Scholarship of Higher Education in Law and Justice
Overview
The Scholarship of Higher Education, Learning and Law and Justice (SHELLJ) acts as a focus for the whole of the Faculty of Law, promoting higher education learning and teaching scholarship, particularly in its legal and justice aspects.
Members of the program work with colleagues from other universities, as well as staff from other faculties at QUT, with the aim of advancing both discipline-specific scholarship and broader higher education pedagogy. One of its objectives is to assist in curriculum enhancement through teaching scholarship. Members of the program are also committed to mentoring early career researchers, and to strengthening the teaching-research nexus.
The program is concerned with developing and supporting national and international arrangements for the purpose of sharing and benchmarking learning and teaching practice and processes, and has strong collaborative links with international organisations, such as the UK Higher Education Academy, the UK Centre for Legal Education, and the US Policy Centre on the 'First Year of College'.
Details
This research program brings together an extensive array of Faculty expertise in a community of practice that promotes and advances higher education learning and teaching scholarship, particularly in its legal and justice aspects. The program builds on the Law Faculty's established reputation for learning and teaching excellence and is closely aligned to sectoral drivers, especially the synergistic integration of research, learning and practice that comes from curriculum enhancement through teaching scholarship. The program's track record is of high-impact multidisciplinary and trans-disciplinary research by team members who have consistently partnered with interfaculty, divisional and external colleagues in a deliberate strategy to reflect the changing nature of contemporary academic work.
Various program members have existing national (and international) profiles in their research areas and have received multiple invitations to deliver international and national keynote addresses on topics of both discipline-specific interest and broader, higher education pedagogy. Program members have been very active in establishing track records in competitive grant-getting and consultancy engagement, while the Faculty is also renowned for its capacity to develop and deliver specialist continuing education activities for a wide variety of stakeholders. Team members are particularly committed to mentoring early career researchers and to strengthening the teaching-research nexus. The program has a number of funded projects (including a number of national Carrick Institute and Queensland LPITAF grants) and a number of proposed projects, including intra- and interuniversity collaborations that have evolved out of long-term, strategic networking.
SHELL J has made a sustained contribution to law and justice teaching scholarship and innovative curriculum design by way of its many DEST and non-DEST outcomes and consultancies: it demonstrates a long-standing record of research capacity as well as a breadth of engagement beyond disciplinary boundaries and a willingness to collaborate with academic and professional peers in a variety of environments and groupings.
The areas of foci of the Research Program are aligned with those of the national Carrick Institute (and the Institute's own international agenda) and are concerned with developing and supporting national and international collaborations to share and benchmark learning and teaching practices and processes. The UK Higher Education Academy, the UK Centre for Legal Education, the US Policy Centre on the First Year of College and the Scottish Funding Council's Quality Assurance Agency's Steering Committee for 'The First Year Experience' are all potential and/or existing collaborators (most recently in Kift's application for a Carrick Senior Fellowship, in the latter instance together with a number of additional individual national and international collaborators).
Topics of current interest include: innovative online course delivery; the experience of firstyear students; work integrated learning; student electronic portfolios; the teaching-research nexus; the future of legal education; the acquisition of professional skills; effective and efficient blended learning environments; and support for sessional teachers. Leveraging the Faculty's national and international reputation for learning and teaching excellence, SHELL J brings together law and justice experts to promote and advance learning and teaching in Australian higher education and conducts multidisciplinary research into pedagogical issues of significance to the tertiary sector.
