Reclaiming scholarship as an integrating dimension of academic work for the impact of research on teaching and learning in Higher Education

Abstract

This paper offers reflections on Ernest Boyer’s conceptions of scholarship which were first outlined twenty years earlier. It considers the ways in which such conceptions have become meaninglessness as part of a wider process of reductionism and how this relates to policy discussions on curriculum, competence and teaching. It argues for the central place of research in, and the central place of, Higher Education in the professional education of teachers. It proposes that in order to develop cultures of inquiry in Higher Education we need to do so in ways that integrate research, teaching and learning. The integration process is seen to be achieved through an understanding of the nature of wholes and through a process of seeing, and therefore thinking and acting, holistically. It is argued that this is part of a wider struggle over values which the academic community needs to advance by reclaiming the meaning of scholarship.