The editors welcome submissions on all current and pertinent aspects of teaching and learning, particularly matters of inclusivity, authenticity, and twenty-first century readiness. However, beyond these matters, we invite fresh perspectives to Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). The scope of the journal is multidisciplinary and international in its reach and work selected for publication sees to foster the development of praxis around higher education practice.

The editors especially invite scholarship from all practitioners who design, adopt, assess, evaluate, and research either first-person or a combination first-, second- and third-person inquiry, methods, and practices. Roth (2006) opens calling for a greater combination of third-person and first-person modes of inquiry in higher education:  

‘Our scientific knowledge of how the world works has never been stronger, but our ability to use it to transform our lives to create greater personal and social harmony remains relatively weak. We can use our technology of the outer world to treat previously incurable diseases, but our mastery of the ‘‘technology’’ of the inner world is so rudimentary that we can barely contain the passions that lead us to destroy the very human life that we, paradoxically, struggle so hard to preserve. We have become the masters of third-person scientific investigation, but we are mere novices in the art of critical first-person scientific investigation. We have never known more about how the mind works, yet our ability to apply this knowledge to our own experience has not been correspondingly developed’ (p. 1787).

One of the reasons for the paradoxical situation that higher education institutions are facing is that there has been a failure to combine the careful, systematic, and scientific investigation of contemplative experience from a combined third-person and first-person perspective. Higher education pedagogy and curriculum is currently dominated by third- person inquiry: observation, analysis, recording, and discussion on a whole variety of subjects held at arm’s length, as a priori, ‘as if they were solely objects and our own subjectivity in viewing them does not exist’ (Roth, 2006, p.1790).

Given the long-held dominance of third-person inquiry in the neoliberal academy, Patterns of Practice especially seeks to amplify first-person inquiry of practitioners and students in an endeavour to unearth both alternative ways of knowing in higher education and alternative visions of higher education.

Given the long-held dominance of third-person inquiry in the neoliberal academy, Patterns of Practice especially seeks to amplify first-person inquiry of practitioners and students in an endeavour to unearth both alternative ways of knowing in higher education and alternative visions of higher education.

While nurturing and publicising inquiry, creativity and criticality within higher education, Patterns of Practice also seeks to stimulate, provoke, and extend discussion and debate with other professionals associated with this field.

Published twice per calendar year (Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter), Patterns of Practice adopts an open, critical, reflective, and interdisciplinary approach to SoTL. Issues are ‘themed’ around ‘big ideas’ that encompass the emotive, collaborative, and critical aspects of SoTL. Launched around the theme (Volume 1, Issue 1) of ‘Authenticity’, subsequent issues will explore themes of ‘Ambition’, ‘Risk’, ‘Desire’, ‘Uncertainty’, ‘Partnership’, ‘Intention’ and ‘Confidence’.