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THE relative importance of teaching and scholarship in academia and the way in which these activities connect have received increasing attention in recent years, both within academic institutions and among the public at large. In the popular press the topic often takes the form of a lament over the neglect of teaching in favor of esoteric research, establishing a simplistic opposition that impedes a thoughtful discussion of the issues involved 1 . Unfortunately, such a lament often invites a heated and overly simplistic defense of the importance of research to good teaching that does not convince the skeptics and fails to address important problems.
We might begin to examine the issue by looking at the fundamental reasons for asking academics to combine research and teaching in their careers. This combination has long been expected in continental European universities, and it was a key attribute of the nineteenth-century French and German institutions that strongly influenced the United States research university. One could also argue that an increasing emphasis on scholarship accompanied the growth of federally funded scientific research and the increase in doctorate production in the United States since the 1960s (see Geiger, esp. ch. 7).
This reason is compelling when placed in an appropriate context. It asserts that scholarship and teaching are inextricable parts of the larger process of learning. The academic's goal and duty is to reach beyond routine knowledge and old answers and to strive constantly to question, seek new answers, and move knowledge forward. Those who separate the process of teaching from that of discovery risk reducing teaching to the repetition of old facts and outdated methods. But teaching inspired by new learning promotes a better attitude in both teacher and student: a dissatisfaction with routine answers and approaches, a desire to find new insights, a commitment to life of intellectual growth.
Literary critics of my generation can easily illustrate this point. When I obtained my doctorate the dominant critical method was the New Criticism, which operated on the premise that a literary succeeding generations would uncover by close analysis. Since then, a series of developments, motivated by changes in historical and cultural circumstances, have changed our perspective. We are now even reluctant to use the term literary work ; we talk instead of “texts,” of verbal constructs whose multiple meanings depend on the circumstances in which they are read.
Any literary critic educated thirty years ago who has not changed his or her approach is, by now, irrelevant. Conversely, the best senior critics of the last decades have evolved beyond the attitudes and approaches dominant at the time of their studies and have devised new ones. They have moved knowledge forward. They were able to do so not so much because of their education as because of an early commitment to examine all ideas critically, to seek new methods, and to become scholars as well as students. Trained by teacher-scholars, they themselves went on further knowledge in their field.
Compelling though this reason for relating teaching to scholarship—to the discovery of knowledge—may be, it does not eliminate some practical problems in colleges and universities, nor does it take into account some special conditions and conflicts of academics in language and literature.
Ideals, to begin with, cannot always be applied practically. Even in large research institutions, it is difficult to evaluate scholarly growth and achievement. Promotion committees, required to evaluate candidates from varied disciplines, are tempted to count publications and rank publication outlets. These criteria do not always determine who is advancing knowledge and who is not. But I would argue that the solution to this problem is not to abandon the effort but rather to modify the process so that quantitative measures do not dominate it and so that committees obtain (through evaluations, letters, etc.) information needed to determine whether a candidate shows significant achievement and promise. In addition, committees and evaluators should balance their evaluations of scholarship and teaching. (They usually do so in theory, but not always in practice.) They should consider the interrelations of teaching and research and seek to understand a coherent pattern of academic achievement, of true learning, in arriving at their decisions.
A related question arises: should we require publications of candidates for tenure? Certainly truly innovative discoveries need to be addressed to colleagues and contemporaries (rather than just to students) in order to demonstrate significant achievement, and publication and peer review are the best ways of determining discoveries' value. Occasionally, candidates may prove their accomplishments in other ways, though the burden of proof has to be with the candidate. By applying our traditional principles thoughtfully in individual instances, we will avoid many problems.
Special pressures and issues arise certain kinds of institutions. At many institutions that do not grant doctorates, the demands of teaching (and often service) leave little time for scholarly activity. Yet faculty members at such institutions need both to keep up with new developments in their field and to participate in the quest for new discoveries. I am impressed by the decision by some excellent colleges to avoid quantitative publication quotas but to insist on some measurable evidence of scholarship. This practice ensures that faculty members show an ability to advance knowledge in their disciplines. Colleges and universities can use common sense to reconcile scholarly expectations with scholars' circumstances and time constraints without abandoning the principle of furthering learning.
