Empowering the scholarship of teaching: an Arendtian and critical perspective

Abstract

This conceptual study challenges narrow interpretations of the scholarship of teaching as an ‘evidence-based practice’, employing as analytical tools Habermas's validity claims and Arendt's tripartite categorisation of human activity. Distinctive features of scholarship, ‘making public’ and ‘peer review’, are re-interpreted through the lens of these tools. It is argued, first, that the scholarship of teaching is observed not only in the instrumental but also the communicative and emancipatory learning that professional engagement with teaching demand; and, second, that ‘making public’ goes beyond sharing one's work through conferences, journals or web-postings, to include subjecting one's views to the critical scrutiny of others, and making intentional efforts towards renewing the world in which we learn, teach and live. Enquiries into ‘what works’, ‘what is to be done’ and ‘why do it’ hold the greatest promise to empower the scholarship of teaching, and to address issues of justice and equality in and through higher education.