Are you a pathway 3 member of staff but are looking to find your pedagogic research niche? You are not alone.
Did you know that more academics are employed in teaching-focused roles than ever before in the UK? In the academic year 2024-5, 34.8% of HE employees were in teaching only roles, 21.4% in research only roles, and 43.2% in research and teaching roles (HESA 2026a). This trend is replicated in other countries, such as Australia, Canada and the US (Bennett et al 2018, Rogers and Swain 2021, Smith and Walker 2024).
Though teaching-exclusive roles are an emerging career pathway in higher education, studies indicate that this group of academics can struggle with their professional identity and career aspirations. Progression for those in these roles vary across institutions, with different organisations placing their own set of expectations on what the job entails and what is meant by ‘scholarly activity and outputs’. This is further compounded by little agreement across the sector on the scholarship of teaching and learning (see Smith and Walker, 2024).
Other studies report that academics in teaching exclusive roles miss having protected time for research (Rogers and Swain, 2021) and worry about their overall career trajectory, especially if they were to move institution, or decide they want to migrate back to a research and teaching role (Graham, 2026; Bennett et al, 2018). In all, the research points to an experience of ‘role and identity confusion’; in the absence of appropriate teaching only role models many experience an unclear ‘teaching-focussed career script’ (Bennett et al 2018).
I’ve been there too.
I am a Pathway 3 (teaching only) staff member in Bristol Dental School. I recently gave a talk in my School about my pedagogic research. I used it as a platform to talk more about how pedagogic research fitted in with my role and offered some tips on how others may want to progress their scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). This short talk gave me an opportunity to think again about my scholarship of teaching and learning and how my ‘teaching-focussed career script’ evolved.
My teaching-focussed career script
One of the most important questions an aspiring SoTL researcher must ask is, “What will I research”? It took a while for me to answer this question.
When I first stepped into this role I had only a patient/service user understanding of dentistry and knew little of the complexities of oral health. Unsure where to begin, I started to explore the SoTL produced by dental educators. I quickly found that most of this work was quantitative in nature and primarily focused on the acquisition and development of clinical/operative skills. This was interesting to discover because my empirical skills set is as a qualitative researcher, and my teaching concerned the decidedly nonclinical topics of sociology of health, dental law and ethics and professionalism.
Upon further analysis of the curriculum, I realised that dental teaching operated within fixed curricular boundaries and that this set curriculum prioritised biomedical and clinical learning outcomes over social science related learning outcomes. Relatedly, while the curriculum was prescriptive, there was no set guidance regarding pedagogy so there was room for creativity and pedagogic development there.
Finally, dental students are known as academic high achievers, arriving at university with a near-exclusive science background. My teaching experience up to that point involved teaching social sciences to a more mixed abilities cohort.
With all the pieces of puzzles laid out in this way, I slowly started to see the missing pieces in the field of dental education as well as opportunities for where my pedagogic research take me.
It all started with the students: how could/should I engage this high achieving, scientifically minded cohort with ‘non-dental’ subjects of professionalism, ethics and law, patient-centred care and health inequalities? Leaning into my expertise in qualitative research methods, I wanted to explore this question from an interpretivist approach.
From this, my pedagogic research began with an interest in the learning dispositions of my students and the barriers or facilitators they encounter in their learning with non-clinical topics. These research studies spun out further to look at how students engage with other topics and how to teach real-world issues in an engaging and ethical and socially responsible way (see my UoB profile page https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/persons/patricia-neville).
Reflections and actions
Everyone’s teaching career script will be different; it will depend on the educational context you work in (undergraduate or postgraduate), the type of curriculum you teach (whether it is prescribed or produced by faculty) and the type of students you will encounter, their learning journey and career destination.
I now realise how advantageous my disciplinary training as a sociologist was when it came to undertaking SoTL. Our professional and academic training shapes our relationship with teaching/pedagogy, and experience with research skills (Kaasila et al 2021, Hassanyian 2024). For me, my research skills were integral to my academic training. However, not everyone is trained in research methods and, for this reason, may struggle to establish their SoTL research. Therefore, locally developed training courses will help build your research skills, such as the new Pedagogic Research and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Training course recently launched by BILT. (see Develop – University of Bristol – Pedagogic Research and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Training Resources).
If you are still struggling to tap into your teaching-focussed career script, or, you are considering applying for teaching only academic role, you may find Felten’s (2013) model of scholarship of teaching and learning a useful place to start. It presents SoTL as being informed by 5 key principles- (1) inquiry into student learning, (2) grounded in context, (3) methodologically sound, (4) conducted in partnership with students, and (5) appropriately public. Exploring your subject in these ways could help determine the pedagogic research journey you might embark on.
References
Bennett, D., Roberts, L., Ananthram, S. and Broughton, M. (2018) What is required to develop career pathways for teaching academics?. Higher Education. 75, 271–286 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-017-0138-9
Felten, P. (2013) Principles of Good Practice in SoTL. Teaching & Learning Inquiry: The ISSOTL Journal 1 (1): 121–125. doi:10.2979/teachlearninqu.1.1.121
Graham, R. (March 2026). Advancing the reward of university teaching: insights from three waves of the Teaching Cultures Survey. Available from: https://www.advancingteaching.com/
Hassaniyan, A. (2024). Revisiting the debate about teaching-research nexus relevance. Research in Education, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00345237241301919
HESA. (19 February 2026a) Table 7 – HE academic staff by HE provider and employment conditions. Available at: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/staff/table-7 Access 5th March 2026
Himanka, J. (2025). Modelling the connection between teaching, research and learning. European Journal of Higher Education, 15(2), 245–262. https://doi.org/10.1080/21568235.2024.2306939
Kaasila, R., Lutovac, S., Komulainen, J. and Maikkola, M. (2021) From fragmented toward relational academic teacher identity: the role of research-teaching nexus. Higher Education 82: 583–598.
Rogers, B., & Swain, K. (2022). Teaching academics in higher education: resisting teaching at the expense of research. Australian educational researcher, 49(5), 1045–1061. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-021-00465-5
Smith, S & Walker, D. (2024) Scholarship and academic capitals: the boundaried nature of education-focused career tracks, Teaching in Higher Education, 29:1,111-125, DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2021.1965570
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