In our academic area, we often encounter a special problem: most of us were trained as literary scholars and critics, yet we spend much of our time teaching language courses and culture courses. This problem has no simple solution. Those who primarily teach language courses may be better off developing a new scholarly expertise in applied linguistics or second language acquisition and accepting that they have shifted disciplines. Administrators and promotion committees should be sympathetic to such shifts, while demanding excellence in the new endeavors. They should give full weight to work in the new area, such as innovative publications on language teaching and second language acquisition and innovative (but not routine) textbooks. I suspect that this change is occurring, though perhaps too slowly: many institutions (including my own) have adopted the practice. Again, institutions should be able to make good judgments if they follow the principle that the work must demonstrate a successful quest for knowledge.
What should we expect of a faculty member teaching in several areas and juggling language, culture, and literature courses? I would favor demanding that faculty members demonstrate innovative, in-depth scholarly work in at least one of the areas taught and the ability to keep up with developments in the other areas. Such an accomplishment would demonstrate a commitment to the advancement of knowledge, self-challenge, and intellectual growth. It would also set a model for students and colleagues.
Some of the problems in applying the traditional expectations of scholarship, especially in institutions other than doctorate-granting research universities, have recently led to attempts to expand the definition of scholarship. The most widely cited example is Ernest L. Boyer's Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. Boyer expanded the traditional category of scholarship—“scholarship of discovery”—to include “scholarship of application,” “scholarship of integration,” and “scholarship of teachings” (18–25). Boyer's categories and arguments are effectively summarized by Anne S. Williams.
“Scholarship of application” involves the practical application of discoveries. Williams argues that “this is the type of scholarship that should thrive at Master's Only Institutions where many post-baccalaureate programs are professional and applied in orientation” (4), presumably fields such as engineering management or business administration. If departments applied the concept to work in applied linguistics or second language acquisition, colleagues who developed new approaches and groundbreaking textbooks would get the credit they deserve, If such work is truly innovative, however, it should be recognized as traditional scholarship of discovery, and a new category should not be needed to defend it.
Creating such new concepts and categories, in fact, might imply that the work in question is somehow inferior to traditional scholarship. At best, the categories might help sway some traditionalists who do not recognize accomplishments in these areas. (I would hope that these traditionalists are a dying breed, and I am reluctant to confuse the issue of scholarship for their sake.) Simply put, it seems clearest and most defensible to give full credit to all scholarship that creates significant new learning.
At first glance, the category “scholarship of integration” seems an attractive way of expanding the options for faculty scholarship. As Williams characterizes it “this form of intellectual inquiry takes place at the boundaries of disciplines when scholars work to identify the threads that connect one body of knowledge to another” (3). It therefore seems to invite work that avoids the narrow specialization criticized in the present academic system. But again I wonder if this category is really needed. The most stimulating recent work in my discipline, rated highly by the traditional criteria of scholarship of discovery, is in fact interdisciplinary. The whole field of cultural studies combines literary, historical, and sociological approaches.
Likewise, in the natural sciences, the traditional lines of division between the physical and the biological sciences are constantly being blurred. In other areas (e.g., environmental studies), exciting scholarship combines the social and the natural sciences. Meanwhile, historians are doing textual analysis and citing poststructuralist literary theorists. These examples make me question Williams's hypothesis that “relatively few scholars” perform work at the boundaries of disciplines (3); I suggest that this new category may not be needed. Such a category could also be used as an excuse to give credit to second-rate scholarship that is insufficiently innovative or that does not emphasize the discovery of knowledge. We should do everything possible to increase qualitative standards (while possibly deemphasizing quantitative ones).
I have serious difficulties with Boyer's category of the scholarship of teaching. It is true, as Boyer ad Williams argue, that good teaching requires research in the discipline and involvement in a constant process of inquiry. But that process can stop short of the attempt to discover knowledge, to push back the frontiers of the discipline. Moreover, an experienced faculty member always has a certain scholarly advantage over students; such a faculty member who is not forced to address peers as well will not be challenged to the fullest. I worry, in sum, that this category could easily become an excuse for doing no scholarship at all. I would be reluctant to use it in making tenure decisions and in evaluating academics in the early stages of their careers.
But as someone who has to worry about the productivity and professional satisfaction of many faculty members, I might find the category useful for one faculty group. We all know that career situations, goals, and achievements change through time; there are academics whose zeal for discovery, already demonstrated for years, wanes in the latter stages of their careers (and well after they have obtained tenure). Yet they may be able to teach effectively and creatively. The category of scholarship of teaching might allow us to demand from them the best and most up-to-date teaching of which they are capable. I would also base a greater percentage of their merit evaluation on teaching than does the standard ratio of forty percent scholarship, forty percent teaching, and twenty percent service prevalent at many research institutions. But I would ask these colleagues to teach additional courses.
