Continuing Professional
Development in Higher Education – the role of the scholarship of teaching and
learning
The article argues for appropriate links between the continuing development of
academic teachers (CPD in HE) and the decisive role in this of the Scholarship
of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), going back to Humboldt’s famous prescription of
1809 for the future
Key
words: The Humboldtian University,
Continuing professional development, Scholarship
of Teaching and Learning, Unity of research and teaching, Managerialism.
There have been two recent developments in the area of Teaching and Learning in
Higher Education: a recognition of the importance of the continuing development
of academics in teaching and learning (CPD in HE) and the possible role in this
development of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). This article
aims to argue for appropriate links between the two.
To understand the meaning of SoTL, one must first understand the meaning of the
word ‘scholarship’ more generally. According to the Oxford English Dictionary it
is a translation of the German word Wissenschaft, and it can be traced
back to Humboldt’s famous prescription for the future
“the teacher is then not there for the
sake of the student, but both have their justification in the service of
scholarship”.
This contrast between school and university to-day is not as absolute as
Humboldt thought 200 years ago and the importance of inquiry based learning at
school level is now fully recognised (e.g. Stenhouse 1975, Bruner 1977, Elliott
1991), but broadly speaking research is not a school function and his
characterisation of work at school level is as described by him. In contrast,
the collaborative principle which he enunciated for higher education applies to
both research and teaching. However – and unfortunately – over the past 200
years a quite different dichotomy has become dominant, the dichotomy between
research and teaching, wholly in contrast to Humboldt’s beliefs, who saw them as
a unity.
The arguably most regrettable feature of the dichotomy between research and
teaching is that it has led to a skewed value system of by now long standing,
with research being considered significantly more prestigious than teaching. In
contrast, SoTL aims to achieve – in the service of scholarship – not only a
unity between the practice of teaching and learning and research into teaching
and learning, but an overall unity of teaching and research, i.e. disciplinary
as well as generic teaching and learning, together with disciplinary research
and research into teaching and learning; all in the service of scholarship (Wissenschaft).
It is this originally Humboldtian approach to the work of universities, which is
– or should be - fundamental to SoTL.
The changes in universities over the past twenty years have been of two kinds.
Regarding external changes, Watson and Maddison (2005) provide a perceptive
account of just how much the world, in the way that it affects universities, has
changed in that time - e.g. through massification (Trow 2005) - which may be
thought to raise deep questions regarding the applicability of principles which
will be 200 years old next year. Yet, they do not challenge the fundamental
Humboldtian principle of a university as a learning community of scholars,
teachers and students, although this community may have to adapt more radically
to the 21st century than it would like. The other and much more
worrying change is managerial, leading to top down management and dirigiste
pressures from Government. Such management and dirigism go totally against the
spirit of the Humboldtian university (Elton 2008a) and are potentially
endangering the future of universities, not only in England [1], but in all
Europe (e.g. Bennich-Björkman 2007). Yet ‘no change’ was not a viable option.
Could there be a modus which gives universities a freedom in the 21st
century similar to that which Humboldt gave them in the 19th?
Clearly, in many ways it would be very different from its so successful
predecessor; it would be necessary to reinterpret both the relationship between
teachers and students in the light of massification and the famous prescription
(Humboldt 1810, Elton 2008a) of ‘in loneliness and freedom’, as well as the
change of status of the academic profession. What would remain are the
fundamental nature of an adult relationship between teachers and students and
the paradox arising from complexity theory (Elton 2008a) that has provided the
rationale for the Humboldtian university, universities best serve the state and
the communities in which they are embedded as well as scholarship (Wissenschaft),
if university staff have maximum freedom of action as individuals and in small
groups.
Even then, there is no certainty that universities will act in socially
responsible ways, as was demonstrated for example by the unquestioned need of
enforcing change in Oxbridge in the 19th century, where the inward
looking attitudes of individual academics had led, at the next higher complexity
level, to inward looking institutions, but that need was met successfully by a
Royal Commission - acting as deus ex machina - not by the kind of
constant and petty interference from outside that universities suffer from at
present. Furthermore, there is little evidence of today’s academics being
largely opposed to governmental aims or inward looking.
