The Future of Education

The Scholarship of Academic Development [1] and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning [2, 3] are amongst the most controversially discussed concepts in both: recent discourse on university teaching and learning, and recent discourse on professionalization of roles within higher education. Both concepts are based on an approach of educational philosophy stating that researchers can (and should) increase their academic proficiency by systematically reflecting upon their teaching practices and the learning processes they (might) trigger. Both suggest, this should be accomplished in a form that can be publicly reviewed and built upon by peers [4–6]. Finally, both concepts aim at encouraging researchers to engage in educational research from their specific disciplinary background.
In this paper, I will inform from an education theoretical point of view about the conceptual distinctions of what is called the Scholarship of Academic Development (SoAD) and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). While SoAD follows on from Boyers and Frasers differentiations of the Scholarship concept [7, 8], SoTL was first introduced by Hutchings and Shulman [9].
The notion referred to in the conceptual variations of "scholarship" in latest discourse may provide a guiding principle and a common rationale for university teaching [2]. As an example, I will point out, how we applied "Scholarship" in an educational setting to build up a community of peers engaging in educational research practice from their (differing) disciplinary perspectives (a new Master's degree curriculum which was rolled out in winter term 2016/17 at the University of Hamburg, Germany).

Keywords: academic identity, research-based learning, scholarship of teaching and learning, scholarship of academic development, academic teaching
 

References

Bass, R. (1999). The scholarship of teaching: What’s the problem? INVENTIO: Creative thinking about learning and teaching, 1(1), 1–10.

Eggins, H., & Macdonald, R. (Eds.). (2003). The scholarship of academic development. Buckingham England, Philadelphia, Pa.: Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press. Retrieved from http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/mh051/2002074958.html

Huber, L. (2014). Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Konzept, Geschichte, Formen, Entwicklungsaufgaben. In L. Huber, A. Pilniok, R. Sethe, B. Szczyrba, & M. P. Vogel (Eds.), Blickpunkt Hochschuldidaktik. 125. Forschendes Lehren im eigenen Fach. Scholarship of teaching and learning in Beispielen (pp. 19–36). Bielefeld: Bertelsmann.

Kreber, C. (2013). The transformative potential of the scholarship of teaching. Teaching & Learning Inquiry: The ISSOTL Journal, 1(1), 5–18. https://doi.org/10.2979/teachlearninqu.1.1.5

Kreber, C. (2014). Reviving the ancient virtues in the scholarship of teaching, with a slight critical twist. Higher Education Research & Development, 34(3), 568–580. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2014.973384

Shulman, L. S. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1), 1–22.