The Faculty of Education Live Life Learning

							Scholarly Activity
The Question of Impact
     James Heap
CSSE/ACDE May 27,2007
       [revision1]
Betwixt the Tower and the Field
• As professional schools, FOEs are Janus-
  faced organizations, oriented to the
  academy, with its disciplines and
  standards, and the field of education,
  primarily K-12 public education, with its
  multiple stakeholders, professional
  organizations and provincial regulations.


                 Faculty of Education
• We need to turn our “location” in this
  normative, regulated space into a position.
• We need to formulate our position in each
  domain of the university‟s mission:
  instruction, scholarship and service
• We need to clarify confusions and
  opportunities arising from our location.


                  Faculty of Education
        Consider scholarship
• A review of Ontario university and FOE tenure &
  promotion documents reveals an abiding
  orientation to the “tower” (the academy and its
  disciplines) over “the field.”
• Refereed publication in top-tier journals is the
  “gold standard.”
• This standard is enshrined in SSHRC proposal
  guidelines and reviews and in (OCT)
  accreditation requirements.

                    Faculty of Education
• For resource allocation decisions in the
  university, e.g., P&T, research funding, the value
  of having refereed journals with different levels
  of selectivity is that they provide a public
  measure of the quality of scholarship.
• For Janus-faced professional schools, what‟s
  wrong with this picture?
• A professional school ought to be concerned
  with the impact of scholarship on the field of
  practice to which it is oriented.

                    Faculty of Education
      Wait, it‟s more complex
• It‟s not that scholarship that is academy-
  oriented should be judged in terms of
  quality, and scholarship that is field-
  oriented should be judged in terms of
  impact.
• All scholarship, especially in FOEs, should
  be judged in terms of both quality and
  impact.

                  Faculty of Education
     The Question of Impact…
• has to be addressed by formulating and getting
  agreement on types of scholarship.
• Concern with refereed publications in top- tier
  journals is appropriate to what Boyer (1990)
  called the Scholarship of Discovery and the
  Scholarship of Integration.
• These two types of scholarship are oriented to
  the standards, problematics and paradigms of
  the academy and its disciplines.

                    Faculty of Education
    Other types of scholarship
• Boyer defined two other types of
  scholarship: Application and Teaching
• “Scholarship of Teaching” has come to
  identify a substantive focus for
  scholarship, not a formal structure of
  inquiry. (I will not address it here.)
• Scholarship of Application: „knowledge
  responsibly applied to consequential
  problems.‟ (Scholarship Reconsidered)
                 Faculty of Education
      “Scholarship of Application”
         disaggregates into…
• “Scholarship of Resolution”—concerned
  with resolving consequential problems,
  e.g., of policy and/or practice in the field of
  education.
• “Scholarship of Creation”—concerned with
  creating knowledge objects (textbooks,
  manuals, curricula, methods, software,
  etc.) for use, or performances for use
  and/or appreciation, in a field of practice.

                   Faculty of Education
So, OK, it‟s even more complicated
• Four types of scholarship: Discovery,
  Integration, Resolution, Creation (??).
• Each type of scholarship has two reflexive
  cycles:
• Quest for discovery, integration,
  resolution, or creation.
• Expression of the results of the quest.

                 Faculty of Education
 For each type of scholarship…
• the “question of impact” is primarily a
  question about the impact of the
  “expression of the results of a quest.”
• the question of impact must be asked in
  terms of the orientation of the expression
  of the results of a quest.
• Is the expression oriented primarily toward
  the academy or the field?
                  Faculty of Education
            It seems that…
• The expression of the scholarship of
  discovery is oriented to the academy.
• The expression of the scholarship of
  integration can be oriented either to the
  academy or a field.
• The expression of the scholarships of
  resolution and creation is oriented toward
  a field.
                  Faculty of Education
   Now for something completely
            different…
• Brock‟s FOE Impact Objectives for
  scholarly activity (www.brocku.ca/fed)
• provoke discussion by peers, practitioners,
  and policy makers [Recognition]
• result in application of our practices,
  materials and theories [Utilization]
• contribute to the improvement of education
  and the human condition [Betterment]
                  Faculty of Education
• The impact of the academy or discipline-
  oriented scholarships of discovery and
  integration is a question primarily of
  Recognition and Utilization within the
  academy.
• The impact of field-oriented scholarships
  of integration, resolution and creation is a
  question primarily of Recognition,
  Utilization and Betterment in a field.

                   Faculty of Education
         Three tasks ahead
• Discuss, clarify and refine the types of
  scholarship.
• Discuss, develop and define ways to
  demonstrate and judge quality for each
  type of scholarship.
• Discuss, develop and define ways to
  demonstrate and judge impact for each
  type of scholarship.
                  Faculty of Education
• The resulting framework, or set of accords, will
  provide FOEs with a reasoned, coherent and
  useable conceptual apparatus for defining,
  explaining and defending the scholarly activity
  we value as professional schools.
• We will, thereby, turn our location “betwixt tower
  and field” into a self-aware position in service
  and accountable to both the academy and the
  field of education.

                     Faculty of Education
                 The end
• Surgite!

• Thank you.

               jheap@brocku.ca




                  Faculty of Education