A good area to start might be a Humboldtian approach to the assurance and
enhancement of teaching quality, something that the Humboldtian university of
the 19th century sadly never attempted. However, such an approach
would be very different from that of the British Quality Assurance Agency, if
only because it is not always possible to articulate detailed descriptions of
quality statements without distorting them – they invariably contain a tacit
component which would lose in meaning through being made overt (González &
Burwood 2003, Elton 2008b) [2].
Universities and Society
Is it too late to maintain what is best in universities, while changing them to
be fit for to-day and to-morrow? And if not, could Humboldt be the man to guide
us in this venture? Answers to these questions raise the deeper issues of the
relationship of universities and the society which they serve, and as Laurillard
(Ashwin, ed. 2006, p.76) has remarked:
“universities have to manage on the large scale the same values, aspirations and
modus operandi they used for a privileged elite.”
The Humboldtian university maintained a distance from the state that was
severely tested in 1837, when seven professors in Göttingen - the “Göttinger
Sieben” who included the brothers Grimm - were dismissed by the King of Hanover
for protesting against a violation of the constitution (Paulsen 1908, p. 260). A
hundred years later, no similar protest came from their successors against the
dismissal of Jewish professors under Hitler and it is difficult to imagine
protests of this kind – under much less threatening circumstances - from the
Vice-Chancellors’ Organisation UUK against the current attacks by British
Governments on academic freedom today, designed to favour top down management,
short term objectives and utilitarianism in both teaching and research. Thus,
the suggestion of an Academic
Decalogue and a Hippocratic Oath (Watson 2007), designed to reinforce
responsible academic freedom and based on the work of Ashby (1969), who knew the
Humboldtian system better than any other English person, then or now, should be
taken seriously.
The advent of SoTL
A promising way to achieve a high quality system of research and teaching in
universities might come out of the recent development of the scholarship of
teaching and learning (SoTL). Although the current view of SoTL derives from the
revolutionary work of Boyer (1990) on his ‘four scholarships’, the current
concept that scholarship should
underpin all the activities of universities owes much more to Humboldt than to
Boyer. The difference arises from a fundamental difference between Anglo-Saxon
and German thinking, the former being essentially Aristotelian and
analytic(either/or), while German thinking is Hegelian and synthetic (not only,
but also). At the same time, it must be stressed that practice in
If teaching is as important as research and research into teaching is as
important as research in the disciplines, then we should demand a preparation
for SoTL equivalent but not necessarily equal to the kind of preparation
required for disciplinary research. Thus, while the latter is normally at the
level of a first degree in the appropriate discipline, this would not be
appropriate as an introduction to SoTL, which is not normally taken up by
academics until after they are established in their disciplines. It should
therefore be in the form of continuing professional development and involve a
postgraduate qualification – Diploma or Master’s degree.
Thus our present position, which only satisfies the belief that we have moved
from stressing ‘teaching’ to stressing ‘learning’, is seriously deficient and an
essential aspect of the kind of preparation which I have referred to must
challenge the fundamental dichotomy of what in SoTL is disciplinary and what is
generic.
SoTL and CPD
In the light of the nature of SoTL, as
described, what form should the continuing professional development (CPD) of
academics take? Such development is clearly additional to the development of
students in their discipline which follows the undergraduate degree and normally
is included in the preparation for a higher degree in the discipline, but it
should be of equivalent weight and not be of the type of initial training
courses, common now in the
CPD for academics is a special case of CPD in general, which in turn is a
special case of the education of adults. For the last of these, and a
fortiori for all three, it has been well established
that adults learn best if they are actively involved in their learning,
so that they internalise it, and if they see it as relevant to their needs. For
the continuing development of professionals, these needs in general arise out of
their practice and the problems created by their practice. However, it is a well
known and regrettable fact that academics rarely transfer this approach - which
is so close to well developed approaches in their research - to their teaching,
an activity which, apart from the quality with which it is carried out, many
academics consider uncontentious, to the extent that when in an inaugural
lecture (Elton 1995) I raised the question: “Is university teaching
researchable?”, many in the audience responded negatively. Hence it must be one
of the main features of any really successful programme of CPD for academic
teachers to convince them that university teaching is a problematic and
researchable activity. It is reasonable to postulate that this is best achieved
through academic teachers reflecting on problems in their own teaching and then
attempting to solve these problems.
