Broadening the Definition of Scholarship: Implications for Independent Colleges and

Universities Presentation to at the TICUA Executive Leadership Institute

Academics and Faculty RelationsLipscomb University

January 24, 2018Dr. John M. Braxton

Professor Emeritus of Leadership, Policy and OrganizationsHigher Education Leadership and Policy Program

Peabody College of Vanderbilt University

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Ernest Boyer’s Four Domains of Scholarship

• In his influential book Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, Boyer (1990) proposed that the definition of scholarship should be broadened beyond the predominant emphasis on the scholarship of discovery to encompass

• the scholarship of application (engagement) • the scholarship of integration, • the scholarship of teaching.

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Why Broaden The Definition of Scholarship?

• Boyer argued that the current faculty reward structure fails to reflect the range of professional activities that faculty perform. Publication Productivity Data. Source: 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty

• Career referred articles: 46.5% have never published• Last 2 year referred articles: 65.8 % none

• The current reward structure counts research, or the scholarship of discovery, as being the most legitimate and preferred type of scholarship.

• Boyer asserted that such a narrow view of scholarship affects the morale of the professoriate, the vitality of individual colleges and universities, and the welfare of students.

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The Scholarship of Application (Engagement)

• The scholarship of application is the application of disciplinary knowledge and skill to help address important societal and institutional problems.

• Boyer (1990) contended that through practice and through the application of disciplinary knowledge, new theoretical understanding and knowledge can be derived.

• The scholarship of application focuses on utility to constituencies outside a discipline and, more importantly, to society in general.

• The objective of the scholarship of application is to serve the external environment of colleges and universities.

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The Scholarship of Engagement: Refinement on the Scholarship of Application• Scholarship of engagement as scholarship for the common good. • Uses the expertise of the disciplines• Makes connections with audiences beyond the campus, lay public.• Engagement with the local community, meaningful societal problem-

solving. • The use of disciplinary knowledge and expertise to address local

problems. • Scholarship if planning, execution, evaluating and reporting are done

with the same depth and rigor as any other research project.

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The Scholarship of Discovery

• The most standard form of scholarship is discovery. • The aim of this form of scholarship is to acquire knowledge for its own

sake. • The testing and generation of theory is also an essential facet of the

scholarship of discovery.• The academic profession ascribes high value to originality in scholarship.

High value accrues to an original discovery because an important aspect of the world is identified and demonstrated for the first time.

• As such, originality in discovery results in colleague recognition for making such a contribution to knowledge.

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Scholarship of Discovery (Continued)

• Such colleague recognition results in high standing in an academic discipline being accorded to the individual academic .

• Colleague recognition takes such forms as election to office in scholarly and professional associations, appointment to governmental advisory boards and appointment to journal editorial boards.

• Reference and citations to published work are additional forms of colleague recognition.

• For these reasons, the scholarship of discovery stands as the pre-eminent domain of scholarship.

• The traditional scholarship assessment template(refereed journal articles, scholarly books, book chapters and citation counts) provides the appropriate basis for the appraisal of faculty performance in this domain of scholarship.

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The Scholarship of Integration

• The scholarship of integration seeks to interpret, draw together, and bring new insight to original research.

• Eugene Rich states "Scholars are needed with a capacity to synthesize, to look for new relationships between the parts and the whole, to relate the past and future to the present, and to ferret out patterns of meaning that cannot be seen through traditional disciplinary lenses.“

• Boyer stated that the scholarship of integration also means interpretation, "fitting one's own research or the research of others into larger intellectual patterns."

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The Scholarship of Integration (Continued)

• New knowledge from original research is more useful when it is integrated into a larger body of concepts and facts.

• The scholarship of integration requires scholars to give meaning to isolated facts, illuminate data in a revealing way, make connections across the discipline and synthesize the knowledge of the discipline.

• The key question for this domain is, What do the findings mean? • Book reviews, meta-analyses, textbooks, reviews of literature and a

book in the popular press addressing a disciplinary/interdisciplinary topic are all examples of scholarship involving the integration of knowledge.

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The Scholarship of Teaching

• In our 2002 book Institutionalizing a Broader View of Scholarship Through Boyer’s Four Domains William Luckey, Patricia Helland, and I define the scholarship of teaching as the development and improvement of pedagogical practice.

• Such scholarship can make a contribute to an individual college or university.

• Such work could also contribute more generally to the development and improvement of pedagogical practice in higher education.

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The Scholarship of Teaching (continued)

• Hutchings and Shulman assert that the scholarship of teaching is a process through which the profession of teaching itself advances.

