Transforming Scholarship

Does Faculty Research Improve Undergraduate Teaching? An Analysis of Existing and Potential Synergies

“…Based on this result, Colbeck argued that research universities should specifically collect information on integrative activities in faculty performance assessments and should view such activities positively when making personnel decisions. Similar points about the desirability of broadening the definition of research, particularly in faculty performance evaluation criteria, have been made by Brew [32], Zubrick et al [25], Schön [61], Scott and Awbrey [62], and Weimer [63]. Greater integration of teaching and research may not automatically translate to improved teaching (proposition 2), but it surely increases the potential for it (proposition 1).…”

“Wipe the Blackboard Clean”: Academization and Christianization—Siblings in Africa?

“…The transversity or connected university is a continuation of the university and the "multiversity": "the idea of a more connected University lies in creating new interactions and intersections in the multidimensional, but fragmented, spaces of the Multiversity. These spaces encompass the disciplines, different areas of knowledge, different multicultural groups, linkages to business, industry and society, and the multiple missions of teaching, research, and service, among others" (Scott & Awbrey 1993). Paul Wildman called for the development of what he called "polyphonic multiversities" that would integrate five types of knowledge: techne, scientia, praxis, gnosis, and relatio.…”

“…As such, African Independent Churches may serve as a model for African universities-for African Independent Universities, capable of integrating and institutionalizing hybrid forms of production and transfer of knowledge. To stress this concept of hybridization, African universities should be transformed into what Scott and Awbrey (1993) have called "transversities," places of learning able to accommodate different modalities of knowledge and different epistemologies.^1 In some cases, hybridization means a re-valuation of endogenous elements, including local knowledge systems and local languages. It also means high-modernity's abandonment (and this also applies to high-modernity circles in the periphery!)…”

Getting Beyond the Productivity Gap

“…Social, economic, and political pressures for change in higher education, including the professional schools, have been greater in the 1990s than in any decade in the last 50 years (Wergin, 1994). In response to these pressures, administrators and faculty of educational institutions across the country have been urgently reexamining faculty roles and responsibilities, and rapidly promoting new policies and criteria for the assessment of faculty scholarship (Edgerton, 1993;Scott & Awbrey, 1993) . Amid these pressures and calls for change , definitions of the roles and responsibilities of social work faculty, including their scholarship, must remain grounded in professional social work.…”