The Scholarship of Curriculum Development
Written by: Julie Thompson Klein
In our last newsletter, we introduced examples of teaching as a form of “scholarship.” In this issue, we focus on curriculum development, drawing again on the American Association of Higher Education (AAHE) series, The Disciplines Speak. Faculty work is divided typically into the triad of research, teaching, and service. However, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) movement has called attention to the blurring of those lines through activities that are fostering a “transformation of knowledge” in classrooms across the country.
Developing new courses and revising existing ones is a vital form of transformation, introducing new findings, methodologies, interpretations, topics, subfields, and ties with cognate disciplines. The Council of Administrators of Family and Consumer Sciences exhorts faculty to not only keep current themselves with advances in the disciplines, but to integrate them into the curriculum. In the broad arena of language and literature, the Modern Language Association emphasizes, in particular, course and program revisions that integrate traditional approaches with new theoretical approaches in literature, textual studies, and cultural studies.
In addition to developing and revising courses, writing innovative textbooks and materials is one of the most frequently mentioned activities. The American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business urges faculty to create new teaching cases accompanied by instructional manuals, instructional software, and materials that describe the design and implementation of new courses. Likewise, the American Chemical Society implores its members to reach “beyond the bounds of standardized textbook material” by exposing students to new developments, devising a new approach to teaching a particular chemical concept, creating a novel lecture or demonstration, or designing a new experiment for a laboratory exercise. The American Society of Civil Engineering concurs, calling for not only course revisions and new courses, but also laboratory revisions and design of new laboratories.
How do we know when teaching exhibits “scholarly “quality? The American Psychological Association specifies that “Teaching is scholarship when it makes an original contribution, for example, through synthesizing information in new ways or through an insight of psychological importance.” It also exhibits a high level of expertise, credibility, and, the Council of Administrators of Family and Consumer Sciences stipulates, it must be presented in a form that can be “shared, preserved, and evaluated.” Representing the discipline of physics, the American Physical Society stipulates validation by external constituencies through critical reviews, archival publications, or export to other institutions. In addition to publications, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing adds documentation in the form of accreditation and other program reviews, presentations at professional meetings, individual teaching honors, external grants in support of teaching and learning, reports on practice, and adoption of new approaches and end products outside of a department or an institution.
References:
BIO 2010: Transforming undergraduate education for future research biologists (2003). Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.
Diamond, R. M. & Adam, B. A. (Eds.) (1995). The disciplines speak: Rewarding the scholarly, professional, and creative work of faculty. Washington, D.C.: American Association for Higher Education.
Diamond, R. M. & Adam, B. A. (Eds.) (2000). The disciplines speak II: More statements on rewarding the scholarly, professional, and creative work of faculty. Washington, D.C.: American Association for Higher Education.
Liberal learning and the arts and sciences major. Volume II: reports from the fields (1990). Washington, D.C. Association of American Colleges [and Universities].
Pellmar, R. & Eisenberg, L. (Eds.). (2000). Bridging disciplines in the brain, behavioral, and clinical sciences. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
The Disciplines Speak is not the only series to call attention to the bridging of research and teaching through the scholarship of curriculum development. The ground-breaking Study in Depth project of the Association of American Colleges and Universities featured reports of a broad cross-section of disciplines on the dialogue of tradition and innovation in the major (Liberal Learning and the Arts and Sciences major). More recently, Pellmar and Eisenberg’s report on Bridging Disciplines in the Brain, Behavioral, and Clinical Sciences presents new models of teaching and training, including incorporation of new understandings of complex health problems and translational research that integrates information from clinical settings and basic research laboratories. The report, BIO 2010, offers a blueprint for bringing undergraduate education in biology “up to the speed” of contemporary research in a curriculum that integrates physical sciences with information technology, and mathematics with life sciences.
In the next issue, we will focus on scholarship of pedagogy. If you’d like to obtain a copy of your particular discipline’s report for dissemination, please contact the OTL at otl@wayne.edu.
