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
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