One possible approach to CPD for academics is therefore through Problem Based
Learning (PBL), with the additional requirement that the problems must arise
from on-going practice. In that way, this form of PBL is radically different
from normal PBL in university courses in one respect: the problems should not be
selected in advance by the course designers, but must be chosen through
negotiation by the academics in question together with their course tutors. The
fact that the whole CPD process is then initiated by the academic teachers
undertaking the course also means that their learning will be self-initiated and
autonomous, and not prescribed by others. One hoped-for outcome of this CPD
process should then be that academics will see the processes of research and
teaching as very similar, and that they will transfer this attitude to the
learning which they engender in their students. Almost certainly the first
course of this kind, which was accredited by the Staff and Educational
Development Association, was developed some years ago at UCL and will now be
described (Stefani & Elton 2002). Similar courses have more recently been
developed at the
.
The UCL Course
The ‘students’ on the UCL course were throughout referred to as ‘course
members’, not only so as to avoid confusion, since they
themselves taught students, but also to give them the appropriate status.
The course aimed to be a collaborative venture between all involved in it –
members and tutors. The main features of the course were:
·
Coursework.
Course members negotiated with their tutor a number of mini-research projects in
the teaching and learning of their discipline, after which they worked through
them and reported on them in their portfolios.
·
Knowledge and
Understanding. While they were not
directly assessed on ‘knowledge’, their reports on the mini-research projects
revealed the extent to which they had acquired appropriate knowledge. The latter
was largely based on the twelve volume compendium “Effective Learning and
Teaching in Higher Education”, edited by Dr Pat Cryer (1992) for the Committee
of Vice Chancellors and Principals [3].
·
Assessment criteria.
Their flexibility within firm overall boundaries, which departed radically from
the criteria for orthodox courses that are related to specified learning
outcomes, gave members the freedom to ‘do their own thing’ via negotiated
learning agreements and thereby do things well beyond what could have been
expected. The form of assessment – through the member’s portfolio and not
through any formal examination - proved wholly appropriate.
·
Standards.
As a result of the flexibility of the assessment criteria, the standard of the
work considerably exceeded any that could have been ascribed as appropriate.
This and the previous point were explicitly recognised by the External Examiner
and the accreditors of SEDA (the Staff and Educational Development Association),
and also by the assessors of the QAA (Quality Assurance Agency).
·
Role of tutor.
The way that the relationship of the tutor and member changed from teacher via
facilitator to colleague, which is common in the best of research supervision,
was found wholly appropriate at this in principle slightly lower level.
·
Role of mentor.
Here again, the policy of giving the maximum of freedom and flexibility to
members in their choice of and relationship with their mentors proved
successful. An odd indication of this was that at least one mentor refused to
accept the, admittedly tiny honorarium, because ‘it was such a pleasure to be
involved’.
·
Mode of CPD.
The course established a mode of CPD
for experienced staff that was genuinely at the intellectual level of research
active staff who wish to devote some of their creativity to the improvement of
teaching and learning. An indication of this was the comment of one of the
successful members:
“I
believe that the course has contributed immeasurably to my development
as a teacher and also to
the development of my career here.
I would not
have got my fellowship
without it I don't think and I certainly wouldn’t
have had the confidence
to do many of the things that I have done either."
The main problem
with the course was that it was ahead of its time. It was likely that it would
not attract many course members and therefore from the start it was decided to
conduct it at a distance. An unplanned bonus of this mode was that the students
worked very independently. What had not been expected was that there would be
only four students and none of them from UCL. The lessons learned by the course
designers from the very small cohort were however both profound and positive. As
mentioned above, each course member had a mentor, chosen by the course member,
whose role was strictly non-disciplinary. Professor Phil Race was the external
examiner for the course and staff and course members owe a huge debt of
gratitude to him. The course was eventually evaluated by one of its members and
the originator of the course (Stefani & Elton 2002). The conclusions were that
its above features had been successfully realised.
To make the course experience come alive, it is worth quoting from Lorraine
Stefani’s evaluation (Stefani & Elton 2002):
Evaluation of the UCL CPD course by Lorraine Stefani
Introduction
I was
particularly attracted to the Diploma in Higher Education Research and
Development course (Dip HERD) for a number of reasons.
