Reclaiming scholarship as an integrating dimension of academic work for the impact of research on teaching and learning (opening lecture)

In this lecture Brian will begin by reflecting on Ernest Boyer’s conceptions of scholarship which were first outlined in his seminal report twenty years ago. He will draw attention to warnings given a decade later that notions of scholarship, scholar and scholarly had spiralled downwards into meaninglessness and argue that indeed these terms do seem to have met the fate of popular buzzwords, having become nothing more than empty concepts. Furthermore he will argue that this has contributed to a situation in which national policy making in the UK over recent years has been based on undefined and reductionist interpretations of scholarship that have become dangerous. This danger is present especially for the future of educational research at a time when the place of Higher Education in the professional education of teachers is being seriously questioned elsewhere in the United Kingdom. He will call for the need to reclaim the term scholarship by educationalists as a part of a struggle over values with other powerful vested interest groups and compare this to the development of “praxis of consideration” which is a major goal for Higher Education elsewhere in the European Higher Education Area