In this entry, I conclude my reading log of Scholarship Reconsidered, by Ernest Boyer and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. I'll cover Chapter 6 ("A New Generation of Scholars") and 7 ("Scholarship and Community") in one session. In a nutshell, these chapters discuss graduate student learning and the urgent need for renewal in scholarly institutions if they are to remain vital contributors to society into the future....

Chapter Six ("A New Generation of Scholars") discusses the boom in graduate student learning at the end of the 1980s and predicts a need for more integrated, interdisciplinary scholarship with a greater emphasis on teaching skills. Graduate research generally becomes "a period of withdrawal" rather than connection (69). Graduate school is where scholars specialize, but not enough are trained in teaching, or even rewarded for it. In graduate school, students are given research assistantships (instead of teaching assistantships) as a reward for being the best and brightest, when those are the very scholars society would benefit from having teach (71). Those who aspire to teach are met with suspicion; it is as though enjoying teaching is a sign of a poor intellect, a withdrawal into teaching from the stress of research. A distain for teaching is born in this environment, which carries over into professional life. Boyer cites Kenneth Eble on this matter: "[The professor's] narrowness of vision, the disdain for education, the reluctance to function as a teacher are ills attributable in large part to graduate training" (70). Thus, Boyer asserts that we need to refashion higher education on every level, from the design of the major to the mentoring structure of graduate study, in order to train students to balance their research scholarship with the other three levels of the Boyer model (integration, application & teaching).

In the final chapter, Boyer warns of the complexity of social problems in modern life, and that narrow focus on the research model in most schools threatens to render campuses obsolete. Integrating the four-pronged Boyer Model into the modern campus and strengthening bonds with the world outside of the ivory tower offers a meaningful solution to today's alienated intellectual and promises to help solve social ills. He appeals to university presidents to flex their muscles and energize their campuses in the name of progress and change. The sobering reality of the emerging obsolescent American college is evident in our track record, as Boyer notes by citing Derek Bok:

...what Rachel Carson did for risks to the environment, Ralph Nader for consumer protection, Michael Harrington for problems of poverty, Betty Friedan for womens' rights, they did as independent critics, not as members of faculty....After a major social problem has been recognized, universities will usually continue to respond weakly unless outside support is available and the subjects involved command prestige in academic circles. These limitations have hampered efforts to address many of the most critical challenges to the nation. (76)

UNSTRUCTURED RESPONSE:
What Boyer portended in 1990 still remains an issue. Bok's point about the failure in American colleges to change society is a bit one-sided -- vastly important research has provided society with many benefits. But his point hits home: narrowly focusing on research alone in a vacuum often puts up blinders to current social needs. His four pronged model makes a lot of sense; it's responsible, critical, and meaningful. At the same time, it has been my experience -- even in graduate school -- that research itself has shifted to accomodate some of what Boyer worried about in 1990. Cultural Studies, for example, integrates research from various disciplines in a socially progressive manner (albeit politically leftist), and opened a lot of eyes. The boundaries between disciplines are murky anymore because of open interdisciplinary scholarship. And for the best, I think. The lessons of one field can only benefit another if there is open interactive dialogue between them, whether in a campus faculty lunchroom or over the internet (the latter of which was still getting its legs when Boyer's study was conducted). A lot has changed since 1990. And yet the tendency to over-specialize and withdraw from teaching is still taught in graduate schools, to some degree... if only as a survival tactic. Teacher training remains a supplement to specialized learning, unless a graduate student enters into a field where pedagogy is an integral element (such as Education, Composition, or Languages).

I'm not going to try to summarize all my thoughts in one entry now; I hope to come back to this book again and again throughout my weblog... indeed, this is one of the reasons I wanted to start with Boyer's book, since the focus of this blog is on a phrase that comes from it: "the scholarship of teaching." My copy of Scholarship Assessed has arrived in today's mail and I will no doubt continue my reading journal apace, and thereby continue reflecting on Boyer's important, if dated, study.

Derek Bok's quotation made a large impression on me. In researching Bok -- a former president of Harvard -- I found the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning and the pedagogical resources there look useful.

The link to Kenneth Eble above isn't really to Eble, but to a paper that makes interesting use of his teaching principles in his book, The Craft of Teaching (which is now on my reading list).

One final pedestrian warning to anyone considering buying Scholarship Reconsidered: half of the book -- literally -- consists of the raw data of the surveys conducted by the Boyer Committee. It's fascinating filler -- with reports on, say, what percentage of faculty in different disciplines and at different institutions feel their enthusiasm to work has waned. 50% of the book is filled with raw data. I find this an ironic conclusion: in the end, Boyer's book literally lets traditional research speak for itself.

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