Raising the profile of innovative teaching in higher education? Reflections on the EquATE Project

This paper presents a methodology developed by members of the Research Centre for Learning and Teaching (RCfLAT) to collaborate with university teaching colleagues to produce theoretically- and pedagogically-based case studies of innovations in teaching and learning. The Equal Acclaim for Teaching Excellence (EquATE) project investigates whether case studies of teaching innovation, facilitated by a research team and made public through a community of inquiry, can take educational research beyond simple descriptions, foster criticality, and facilitate participants’ engagement with theory. The project supports participants as they plan and conduct their case studies and provides a community of inquiry in which findings are shared and discussed in relation to micro (classroom and discipline) contexts and macro (university-wide and higher education) agendas. This enables the project team to make comparisons across the case studies and to explore participants’ epistemic beliefs and views of learning. The project team collected data from the case studies, project tasks, and discussion groups that were thematically analyzed using inductive and deductive lenses. The data suggests that participation in the project can promote greater reflectivity, defamiliarize habitual practices, and promote openness to new theoretical and pedagogical perspectives.