A developing trend in post-secondary education is the increased emphasis on research on teaching in the university setting.
A number of faculty members and librarians at Western are actively engaged in research projects based on innovations that have been introduced in our classrooms or on ideas that they have about how to improve the quality of learning and engagement in their classrooms.
To support and encourage this research, Research Western has established a new grants program for faculty and librarians: The Western Research on Teaching Grant.
This research and these research grants support the developing area of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). In the early 1990s, Ernest Boyer, the then president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, published his influential work, Scholarship Reconsidered.
In that book, Boyer argued that the professoriate needs to consider all aspects of their engagement in a scholarly way. He identified four areas of scholarship: the scholarship of discovery, of teaching, of application and of integration.
The first of these, the scholarship of discovery, has received the most attention in recent years.
Faculty members know the importance of research to their careers, and universities have developed multitudinous ways of recognizing and rewarding research results.
An emphasis on the scholarship of discovery has made universities the leader in the production of research and knowledge. But, Boyer argued, the other components of a professor’s work should be viewed in scholarly terms as well.
The scholarship of application would involve attention to the professor’s work in service and the scholarship of integration would look at a professor’s work in interdisciplinary activities.
The scholarship of teaching, of course, encourages a scholarly attitude towards one’s teaching responsibilities. The scholarship of teaching has taken several directions. One is to encourage and enable faculty to be scholarly or reflective teachers.
At Western, the Teaching Support Centre has a variety of programs and events that help faculty members to be more reflective and scholarly in their teaching. A second interpretation of the scholarship of teaching is to look at teaching excellence. Again, at Western there are range of ways in which teaching excellence is recognized at both the Faculty and the University levels.
The final direction that the scholarship of teaching has taken is called the scholarship of teaching and learning. The scholarship of teaching and learning is research undertaken in all parts of the university by faculty and librarians to understand and evaluate teaching practices that they engage in or may wish to try. Like all scholarship, the results of research on teaching are expected to be made public through publication or presentation.
It is this expectation for publication that makes the scholarship of teaching and learning different from scholarly teaching. There is considerable research on teaching being done currently at Western.
There are groups of researchers that pursue lines of inquiry on teaching such as the Research on Teaching Learning Community hosted by the Teaching Support Centre, the GAMES group in the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, and the INSPiRE network in Health Sciences and Education.
To support this area of research across the University, Research Western has established an internal research program, the Western Research on Teaching Grant, the details of which can be found on the Research Western website.
What can this program of research achieve? Like all research, it will contribute to our knowledge and understanding of the world, in particular the world of university teaching and learning that we inhabit. As well, it is a respected area of research with outlets for publication in both discipline based journals and in the journals that serve the general scholarship of teaching and learning community.
Finally, and most importantly, this research can improve the university experience of our students. As we pursue research on how teaching affects and engages our students, we will develop and publicize approaches that can enhance the student experience at Western and their engagement in our academic programs.
The Western Research on Teaching Grant provides a valuable tool to allow faculty and librarians to pursue these important issues.
The writer is a faculty member and former dean in the Faculty of Education.