I interpreted the aims of the course to mean that there was encouragement
and support to link teaching and learning by posing the question: ‘how might my
teaching affect my students' learning experience?’, and to link teaching,
learning and scholarship. The
distance learning nature of the course suited my needs and my commitments,
although this would be my first experience of this mode of learning.
With the
shifting status of HE teaching I viewed the Dip HERD programme as providing a
creative pathway for my CPD and credibility within my field.
The member centred nature of the course was very appealing to me, ie the
framework is presented but there is ample scope for individual creativity in
shaping the course round one’s own needs, interests etc.
Getting Started
After
having my application to pursue the course accepted I waited for the 'resource
pack'. What arrived was very
impressive but slightly overwhelming: a complete set of Cryer’s ‘Effective
Learning and Teaching in Higher Education’ modules, the Course Handbook; a
Mentor's Handbook; a Course Bibliography; a book on Small Scale Research in
Teaching and Learning; and a letter of welcome.
The arrival of this 'resource pack’ marks the starting point of the
course. It is then up to the member
to choose a mentor, to tune in to the nature of the course and to make headway
with the first Learning Contract.
My
initial reactions to this official start of the Course were slight panic and
insecurity. On first reading the
Course Handbook I felt that I was not really sure how to progress, how to read
the Handbook and make sense of it enough to prepare a statement of intent for
the first module. So I
procrastinated for some time before bracing myself again to read the Course
Handbook and the book on Small Scale Research and re-assure myself that of
course I could do this but instead of being directed, I was led along a pathway
and it was my responsibility to shape my course.
We have
worked over the years to develop a student-centred curriculum and to raise
students' awareness of personal responsibility for learning.
When this was turned around and teacher became learner, it was a learning
experience in itself for me to determine the direction of my own learning.
I felt rather like a first year student saying to a tutor, 'you mean
there are no instructions for me'!
To complete a course such as Dip HERD one must be motivated and have goals to
aim for.
Drawing up the First Learning Contract
I found
drawing up the Learning Contract quite challenging in the first instance and it
determined the means of communication between myself and my tutor for the
remainder of the course. The ethos
of the Course is that it is problem-based. On particular broad areas regarding
delivering the curriculum, the member must identify a problem or issue and then
devise a means of solving the problem or dealing with the issue.
Ideally one should then put a strategy in place and reflect on the
outcome and enter into this cycle again.
What I found difficult in the first instance was articulating clearly
enough my intentions for the assignment.
Lewis
Elton, who was my tutor, and I started off using e-mail but I find this medium
too immediate. It often leads me into rapid response without thinking out
clearly enough what I want to say and how I want to convey what I want to say.
After struggling with the first contract a couple of times until it
received a signal of approval, we shifted to communicating by fax and that
worked very well indeed throughout the course.
Once I had mastered the art of clearly articulating my objectives we
rarely had problems understanding each other.
The importance of clarifying the aims and objectives of assignments was
another major learning experience for me and I am more careful now than I was
previously when I work with staff and students.
If the aims and objectives are clear then you work to these aims and
objectives and you are assessed on these.
This makes for a very transparent assessment system.
This is a
key learning point as regards pursuing the course. On reading the Course
Handbook I had great difficulty getting any sense of the assessment criteria.
How often have we heard students say this?
However given the member-centred nature of the course it would be too
constraining if specific as opposed to general criteria were determined in
advance.
Assessment and Feedback
It is of
course slightly nerve wracking sending off one's first assignment. Is it good
enough, have I really followed my aims and objectives?
These are not unreasonable sentiments, doubts etc when one first embarks
on a new course of this type. What
was impressive was the speed of turnaround and the quality and depth of the
feedback.
Occasionally I engaged in dialogue with my tutor on aspects of the feedback eg
responding to questions or comments.
This goes way beyond what happens in most classroom situations but again
provides a good model for giving feedback on extended assignments.
The feedback itself supports learning and helps members to move forward
in their thinking. In an ideal
world we would provide such quality feedback on all student learning.
Meeting Deadlines
Commitment must be given to completing assignments.
