded networks. Refereed/Peer-reviewed