Scholarship in teaching as a core professional value: what does this mean to the academic?

Abstract

This paper demonstrates how the introduction of the word scholarship in respect to teaching has become confused and misplaced and used to sustain and enhance a particular type of credibility to activities related to the enhancement of learning and teaching in higher education. Bourdieu's concept of symbolic culture is used to construct the argument and show how the use of the term 'Scholarship of Teaching' needs to be re-examined and conceptualized. Twenty-five academics from a variety of disciplines were interviewed to give their perceptions on the notion of scholarship, the scholarship of teaching, and the scholarship in teaching. These data were used to develop a framework for understanding and possibly reconsidering the role of the scholarship of teaching.