Setting deadlines is a good idea even if they have to be changed within
reason. The very act of changing my
deadlines was generally enough to spur me into action.
I did not have designated time off my work commitments but I used any
free time I had to progress my work.
Personal and Professional Gains
When I
think of the gains of completing a course such as Dip HERD, I think back to 'why
did I choose the course?' I feel
very strongly a higher level of professional credibility, particularly in the
light of my role as Advisor of Studies on the Advanced Academic Studies
accredited course for academic and related staff currently being offered at the
University of Strathclyde which is in fact modelled on many aspects of the Dip
HERD programme. Because I
decided, on completion of the Dip HERD course, to prepare a portfolio for
assessment for the award of a SEDA Fellowship I consider that the course opened
up a further credible pathway for accreditation of my own academic practice.
Other
gains include the development of a deeper understanding of the nature of
distance/self-directed learning.
Given that the prevalence of these modes of learning will undoubtedly increase
in the short to medium term future, this is an added bonus.
I feel
equipped with new skills which I can transfer to new situations.
It is often easy to lose sights of the constraints under which learners
are operating, be these learners 'traditional' students or staff pursuing CPD.
More recent developments
The fact that the course which has been described was a distance course proved a
very positive feature, since it threw course members much more on their
resources than would be the case with an on-campus course. However, it
essentially predated recent developments in computer technology and there was
almost no interaction between course members. Both these deficiencies were
successfully tackled in a more recent distance course at UCL (Russell, Elton,
Swinglehurst & Greenhalgh, 2006), developed by Professor Greenhalgh for
practising doctors, which successfully integrated student-student interaction
and teacher-student interaction into it through up-to-date technology. Her team
initially included one educationist (L. E.) whose experience of the earlier CPD
course for academic teachers proved very useful That these courses could be
successfully developed at UCL, which is so heavily oriented towards research and
overall very conservative in its approach to teaching, is one of the remarkable
aspects of this story.
At the same time, it must be conceded that the distance nature of the course is
far from an essential feature. None of the three courses mentioned earlier, at
the
Conclusions
The most important – and possibly least expected conclusion relates to the
primacy of scholarship in universities. Traditionally, there was always an
expectation in
A second and equally important conclusion relates to the provision of
appropriate continuing professional development in teaching and learning which
turns out to be the arguably most important development in SoTL. The traditional
view, although not always expressed as blatantly, was that one improved in
teaching through imitation of role models - one taught, as one had been taught
by academics that taught, as they had been taught, an apostolic succession,
going back to the middle ages. In practice, a high proportion of academic staff
in Britain still believe that improvement in teaching is largely a matter of
imitation on the basis of role models, but this view is becoming less acceptable
and continuing professional development in teaching and learning, together with
the acceptance of a research component is becoming respectable. In contrast, in
the USA, where what is called there ‘faculty development’, was until recently
confined largely to graduate students, but this is changing now through e.g. the
Carnegie Foundation work on SoTL and many universities now have faculty
development programmes and/or centres [4]. However, my belief is and I
will be happy to be challenged on this, that these are largely concerned with
improving rather than changing present practices.
Only the latter will in the long run lead to real improvement and for
that to happen, full courses at up to Master’s level, of the kind described,
will be necessary.
The integration of research with teaching and learning, and of discipline
specific and generic components in both, have received a considerable impetus
through the SoTL movement, as has the need for the CPD of academics, which
surely constitutes a more fundamental tackling of the quality issue than those
of the Quality Assurance Agency. However, there is a long way to go before SoTL
will be accepted generally as the road to quality. The connection to the
Humboldtian concept of the university lies in this integration of teaching and
research, paradoxically, since in practice the Humboldtian university only
rarely attempted such an integration except at times in the advanced seminar.
Finally, a word must be said about interdisciplinarity. Traditionally,
universities have been oriented pre-eminently towards single disciplines, but
there is an increasing pressure for interdisciplinary work. It will not be easy
to move traditional universities in that direction and the recent suggestion by
the Leadership Foundation (Gill 2007) that academics should have both a
disciplinary and an institutional loyalty is wholly irrelevant and dangerous in
the present climate. Genuine interdisciplinary work must grow organically out of
the requirements of research and the transfer to teaching; in some ways it is
already doing the former, but rarely, if ever, the latter; the
multidisciplinarity of modular degrees is more likely to confuse students than
to make their degrees interdisciplinary. Finally, while interdisciplinarity in
no way conflicts with the principles of the Humboldtian university, its
achievement as a by-product of top down managerialism and through dual loyalties
certainly does.
