A need for clarity: scholarship, scholarly teaching, and the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Abstract

DURING A RECENT SUMMER, as part of a course for nurse educators, I read several journal articles discussing the term scholarly teaching. I also encountered other readings highlighting Boyer's Scholarship of Teaching and Learning model (1-5). While use of the term scholarship of teaching has been prevalent as academic lingo where I teach, at a small, private university in the Midwest, I learned during the course of my reading that there is ambiguity in defining this concept. I decided to try to uncover how this concept has been interpreted by educators. Just how do educators define the scholarship of teaching and learning? I was stirred by an article sent to me by a colleague titled "Scholarly Teaching and Scholarship of Teaching: Noting the Difference" (2). The authors, Alien and Field, distinguish between the terms scholarly teaching and the scholarship of teaching by initially describing the two terms, contrasting them, and asserting that faculty must be evaluated according to definitive criteria pertaining to each role. Scholarly teaching is described as demonstration of teaching expertise, viewing teaching in a teacher-focused way, use of in-depth disciplinary knowledge, and engagement with teachinglearning literature. According to Alien and Field, the emphasis is on "practice wisdom" (2, p. 1), which includes effective and creative teaching strategies. The scholarship of teaching, on the other hand, is described as student-focused, driven by an inquiry ethic, characterized by mastery of the content area and educational foundation, and open to critical review, evaluation, and exchange by scholars. The authors cite Kreber (3) and state that the scholarship of teaching goes beyond teaching excellence and involves systematic inquiry about the teaching/learning process. As part of my continuing research, I also discovered an article by Richlin and Cox that helped me sort out this puzzle (4). Richlin and Cox distinguish both terms concisely and precisely. They state that the purpose of scholarly teaching is to affect the teaching and resulting learning process, while scholarship of teaching contributes to formal educational practices and the discipline's knowledge base. Both aspects of scholarship, they say, are essential to the academy. An overall focus of their article is on the use of faculty learning communities to "develop scholarly teaching" practices and "create the scholarship of teaching and learning" (4, p. 128). In a qualitative study, Nicholls examined how the word scholarship is defined within the academy (5). Twenty-five academics from a variety of disciplines were interviewed about their perceptions and conceptualizations of scholarship and the scholarship of teaching. Explicit responses defining scholarship were noted. The primary three themes derived from their responses were critical thinking and problem solving, dissemination of knowledge, and production and understanding of new knowledge. However, the academics had difficulty responding to questions about the scholarship of teaching and associating identified attributes of scholarship with teaching. …