Boyer-Scholarship Reconsidered

Boyer, Ernest, L. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990: 15-25. Print.

Ultimately, Boyer is calling for a broader definition of what it means to be a scholar. He brings in four areas: discovery, integration, application, and teaching. In order to be a scholar, all four are necessary parts of the process. Learning new information, making connections between the information, applying the learning and learning from the application, and teaching what you've learned. Each one informs the other, so they cannot be separated, but by including them all as in the scholarship 'process' we broaden the definition of scholarship.

I think Boyer brings up a great point. This is seen directly in debates in English Studies and how "we" came to be what we are today (or maybe what we should be today). The necessary pieces that he discusses influence and inform each other. I suppose it points to why it's so important for those that use technology in teaching to continue to study it. I think technology is fluid today-what's here today could be gone tomorrow and then back again once "they've" made changes to it. I also saw this as a call to interdisciplinary work. This we're seeing more of in English departments (because we're one of many "disciplines") however, I think the vision is for more departments to work together in order to learn (then starting the "cycle").