Ernest Boyer popularized “scholarship of teaching” in a famous monograph Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. 1990 Princeton, NJ: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Boyer argued that the concept of scholarship must be broadened to include not only basic research but other kinds of intellectual work in which faculty engage. He suggested four types of scholarship: discovery, integration, application, and teaching. All of the elements of “Reform Concepts” build on Boyer’s theme of broadening the traditional view of scholarship.

Boyer disseminated the notion of a scholarship of teaching but did not define clearly what this scholarship would be. He thereby touched off a decade of academic thought and controversy over this topic. As a result, our conceptualization of this scholarship is a bit clearer today (but only a bit!)

In the first sentence, Hutchins also expressed a truth still not internalized by many faculty who prepare graduate students in doctoral institutions today … that research productivity that advances the discipline ends with the dissertation for most Ph.D’s. Today, the vast majority (95% is a figure often quoted) of new Ph.D’s who take positions in Academe do so in teaching institutions rather than research universities. In other words, though they may acquire their Ph.D’s in research universities as researchers, teaching is what they will primarily do in academic careers.