• It occurs when faculty systematically investigate questions related to student leaning.

• one eye on improving their own classroom performance while the other eye is focused on advancing the practice of teaching.

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Altered Picture of Publication Productivity

• Different picture of recent productivity emerges when the domain is taken into account.

• Scholarship of Application: 57.1% have not published during the past 3 years.

• Scholarship of Discovery: 27.6% have not published during the past 3 years

• Scholarship of Integration: 25.9% no publications during the past 3 years

• Scholarship of Teaching: 74.7% no publications during the past 3 years

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Later in this presentation I will return to the scholarship of teaching.

Three Issues Emerge from Boyer’s Perspective.

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First Issue

• Boyer delineated proscriptions for institutional emphasis on each of the four domains of scholarship. These proscriptions seek to align the type of scholarship emphasized with the institutional missions of different types of colleges and universities.

• Scholarship of Application. Faculty members in doctoral-granting universities and comprehensive universities and colleges should engage themselves in the scholarship of application.

• Scholarship of Discovery. Some faculty in all types of colleges and universities might pursue the scholarship of discovery. However, t faculty members in research and doctoral-granting universities should engage in the scholarship of discovery.

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Prescriptions for Institutional Domain Emphasis Continued

• Scholarship of Integration. Faculty members in liberal arts colleges and in comprehensive universities and colleges should engage in the scholarship of integration.

• Scholarship of Teaching. Boyer advanced expectations for faculty in liberal arts colleges to engage in the scholarship of teaching. He also suggested that some comprehensive colleges and universities also elect to stress the scholarship of teaching.

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Second Issue

• Boyer asserted that publications in refereed journals and scholarly books need not be the primary criteria used to assess faculty performance.

• He contended that other writings or documented evidence of scholarship may be used as scholarly forms for faculty assessment.

• The third issue stems from this particular perspective of Boyer: What counts as scholarship other than publications in the form of journal articles, books or book chapters?

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The Third Issue: What counts as scholarship other than publications? • Schulman and Hutchings (1998) delineate three necessary

characteristics for a scholarly form to be labeled scholarship.• These indispensable characteristics are:• it must be public• amenable to critical appraisal• be in a form that permits exchange and use by other members of

the scholarly community.• William Luckey, Patricia Helland and I assert that unpublished, but

publicly observable outcomes of scholarly activity possess these three essential characteristics.

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Unpublished, but publicly observable outcomes of scholarly activity • Papers, presentations, reports, videos, computer software, Websites,

Podcasts, Blogs are possible form of unpublished, but publicly observable outcomes of scholarly activity.

• Presentations must be recorded(audio-taped or video-taped) in some way so that individuals not in attendance may listen to or view the presentation.

• Documentation must accompany pieces of unpublished academic work that is publicly observable by peers. Documentation should state the goals and contributions made by a particular piece of unpublished, publicly observable outcome of engagement in scholarship.

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Compelling Rational for Use of Unpublished, Publicly Observable Forms of Scholarship acceptance of scholarship in this form can remove a barrier for those faculty who have seldom or never published, or those faculty who are “intimidated by the process of publication.”

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Returning to the Scholarship OF Teaching

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An Appropriate Type of Scholarship for TICUA Colleges and Universities• As I previously stated, in making recommendations for domain

emphasis by institutional type, Boyer (1990) expressed expectations for faculty in liberal arts colleges or teaching oriented institutions such as those represented here today by fellows of the TICUA Executive Leadership Institute to encourage faculty to engage in the scholarship of teaching.

• Toby Park and I have empirically identified 5 types of faculty scholars. Scholars of Pedagogical Practice, one of the five types of faculty scholars, are primarily located at liberal arts colleges. Thus, providing empirical credence to Boyer’s expectations for the scholarship of liberal arts colleges.

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Classifying Published Works of the Scholarship of Teaching

• A crisper understanding of the scholarship of teaching come from a knowledge of the types of published work reflective of the scholarship of teaching.

• Maryellen Weimer in her book Enhancing Scholarly Work on Teaching and Learning refers to such scholarship as "pedagogical scholarship.“

• In a forthcoming chapter titled “Inventorying the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Literature” in Higher Education: A Handbook of Theory and Research, Clay Francis, Jenna Kramer, Christopher Marciano and I describe the results of our classification of articles published in four teaching focused journals in the disciplines of biology, chemistry, history and sociology.

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The Findings of This Inventory

• To conduct this inventory, we modified Weimer’s classification schema to include types of articles (e.g. personal accounts of change, recommended-practices reports, recommended-content reports, and personal narratives) and types of analyses (quantitative investigations, qualitative studies, descriptive research, mixed methods, literature review, and personal reflection).

