What can resits teach us about teaching? A SoTL perspective
Karen Lander
Across higher education systems, students who do not meet the required standard in an assessment may be offered a second chance through a resit. Although the terminology varies, with alternative terms such as retake, reassessment or second attempt, the focus is usually on what students need to do differently to succeed. A Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) perspective instead invites us to see assessment outcomes as evidence that can inform our understanding of teaching and learning. Through this lens, resits help us look beyond what students have or have not achieved and ask: What patterns emerge? What assumptions might be built into our teaching, assessment, or feedback practices? Where might our own practices need to change?
What resit patterns can reveal
When several students struggle with the same assessment, this raises questions about the alignment between what we intended them to learn, what was taught, and what students understood they were expected to do. Students may struggle to show their learning, not necessarily because they lack ability, but because expectations have not been made clear enough. Whether the task involves statistics, laboratory work, academic writing, or professional practice, repeated difficulty may indicate that students need clearer guidance on how to show what they know and can do. We might respond by revisiting foundational concepts, checking understanding, making expectations explicit, or scaffolding tasks more effectively.
Resits can also tell us something about feedback. If students repeat the same mistakes, we ask whether previous feedback helped them understand what to improve and how to act on it. Resit patterns can expose issues in curriculum sequencing. For example, students might be assessed on skills or concepts before they have had enough opportunities to develop them. Recurring difficulties with academic writing, referencing, critical evaluation, or applying theory suggest that these academic literacies need to be taught more deliberately rather than assumed.
Inclusion and curriculum
Resits help us ask more inclusive questions about which students resit, who can access support, and whether our curriculum and assessment practices recognise students’ wider lives. Across Europe, students study while balancing employment, caring responsibilities, commutes, language differences, financial pressures, and other commitments. In this context, repeated resits may highlight structural barriers to success. Students with caring responsibilities, paid work, or long commutes can find it harder to attend optional support before a resit. This points to the importance of building support into the curriculum, rather than simply making it available.
This does not mean lowering standards or removing challenge. It means considering resits within the wider context of students’ lives. The aim is not simply to help students pass at the second attempt, but to understand how we can enable better learning. Resits therefore become prompts for scholarly reflection whereby we analyse resit data, review feedback themes, speak with students, compare outcomes across cohorts, or evaluate changes to teaching and support. These activities use evidence from teaching to understand and improve student learning, which is central to the ethos of SoTL.
Resits as a second chance for educators
When we bring a SoTL perspective to resits, we shift from asking, ‘What did these students do wrong?’ to the more challenging question of ‘What might our teaching and assessment practices have left unclear?’ Seen in this way, resits are not merely administrative. They offer us a way to reflect on the effectiveness and inclusiveness of our learning environments. Resits may be a second chance for students. Through SoTL, they can also become a second chance for educators to reflect on and adapt their teaching practice.