In sum, this paper argues that the way towards the university of the 21st
century should be through SoTL, with its stress on the links between research
and teaching, its demand that university teachers should become a trained
profession and its recognition that the Humboldtian university, with its
structure now validated by complexity theory, continues to be the way forward
[5].
Notes
[1] The differences between the different parts of
[2] A much more comprehensive attempt at combining the eternal verities of
universities with the conditions of the 21st century has been
provided by Watson (2007).
[3] UUK was previously called the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals.
[4] My thanks are due to the Editor for bringing me up-to-date on this matter.
[5] I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the two Readers of this paper,
whose insightful comments much improved it.
References
Ashby, E.
(1969), ‘A Hippocratic Oath for the Academic Profession’,
Minerva 8 (1), pp. 64 – 66.
Ashwin,
P. (ed.) (2006), ’Changing Higher
Education: The Development of Learning and Teaching’, Routledge.
Bennich-Björkman, L. (2007), ‘Has Academic Freedom Survived? –An Interview Study
of the Conditions for Researchers in an Era of Paradigmatic Change’,
Higher Education Quarterly
61, pp. 334 – 361.
Boyer, E.
L. (1990), ‘Scholarship
reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate’, Carnegie Foundation,
Bruner,
J. S. (1977), ‘The Process of Education’,
Cryer, P.
(1992), “Effective Learning and Teaching
in Higher Education”, edited for the Committee of Vice Chancellors and
Principals.
Elliott,
J. (1991), ‘Action Research for
Educational Change’, Open University Press.
Elton, L.
(1986), ‘Research and Teaching: symbiosis or conflict’,
Higher Education
15, pp. 299 – 304.
Elton, L.
(1995), ‘Is university teaching
researchable?’, Inaugural lecture, University College London, 9
March.
Elton, L.
(2008a), ‘Collegiality and Complexity: Humboldt’s relevance to British
Universities to-day’, Higher
Education Quarterly
62, pp. 224 – 236.
Elton, L.
(2008b), ‘Academic
writing, tacit knowledge and enquiry-based learning’,
to be published.
Gill, J. (2007), ‘Staff loyalty key to Hefce report’,
Times Higher 30. 11. 07, p. 2.
González,
S. & Burwood, S. (2003), ‘Tacit Knowledge and Public Accounts’,
J. Philosophy of Education
37, pp. 377 –391.
Hartwig,
L. (2007), ‘Is
Humboldt still relevant today? Notes on the relationship between research and
teaching from a German perspective’,
Third Marwell Conference on Research and Teaching,
Humboldt,
W. von (1810), ‘Über die innere und
äussere Organisation der höheren wissenschaftlichen
Anstalten in
Humboldt,
W. von (1970), ‘On the spirit and organisational framework of intellectual
institutions in
Paulsen,
F. (1908), ‘The
Russell,
J., Elton, L., Swinglehurst, D. & Greenhalgh, T. (2006), . ‘Using the online
environment in assessment for learning: a case-study of a web-based course in
primary care’, Assessment and Evaluation
in Higher Education 31
(2006), pp. 465 – 478.
Stefani,
L. & Elton, L. (2002),
'Continuing professional development of academic teachers through
self-initiated learning'. Assessment and
Evaluation in Higher Education 27,
pp. 117 – 129.
Stenhouse,
L. (1975), ‘An Introduction to Curriculum
Research and Development’,
Trow, M.
(2005), ‘Reflections
on the Transition from Elite to Mass to Universal Access: Forms and Phases of
Higher Education in Modern Societies since WWII’. Philip Altbach,
ed.. ‘International
Handbook of Higher Education’, Kluwer.
Watson,
D. (2007) ‘Does Higher Education
need a Hippocratic Oath?’, Higher
Education Quarterly 61,
pp. 362 – 374.
Watson,
D. & Maddison E. (2005), ‘Managing
Institutional Self-study’, Open University Press.