• Using this schema, we classified 425 articles appearing from 2012–2016 in four teaching focused journals of the disciplines of biology, chemistry, history and sociology.

• We conclude that: • articles focused on instructional methods (recommended practice reports) and

that use research scholarship (descriptive research analyses, quantitative investigations, and qualitative investigations) as its type of analysis dominate this literature.

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More Findings

• Recommended-Content reports constitute the second most frequent type of article given that 29.00% of all articles coded fit this category of types of articles. The type of article recommends content for a particular course or academic discipline (Weimer, 2006).

• Personal narratives (3.00%) and personal accounts (2.00%) of change rarely appear.

• In Personal Narratives, authors reflect upon their teaching with a critical eye toward their practice and content.

• Personal Account of Change, the author describes a change to a curricular or pedagogical policy or practice (Weimer, 2006). accounts of personal growth, evolution of pedagogical thought, individual statements of personal philosophy, takes a stance on an issue

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Further Findings on Type of Analyses

• Personal reflection infrequently occurs given that less than ten percent (8%) the articles reviewed across the four journals were coded as personal reflections. However, personal reflections dominate as the type of analysis found in Teaching History given that we coded 57% of the articles in this journal as such.

• Of research scholarship as the type of analysis We noted descriptive research constitutes the most frequently occurring type of analysis across the four the SOTL journals as 63% of all coded articles used this type of analysis. Descriptive research analyses endeavor to describe or explain a particular phenomenon based on an analysis of survey results (Weimer, 2006).

• Analyses that employ experimental or quasi-experimental designs constitute quantitative analyses. This particular type of analysis (11%) stands the next most frequent type of analysis.

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What is the Origin of Topics for Scholarly Engagement in the scholarship of teaching? • How does one develop ideas? This question stems from an

underlying problem of the academic profession: the graduate school socialization process generally neglects preparation for teaching or pedagogical practice.

• Possible Ways to Develop Ideas to develop and improve pedagogical practice:

• one's own experience in teaching courses• frequent interaction with other professors about teaching

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Additional Ways to Develop Ideas for Engagement in the Scholarship of Teaching• Faculty attendance at campus-based symposiums or colloquiums on

teaching where faculty share their ideas about teaching• attending conferences on the scholarship of teaching and learning

• teaming up with faculty in other departments• teaming up with leaders of support offices such as service-learning,

multicultural affairs, international studies, disability resources, and internships

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Another Additional Way

• Reading teaching-focused journals. Examples are • The Journal of Chemical Education• Journal of Economic Education• Teaching Sociology• Teaching of Psychology• The Journal of Excellence in College Teaching

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Concluding Thoughts

• Boyer’s broadening the definition of scholarship beyond the scholarship of discovery to include the scholarships of engagement, integration and teaching benefits teaching oriented independent colleges and universities.

• The use of other writings or documented evidence of scholarship should receive serious consideration by TICUA member institutions.

• The application of Schulman and Hutchings three necessary characteristics for a scholarly form to be labeled scholarship will require significant effort by faculty review committees.

• Faculty who are engaged in the scholarship of teaching and share their work with other faculty at their institution or elsewhere are engaged in both scholarship and in the role of educator.

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Further Concluding Thoughts

• Faculty engagement in the scholarship of teaching provides an optimum alignment between the teaching oriented missions of those TICUA member colleges and universities represented here today that range from Belmont University to Union University and the type of scholarship pursued.

• TICUA member institutions should give serious consideration to providing opportunities for faculty to share ideas about teaching, to attend teaching oriented conferences and assure library subscriptions to teaching focused journals.

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• Thanks you for your attention. Any questions?

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References

• Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate.Lawrenceville, NJ: Princeton University Press.

• Braxton, J.M., Francis, C.H., Kramer, J.W., and Marciano, C. (in press) “Inventorying the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Literature” in M.B.Paulsen (ed). Higher Education: A Handbook of Theory and Research. New York, NY: Springer

• Braxton, J. M., Luckey, W., & Helland, P. (2002). Institutionalizing a Broader View of Scholarship through Boyer's Four Domains. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

• Shulman, L.S. and Hutchings, P. (1998). About the scholarship of teaching and learning: The Pew Scholars National Fellowship Program. Menlo Park, CA: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

• Weimer, M. (2006). Enhancing Scholarly Work on Teaching and Learning: Professional Literature that Makes a Difference. San Fransico,CA: Jossey-Bass.

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