Professor Phyllis Gleason
Middlesex Community College
Presented at the New England Faculty Development Consortium Conference
Nov. 14, 2003
This timeline traces the evolution of, attitudes towards, opinions about, and clarifications on the continuing debate regarding the distinction between the Scholarship of Teaching (SoTL) and scholarly teaching.
1980s: Universities debate the teaching versus research question.
1987: Lee Shulman discusses “Pedagogical Content Knowledge.”
1990: Ernest Boyer in Scholarship Reconsidered, uses the terms, “the scholarship of discovery, the scholarship of integration, the scholarship of application, and the scholarship of teaching.”
1991: Eugene Rice says SoTL has three distinct elements: “Synoptic Capacity, pedagogical content knowledge, and what we know about learning. “Synoptic capacity [is] the ability to draw the strands of a field together in a way that provides both coherence and meaning, to place what is known in context and open the way for connection to be made between the knower and the known” (p. 15).
1993: Shulman says SoTL requires “community…an artefact, a product, some form of community property that can be shared discussed, critiqued, exchanged, built on” (p. 7). It also requires peer review and sees teaching as community property.
1996: Jere Morehead & Peter Shedd conceptualize SoTL as teaching excellence; they conduct interviews with students to gain insights regarding ways to improve teaching. It is their belief that students need to be part of the learning/assessment process.
1996: Robert Menges & Maryellen Weimer believe that SoTL is the “educationists prerogative,” and faculty should “apply the educationist’s scholarship, which is found in books and scholarly articles, to their own practice, thereby taking on a more scholarly approach to teaching.”
1996: Patricia Cross & Mimi Steadman publish Classroom Research. They discuss learning portfolios, classroom assessment tools (CATS).
1998: The Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) is established.
1998-1999: Carolin Kreber conducts a Delphi study.
The study asked two questions:
“What do you consider to be the key features or components of the scholarship of teaching?
Which if any are the issues surrounding the scholarship of teaching that you consider to be unresolved to date?” (Kreber 2002).
1998: Cross publishes Classroom Research update
1999: Pat Hutchings & Shulman say, “[A] scholarship of teaching is not synonymous with excellent teaching. It requires a kind of ‘going meta’ in which faculty frame and systematically investigate questions related to student learning—the conditions under which it occurs, what it looks like, how to deepen it, and so forth—and do so with an eye not only to improving their own classroom but to advancing practice beyond it” (p. 15).
2000: Keith Trigwell et al conduct a study of 20 faculty members at an Australian University. The participants were asked, “What do you think scholarship of teaching is? Think of a time when you or someone demonstrated scholarship in their teaching: What was done?” (p.158). From this study came, “The Scholarship of Teaching: a Model.” The study resulted in a model that “has four dimensions relating to the areas of (a) being informed about teaching and learning generally and in the teacher’s own discipline; (b) reflection on that information, the teacher’s particular context and the relations between the two; (c) the focus of the teaching approach adopted; and (d) communication of the relevant aspects of the other three dimensions to members of the community of scholars. All four dimensions are considered to be a necessary part of the scholarship of teaching.
2000: Kreber & Patricia A. Cranton say, “the scholarship of teaching has been conceptualized in at least three different ways: as faculty conducting research on how to teach their discipline and publish the results (e.g. Richlin, 2001); as teaching excellence (Morehead & Shedd, 1996); or as the prerogative of the educationist (e.g. Menges & Weimer, 1996). Kreber & Cranton espouse a fourth perspective.…they introduce a model that suggests that academics who practice the scholarship of teaching engage in content, process, and premise reflection on research-based and experience-based knowledge in the areas of instruction, pedagogy and curriculum in ways that can be peer reviewed.”
2001: Laurie Richlin makes the distinction between SoTL and Scholarly Teaching—she believes in order to be considered SoTL, the work must be published in an appropriate journal or conference venue.
2001: Michael Paulsen examines the relationship between research and SoTL; he says that SoTL “requires high levels of discipline-related expertise; breaks new ground and is innovative; can be replicated and elaborated; can be documented; can be peer reviewed, has significance or impact.”
2002: Delphi study results, “experts agree that the scholarship of teaching is associated with, yet not the same as, teaching excellence, is not the prerogative of the educationist, and is not limited to publishing research on teaching in peer-reviewed journals” (Kreber p. 161). The study also showed that “the lack of broadly acceptable definitions for the scholarship of teaching, scholarly teaching, excellence in teaching, expert teacher, and research on teaching and learning is an unresolved issue” (p. 161).
2002: Rice says that “another form of scholarly work is gaining strength….The scholarship of engagement, as it is now being conceptualized, calls for a major epistemological challenge to the more traditional view of scholarly work of faculty members and the dominant way knowledge is generated in the academy” (p. 13).
2003: Hutchings examines the “Ethical Issues in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.”
References
ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report 2002, vol 29, Issue 2, p. 55, 15pp
Boyer, E. (1990) Scholarship Reconsidered (Washington, DC, Carnegie
Foundation).
Cross,K.P., and Steadman. M.H. (1996) Classroom Research: Implementing
the Scholarship of Teaching (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass)
Cross, K. P. Classroom Research: Implementing the Scholarship of
Teaching. New Directions for Teaching & Learning; Fall98 Issue 75,
p5, 8p
Kreber, C. (2002) Controversy and Consensus on the Scholarship of
Teaching, Studies in Higher Education Vol. 27, No.2, 2002
Hutchings. P & Shulman. L, (1999) The Scholarship of Teaching.
Change, Sep/Oct99, Vol. 31 Issue 5, p10, 6p, 1c
Hutchins. P. (2003) Competing Goods Ethical Issues in the Scholarship
Of Teaching and Learning, Change, Sep/Oct 03 Vol. 35 Issue 5, p26, 8p, 1c
Menges, R. J. & Weimer, M. (1996) Teaching on Solid Ground: using
scholarship to improve practice (San Francisco, CA, Jossey-Bass)
Morehead, J. M. & Shedd, P.J. (1996) Student interviews: a vital role in the
scholarship of teaching, Innovative Higher Education, 20, pp. 261-269
Paulsen, M.B. (2001)The relationship between research and the scholarship
of teaching, in: C. Kreber (Ed.) Revisiting Scholarship: perspectives
on the scholarship of teaching, New Directions for Teaching and Learning, no 86 (San Francisco, CA Jossey-Bass)
Rice, R. E. (1991) The new American Scholar: scholarship and the purposes
of the university, Metropolitan Universities, 1, pp7-18.
Rice, R. E. (2002) Beyond Scholarship Reconsidered Toward an Enlarged
Vision of the Scholarly Work of Faculty Members, New Directions
for Teaching and Learning; Summer 2002 issue 90, p. 7, 11pp.
Richlin, Laurie (2001) Scholarly Teaching and the Scholarship of Teaching.
NewDirections for Teaching & Learning; Summer Issue
86, p57, 12p, 2 diagrams
Shulman.L.S. (1987) Knowledge and Teaching : Foundations of the New
Reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57, pp. 1-22
Shulman, L. (1993) Teaching as community property. Change
(November/December) 6-7
Trigwell, K., Martin, E., Benjamin, J., & Prosser, M. (2000) Scholarship of
teaching: a model, Higher education Research and Development, 19 pp. 155-168.