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narrow relationship to teaching and learning, where teaching is viewed as the cause, leaving an effect on students4. Here, SoTL becomes a reflexive examination of our own beliefs and practices in a way that ‘enables students’ voices and perspectives to be fully integrated into not only in problem solving scholarship but also wider educational discussions concerning ideas, theory, values and purposes’ (Ding, 2016: 15–16).

      SoTL is alternatively referred to as pedagogical research and is largely seen as specific to those who work in Higher Education. It is distinct from, yet a branch of, educational research. The key differences being that educational research is conducted by those specifically research trained within the epistemological paradigms of educational research; it is often viewed as research on or about a particular area of inquiry. Those entering a SoTL ‘community of practice’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991) do so from a wide range of disciplinary epistemologies and are required to both maintain this particular perspective and cross the ‘tribal’ boundaries of disciplines (Becher & Trowler, 2001) to develop scholarship projects that can be accepted as a worthwhile contribution to teaching and learning inquiry; it is generally viewed as being research for a specific group or community. By doing so, scholars open themselves up to the question posed by Kanuka (2011 in Fanghanel et al., 2015: 9): ‘Notwithstanding such small-scale efforts [i.e. inquiry on and for practice] may make contributions to one’s practices – but when they are made public, is this enough to be considered a scholarly contribution?’ In their SoTL Manifesto, Ding et al. (2018) argue that SoTL should be about impact, including ‘impact on people, policies and practices (assessments, concepts of syllabi and curricula, communities, community engagement, leadership, mentoring)’. By having impact beyond the individual teaching and learning context, they go on to suggest that ‘scholarship has the potential to enable language educators to actively shape their educational contexts rather than be shaped by circumstance, others and powerful ideologies and structures’ (2018: 58–59). This, I suggest, is the guiding principle of this book and should be a key guiding principle for all EAP scholarship and practice.

      What counts as SoTL methods of inquiry is still an area for debate, and the lines between a pedagogical approach and a means of inquiry into teaching and learning can, at times, become blurred. SoTL is also tied in with continuous professional development, or learning (CPD/ CPL) (Geertsema, 2016). SoTL should take place within disciplinary contexts but can also be used to cross disciplinary boundaries, encourage educational development across disciplines and faculties and work to change institutional practices. Viewed in this way, that EAP practitioners should engage in SoTL seems obvious. There has been long standing consideration in language teaching research around how/whether practitioners engage in research (Borg, 2009, 2013; Hanks, 2019; Smith & Rebolledo, 2018), with a focus on Action Research, Exploratory Practice or Exploratory Action Research (for more comprehensive discussion of these areas of language practitioner research see, inter alia, Burns, 2010; Allwright & Hanks, 2009; Smith & Rebolledo, 2018, respectively) . The imperative for language teachers to do this remains unclear throughout much of this literature, other than a sense that it is desirable and could, in the case of Exploratory Practice, enhance ‘quality of life’ (Hanks, 2017). For those working as EAP practitioners in Higher Education, the imperative goes beyond this because ‘by withholding contributions to scholarship we are potentially limiting our own agency, limiting our ability to influence structural change and accepting of changes and practices defined and decided by others’ (Ding, 2016: 12). SoTL in EAP, while more ambiguous in terms of methodology, becomes an ‘attempt to shorten the gap between what is and what ought to be’ (Ding, 2016: 13), i.e. moving EAP practice from a liminal, marginal position to one with academic status and a central place within the academy.

      In their review of SoTL literature for the HEA, Faghanel et al. (2015) outline the different contractual status with which people working in academic departments now find themselves. Within this, they suggest that there is an increasingly clear split between those on research focused contracts, with a requirement to submit to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and those on teaching only, or teaching and scholarship, contracts. One of the aims of SoTL is to redress the perceived imbalance in status between teaching and research in HE institutions, providing public evidence of excellence in learning and teaching and thus enabling those on teaching contracts to be rewarded and recognised in equal measure with those on more research focused contracts. This has now been extended to institutional level with the introduction of the TEF.

      The Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), introduced in 2016 aimed to place teaching in HE on a par with research. In the first round of TEF submissions, evidence was required at an institutional level only, with HEIs being able to create their own narrative around excellence in teaching and learning. Evidence of engagement in the scholarship of teaching and learning, or pedagogical research, was a key part of many institutions’ submission. As Fanghanel et al. suggest (2015: 10):

      SoTL has been utilised as:

      • a means of demonstrating excellence with a view to raising the status of teaching in relation to that of research;

      • a framework to evidence excellence in teaching and learning and assess teaching quality;

      • a tool to develop academics and teaching practice.

      In this way, SoTL is no longer only a movement of engaged practitioners moving towards evidence based teaching practices, working to legitimise, to share and go public with their investigations and do so in a rigorous and systematic manner. SoTL is now being used as evidence for individual promotion and also for evidence of institutional excellence.

      There are, therefore, instrumental and external pushes for staff to engage with SoTL; UK HEIs are increasingly setting targets around how many of their teaching staff should have achieved Fellowship status through Advance HE, one requirement of which is engagement with SoTL literature and practice, and promotion criteria have been developed to encourage a route through student education and pedagogical research. Therefore, a number of academic teaching staff may find themselves being pushed into SoTL with little intrinsic motivation and understanding around how SoTL can feed into their student education practice and little sense of purpose or direction. Without this understanding, the usual considerations, particularly around ethics, that would take place when undertaking disciplinary research can sometimes be lost through a sense that SoTL is less rigorous, more personal and a part of ‘normal’ teaching practice.

      The ethics of SoTL

      The ethics of SoTL, as with SoTL itself, remain undefined and a somewhat grey area. By attempting to define itself as different to traditional research, and separate from Educational Research, it is tempting for scholars to proceed without the same rigorous consideration for ethics as is now required before conducting research. This is exacerbated because many SoTL projects are localised and, by definition, should be part of normal teaching and learning practices. However, as MacLean and Poole argue: ‘Teachers who act also as scholars of teaching and learning in the practice of their discipline must consider the ethics of their dual roles in situations in which their students are also their subjects of research’ (MacLean & Poole, 2010: 1).

      Most exploration of the ethics of SoTL has focused on this dual role in relation to students. Martin (2013) emphasises the need to consider students as ‘human subjects’. In the same article, Martin reproduces a statement of ethics for SoTL created and presented by Gurung et al. at the 2007 ISSOTL conference in Sydney, Australia. In this they outline three major principles. These are:

      • Respect for Persons: Students (the research participants) should be treated with autonomy and must be free to decide whether or not to participate in a research study unless archival data are being used or if results are not to be presented publicly.

      • Beneficence: Instructors (researchers) must recognise the need to ‘maximise possible benefits and minimise possible harm’.

      • Justice: Students (research participants) should be the people who most benefit from the research. It would be unethical to research a particular group in excess if that group is not the group that will benefit from the knowledge generated through the research.

      (Gurung et al., 2007 in Martin, 2013: 62–63).

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