Valuing Educational Scholarship: Getting it Wright

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Valuing Educational Scholarship Getting it
Wright
Optimizing Your Educational Activities through
Educational Scholarship

• Boyd F. Richards
• Columbia University

September 18, 2008
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Carnegie Foundation/Boyer 1990

• We believe that it is time to move beyond the
  tired old teaching versus research debate and
  give the familiar and honorable term
  scholarship, a broader, more capacious meaning,
  one that brings legitimacy to the full scope of
  academic work.

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Carnegie Foundation/Boyer 1990

• Surely Scholarship means engaging in original
  research Discovery.
• But the work of the scholar also means
• stepping back from ones investigation, looking
  for connections Integration,
• building bridges between theory and practice,
  Application
• and communicating ones knowledge effectively to
  students Teaching/Education

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Hegemony in Action

• Hegemonic assumptions are assumptions that we
  think are in our own best interests but that
  actually work against us in the long term.
• Hegemony describes the process whereby ideas,
  structures and actions come to be seen by the
  majority as wholly natural, pre-ordained and
  working for their own good, when in fact they are
  constructed and transmitted by a powerful
  minority to protect the status quo
  -
  Steven Brookfield

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Tipping Point

• "the levels at which the momentum for change
  becomes unstoppable
• "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the
  boiling point

- Malcom Galdwell
AAMC/GEA Scholarship Project
Academies Movement
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GEA Scholarship Project Phases
Phase 3 2005-2006
Phase 4 2007- ?
Phase 1 1996-2000
Phase 2 2001-2004

• Defined educational scholarship
• Provided examples of activities and evidence
• Outlined infrastructure needed to support
  educational scholarship
• Fincher et al (2000)

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GEA Scholarship Project Phases
Phase 4 2007- ?
Phase 3 2005-2006
Phase 1 1996-2000
Phase 2 2001-2004

• 2006 Consensus Conference
• How to evaluate educational accomplishments for
  purposes of P T?
• Disseminate consensus via publication

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Medical Education 200741(10) 10021009
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Outcome 1 Categories Confirmed

• A. Scholarship of Education
• Curriculum development
• Teaching
• Assessment of Learner Performance
• Advising/mentoring
• Ed. leadership/administration
• B. Scholarship of Discovery (Ed Research)

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Outcome 2 Q2 E
Engagement in Community
Quality
Scholarship of Activity
Scholarly Approach to Activity
Quantity of Education Activity
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Outcome 3 Criteria of Scholarship Endorsed

• Clear goals
• Adequate Preparation
• Appropriate methods
• Significant results
• Effective presentation
• Reflective critique
• Glassick (1996)

• Public
• Peer reviewed
• Platform that others can build upon
• Shulman Hutchings (1999)

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Outcome 4 Selection and Presentation of Evidence

• Should enable/enhance peer review
• vary by category
• differentiate between Q2E
• be concise and clear
• be consistently organized
• Should conform to format established by
  institution

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Outcome 4 Selection and Presentation of Evidence
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Outcome 5 Need for Infrastructure

• Implementation of these standards should parallel
  the development of an infrastructure to support
  educators.
• Infrastructure elements include
• sustained faculty development programs e.g.,
  Academies
• access to resources and journals in the field
• peer review mechanisms,
• consultation and support for curriculum
  development, evaluation and educational
  measurement.

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Five Categories of Ed Contributions
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Glassicks Criteria 3Ps
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Q2 E Quantity/Quality Engagement
Structured Presentation of Evidence
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Infrastructure Needed
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Outcomes Applied to Teaching
Teaching is the design and implementation of
activities that foster learning and includes

• direct teaching and
• the development and use of supportive
  instructional materials.

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Outcomes Applied to Teaching

• There are important distinctions between
• teaching,
• scholarly teaching, and
• the scholarship of teaching.
• We can conceptualize these three activities along
  a continuum.
• This means that the act of teaching itself is not
  scholarship.

Teaching gt Scholarly Teaching gt Scholarship of
Teaching
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Outcomes Applied to Teaching

• Teaching and Scholarly Teaching directly affects
  student learning.
• In contrast, the Scholarship of Teaching goes
  beyond impacting the learner and has the
  potential to impact the field.

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Outcomes Applied to Teaching

• Quantity of teaching should be documented in
  terms of contact hours, number of learners,
  number of venues, etc.
• Quality of teaching should be documented with
  learner evaluations, peer review, outcomes data,
  subsequent performance of learners, etc.

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Outcomes Applied to Teaching

• Scholarly teaching involves an understanding of
  current principles of teaching and learning and
  the application of these principles to ones
  practice

i.e., Goal of Engagement to understand best
practices
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Outcomes Applied to Teaching

• Scholarship of teaching requires a product that
  is presented on a platform that can be peer
  reviewed for quality and publicly disseminated
  for others to learn from or build upon, i.e.,
  move the field of education forward.
• The products of the scholarship of teaching may
  be different from the products of the
  scholarship of research. However, the processes
  for peer review and dissemination are parallel.

i.e., Goal of Engagement to build shared
platform
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Outcomes Applied to Teaching

• Institutions need infrastructures to help faculty
  achieve and be recognized for quantity, quality
  and engagement of teaching. (e.g., educator
  development programs, systems of learner and peer
  assessment of teaching a teaching
  commons/Academy, etc.)

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Outcomes Applied to Teaching
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Professional
Making it Happen
Personal
Institutional
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Making it Happen Personal

• Consider two hypothetical members
• Decide which one is best example of Q2E

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The Academy Movement
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UCSF Academy

• Recognition of the importance of teaching and
  the educational mission and existence of truly
  outstanding teachers is largely symbolic but the
  symbolism is powerful.
• The department chairs all know who their Academy
  members are and are very proud of them.    
• Having a rigorous selection process that people
  have confidence in is an important element.   
• We have developed an elaborate process for
  dealing with the people we turn down so now, by
  and large, even the disappointed applicants feel
  okay about it (most people reapply in one to
  three years reapplications are largely
  successful).  
• Department chairs used to harangue me about why
  we hadnt taken their favorite sons now they
  ask me how they can help a reapplication be more
  successful.

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UTMB Academy

• I believe that in the long run, the development
  of our education portfolio is probably the most
  important thing that we have done.
• Currently it is being adopted for use by ALL
  faculty who want to document their educational
  accomplishment for the purpose of promotion and
  tenure, not just for those faculty who are
  interested in applying for the Academy.
• The Academy members have volunteered to take
  charge of orienting new faculty and teaching them
  how to use the portfolio template--and our
  portfolio workshops are being offered to faculty
  across campus.

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2007 BCM Promotions Guidelines

• Contributions to education, of whatever type,
  are extremely important at BCM. They will be
  given due consideration in promotions decisions,
  based on the nature of the contribution itself
  and the degree of quantity, quality, and
  scholarship Q2E manifest through evidence
  presented.

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2007 BCM Promotions Guidelines

• Recommendations for promotion based on
  educational excellence should be based on
  criteria similar to those used by the Educator
  Recognition Awards.
• Nominators of candidates without one of these
  awards must provide to the FAP Committee similar
  types of multiple, corroborating sources of
  documentation as would have been included in a
  Fulbright Jaworski mini-portfolio

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Questions?