On balance, though, I feel that what we need is not new categories to expand our definition of scholarship, but rather a willingness to accept diverse scholarly work as long as it involves the discovery of significant knowledge. If we avoid prejudices that have unfairly devalued some areas of study (I am thinking of those who denigrated innovative work in second language acquisition, rejected creative theoretical studies in literature, and ignored new directions in sociological research), we can uphold the traditional vision of scholarship as the quest for discovery.
The history of Western university education provides at least one another model of academic development; it has, not accidentally, been supported be recent critics of the tenure system in the United States. I refer to the model prevalent at British universities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
In this system, the faculty member (tutor) was expected to develop the students' minds and knowledge (this description is slightly simplified). Having already learned many facts and skills in grammar school, the university student was led to read, think, discuss, argue, and write. The teacher's primary duty was to work with the student and push him or her (usually him) to ever-higher achievements. The teacher, who was expected to be well-read, literate, a member of an intellectual community, might do original scholarly work but could develop a career without it.
This system has changed gradually throughout the twentieth century. In recent decades, professional advancement (to senior lecturer or professor) has come to depend on scholarly achievements. Permanent status is granted primarily on the basis of teaching, however, and it is usually achieved more quickly than tenure in the United States and without the complex process used in most of our universities. These advantages have led Jay Parini, among others, to advocate some version of the British system for our institutions.
I am not convinced by these arguments. The British model seems smugly elitist and noninnovative in its original form. It led, in the literary studies of the 1920s and 1930s, to a stultified establishment; it was already evolving significantly when exciting new critical currents developed in Britain in the mid-1930s. Admittedly, this system did produce many well-educated, well-read, and thoughtful British citizens and a number of excellent academics in foreign languages and literatures (though most language instruction occurred before entrance to the university).
In criticizing the tenure system in the United States, Parini highlights cases in which tenure is decided by politics or conformism and argues that “tenure committees only rarely seem to accomplish what they set out to do.” I suspect that his assessment is unduly negative and that many tenure committees (including most that I have served on) work well. Parini's argument seems aimed more at the incorrect use of the tenure system than at its principles and goals. It would be a mistake to overthrow a system summarily just because it is being misapplied or perverted. We should work, first, to make it conform to its ideals, as I suggest above. The overriding ideal of the tenure process—ensuring that we grant tenure only to those who show excellence in teaching and scholarship and a commitment to grow intellectually and to discover knowledge—is a sound one. (Some of Parini's suggestions on instituting a dual-track system, however, could be implemented for senior tenured faculty members.)
Parini also contends that teaching and scholarship often require different talents. And it is undoubtedly true that some of us excel at writing or at working alone with research materials, while others are particularly effective in the classroom. But we must fulfill, in some fashion, the duty of professionals devoted to advancing and communicating learning, and we must all combine the zeal of discovery with the drive to convey the effects of our discoveries. Different academics will balance these two imperatives in different ways, and promotion committees should allow for variants of the basic pattern.
I hope that my comments will not be taken as a Pollyannaish defense of the current system; there are many problems in how scholarship is evaluated, tenure decisions are made, and academic careers are developed. But we can solve these problems without abandoning the basic principles and procedures of our academic enterprise. Above all, let us not scuttle our belief that good teaching must go hand-in-hand with a constant quest for the discovery of knowledge. Only by upholding this conviction will we fulfill the ideal lifelong learning for our society.
The author is Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies and University Professor of Spanish at the University of Kansas. This article is based on his presentation at ADFL Seminar East, 15–17 June 1995, in Charleston, South Carolina.
1 In the humanities at least, scholarship and research are almost synonyms, in general discussions, and I use them as such here. I tend to prefer the former term because it seems more strongly linked with the discovery of knowledge.
Boyer, Ernest L. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. Princeton: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990.
Geiger, Roger L. Research and Relevant Knowledge: American Research Universities since World War II. New York: Oxford UP, 1993.
Parini, Jay. “Tenure and the Loss of Faculty Talent.” Chronicle of Higher Education 14 July 1995: A40.
Williams, Anne S. “Teaching and Scholarship at Master's Only Institutions.” Council of Graduate Schools Communicator 28.4 1995: 1–5.
© 1996 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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