Chapter 7: Scholarship Reconsidered: The Art of Teaching

We’ ve all been there before on the first day of class, sitting through the presentation of a professor who seems knowledgeable and qualified but unable to connect with the students in the room. Your intuition told you before she referenced the first line in the syllabus that she is a researcher at heart, but not necessarily prepared to share the wealth of knowledge accumulated. This individual doesn’t lack passion for the subject; she just doesn’t know how to share it with the students sitting in an undergraduate class. Ernest Boyer’s (1990)Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate tackles the functions of the professoriate and how professors have become more heavily focused on research resulting in a lack of attention paid to teaching. Boyer provides highlights of the history of the professoriate and describes four roles he feels the professoriate must adopt to remain essential today. Boyer’s feelings about the professoriate are qualified by the results he shares from a survey of professors across the nation. Scholarship Reconsidered concludes with a call to arms for the professoriate to stay relevant. Staying relevant in an ever-changing dynamic world is a concern for the professoriate and always has been. Throughout the book it is easy to recognize Boyer’s personal feelings about service, community, and the importance of connecting with future scholars in order for the professoriate to have a meaningful impact.