University Teaching & Learning 5000

Boyer’s Scholarship Reconsidered

This morning I mentioned that a reading of Ernest Boyer’s Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate might lead one to a somewhat different sense of the term “scholarship of teaching” than is current in the literature. I frequently encounter the term used to indicate that teachers should do research on the success or failure of the teaching strategies they employ. On the other hand, I think Boyer was referring to the idea that teaching is itself a scholarly activity, that one learns and expands one’s conceptual structures by engaging in teaching. Boyer makes the same point about the gains that come from engaging in the scholarship of discovery research, of integration and of application. The Boyer book is available in Scott Library (LA 227.3 B694 1990) and a brief, but informative, discussion of a portion of it can be found here.