A developmental pathway toward leadership for educational change: the Educators’ experiences of the educational scholar program

INTRODUCTION: The Educational Scholar Program (ESP) is a creative method to focus on the quality of education and the scholarship of education. This paper critically investigated how educational educators perceived the Educational Scholar Program. METHOD: The ESP was developed according to the project-based learning method. An interdisciplinary strategy was used by participating educators from different schools, including nursing, medicine, public health, dentistry, and pharmacy. (n = 27). Semi-structured interviews explored the experiences of the participants in the ESP. A conventional content analysis approach introduced by Graneheim and Lundman was used for data analysis. RESULTS: A theme of “a developmental pathway toward leadership for educational change” was explored into four categories: “Motivated for educational change,” “collaborative learning through the application of knowledge,” “tensions of change agent,” and “a perceived responsibility of a change agent.” CONCLUSION: The participants perceived the ESP as a platform for improving leadership capabilities for educational change through the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Using the ESP as a faculty development program to train educational leadership for change is suggested. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-023-04015-8.