Retreating Academics: Creating Spaces for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Abstract

Recognising the struggles many academics experience around academic writing, this paperexplores particular spaces created to support academic engagement in the scholarship ofteaching and learning: the space of writing retreats. The metaphor of ‘tapestry’ is used tocapture the development of a complex conceptual image of the writing retreats. A metatheoreticalframework - a matrix built from the ‘warp’ and ‘weft’ of spatiality and sociality -supports the development of a pedagogical picture of presence. Analysis of qualitative data,generated through questionnaires and informal group discussions, led to the identification ofdimensional ‘threads’, considered as enabling conditions, for scholarly engagement. Suchdimensions speak to spaces not only within (personal) and between people (interpersonal),but also spaces beyond (extrapersonal).