The Role of Scholarship in University Teaching

Abstract

The primary resource in university teaching is the scholarship of faculty. This discussion paper explores the potential role of scholarship as a teaching resource and the value of a scholarship perspective in instructional development. It is argued that the content, structure and process knowledge inherent in scholarship have the potential to contribute to effective teaching and learning, but only when all three forms of expert knowledge are explicitly taught. This teaching task does not flow naturally from scholarship, but requires reflection and careful structuring on the part of the scholar-teacher. It is also argued that a scholarship perspective constitutes an effective context from which to engage a broader spectrum of faculty in communicating about teaching and learning. The purpose of this paper is to stimulate discussion on how a scholarship-based instructional development context might achieve learning outcomes that more closely approximate the ideal of apprenticeship in a discipline.

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and the Online Classroom

“…SoTL has gained some prominence in higher education in recent years (Charbonneau, 2005;Huber & Hutchings, 2005). First introduced in the early 1990s by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in the United States (e.g., Boyer, 1990), the idea soon intrigued academics internationally, especially in the United Kingdom (D'Andrea & Gosling, 2002;Elton, 1992;Healey, 2000), Australia (Andresen, 2000;Martin & Ramsden, 2000;Trigwell, Martin, Benjamin, & Prosser, 2000), and Canada (Kreber, 2006a(Kreber, , 2005(Kreber, , 2002bTaylor, 1993;Weston & McAlpine, 2001). Supporters of SoTL have suggested that university teaching is challenging and intellectual work and poses interesting as well as consequential questions, especially about student learning.…”