Journal of Education and Learning Technology (JELT) - ISSN 2720-7730

We have immense pleasure to introduce the special issue of the Journal of Education and Learning Technology (JELT). The issue entails of the collection of the scholarly work, which was presented on the 11^th International Conference on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, hosted by the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at the Central University of Technology, Free State, South Africa. The conference call landscaped the 2025 intellectual gathering under the theme; Doing SoTL differently, impactful, and relevant for lived realities: Igniting inclusivity and new theories, and invited scholars to rethink the purposes, forms, and institutional place of SoTL in contemporary higher education. The theme was deemed timely, as it intersected the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning with the relevance thereof with lived realities, theories and (or) praxis. The conference call foregrounded key questions that continue to shape the field, including relevance, inclusion, theory building, digital transformation, and the relationship between SoTL and the lived realities of students and lecturers in diverse contexts. It also challenged contributors to move beyond taken for granted assumptions and to generate work that is meaningful in a time shaped by technological change, artificial intelligence, epistemic contestation, and widening inequalities.

The present special issue mirrors the latter determination. Drawing on the plethoric list of papers prepared for publication in the JELT March 2026 special issue, the collection presents 26 diversified scholarly contributions, that convergently addressed the conference theme from different scholarly stances. The papers in the special issue present the phenomenon of the Scholarship of Teaching and Teaching from diversified institutions of higher learning, thereby illuminating the point(s) of convergences, divergence(s), and need for further line(s) of inquiry. What is particularly striking is the breadth and the width of the issue as well as the manner in which the papers collectively illuminate plethoric and diversified approaches towards doing SoTL differently. Rather than forming a single narrow conversation, the contributions cluster into convoluted thematic areas that speak directly to the conference call.

The first cluster is centric on reimagining SoTL as a pedagogy, field, culture, and scholarly practice. Papers in this grouping engage the broader intellectual and institutional questions of SoTL, including how SoTL cultures are built, how benchmarking can (re)inform future directions, and how teaching can be (re)imagined within the terrain towards changing academic landscapes. This cluster also includes contributions that foreground student centred learning, meaningful engagement, and critical literacy as part of a renewed pedagogic imagination. Together, these papers strengthen the theoretical and strategic foundations of SoTL and invite institutions to take teaching scholarship more seriously as a site of knowledge production and transformation. The foci of the second cluster are on curriculum transfiguration and discipline responsive pedagogies. This cluster models how SoTL can be practiced within specific disciplinary and professional contexts, including mathematics, radiography, geography, communication design, tourism education, communication networks, and accounting education. These contributions reveal that curriculum renewal is not an abstract and arbitrary institutional slogan. Rather, it is a practical and intellectual process that needs to be approached with trepidation, disciplinary sensitivity, pedagogic creativity, and attention to future readiness, labour market relevance, and student learning realities. In this respect, the collection speaks powerfully to the subthemes on curriculum transformation, teaching anew, and pedagogical innovation.

The third cluster addresses assessment, feedback, and academic integrity in contemporary learning environments. The issue includes work on reflective and transformative assessment practices, student feedback on supplemental instruction, and assessment integrity in learning management systems. These studies bring needed attention to the quality and credibility of learning processes, especially in digitally mediated contexts where questions of fairness, trust, and evidence of learning are increasingly important. This cluster also resonates with the conference emphasis on assessment innovation and learning analytics, while reminding us that assessment is a deeply pedagogical and ethical practice, not merely a technical procedure. A fourth cluster explores digital pedagogies, educational technologies, and artificial intelligence. Several contributions engage with digital learning environments, gamification, geospatial intelligence, artificial intelligence in photography classrooms, AI-enabled curriculum and assessment transformation, and the integration of ChatGPT in disciplinary teaching contexts. Importantly, the issue does not present technology as an end in itself. Across these papers, technology is framed as a pedagogical concern, a curriculum question, and in many cases an inclusivity question. This is precisely the kind of grounded and critical engagement that the conference theme called for when it asked what SoTL should look like in a century marked by rapid technological changes.

A fifth cluster advances inclusion, decoloniality, student voice, and support for diverse learning needs. Contributions in this area engaged with inclusive and decolonial digital pedagogies, universal design for learning, student perspectives on pedagogic praxis and absenteeism, adaptive mentorship in work integrated learning, and reflective practice for collaborative learning. These papers deepen the issue’s concern with lived realities by foregrounding access, belonging, participation, and responsiveness to diversity. They also extend SoTL beyond classroom technique toward questions of justice, design, and institutional responsibility. A sixth cluster highlights teacher education, professional learning, and transitions across educational contexts. Papers on science content knowledge, teacher education learning experiences, and the experiences of novice lecturers transitioning from basic education into higher education broaden the scope of SoTL and remind us that pedagogic development is shaped by continuity and transition across sectors. These contributions are particularly valuable because they situate higher education teaching within a wider educational ecology, where lecturer identity, teacher preparation, and practice-based reflection matter deeply for quality education.

Finally, the 26 scholarly contributions accepted out of 34 received demonstrate that SoTL in the South African and broader higher education context is vibrant, searching, and increasingly confident in its methodological and conceptual diversity. The collection includes conceptual, practice based, and empirically oriented scholarship, and it draws attention to pressing concerns in teaching and learning while also generating new possibilities for theory and practice. It shows that doing SoTL differently is not a slogan. It is already happening through experiments in pedagogy, curriculum redesign, student partnership, technological engagement, reflective practice, and collaborative knowledge making.