This article examines the use of teaching portfolios in documenting the scholarship of teaching in the U.S. Portfolios are generally three-ring binders that create teaching records including most often three types of materials: products of good teaching; material from oneself; materials from others. The major contribution most advocates of portfolios mention is the perceived improvement of teaching. Portfolios increase reflection and action about teaching by: giving focus on teaching as part of a professor\u27s expected activities; encouraging faculty to seek ways to improve their teaching by attending conference meetings on teaching, reading about teaching techniques, and creating discussions about teaching within the department and university; and stimulating formal and informal research on teaching

Boileau, Don M.

English

University of Central Florida (UCF): STARS (Showcase of Text, Archives, Research & Scholarship)

BoileauJACA3(1993): 19-23Scholarship Reconsidered:A Challenge to UseTeaching Portfolios to Documentthe Scholarship of TeachingDON M. BOILEAUPERHAPS no one more than Emest L. Boyer has influenced decisions on the retention,promotion, and tenure of professors in this generation. Scholarship Reconsidered:Priorities ofthe Professoriate, sponsored by the Camegie Foundation for the Ad-vancement of Teaching, raised the essential issues for broadening the consideration ofscholarship. Russell Edgerton, the President of the American Association of HigherEducation, viewed the report as "...reclaiming the common ground of scholarship thatunderlies" teaching, service, and research. The former President of Stanford University,Donald Kennedy, saw the report as dispelling the polarity between teaching and scholarshipas a way to achieve "a more rigorous and healthy version of the academy—and importantly,for a renewal and revitalization of teaching as well." Derek Bok, former president of HarvardUniversity believed that Scholarship Reconsidered poke directly to the renewed debate"...over the faculty's preoccupation with research and its effects on the quality of teaching."(The Edgerton, Kennedy and Bok quotations are from promotional literature ofthe CamegieFoundation.)In another vein, Peter Seldin's Successful Use of Teaching Portfolios awakens theprofessoriate to ways to enhance the conversation among peers as to teaching. Seldinobserved how Boyer's work created the new emphasis on teaching by national emphasis on"...the insistent viewpoint that teaching is actually an expression of scholarship, thatscholarship does not confine itself to the cutting edge of research, but also lives in intimateknowledge and teaching ofthe research in the classroom."From these two contributions communication departments gain immensely by havingrationales and a vocabulary to present to our colleagues in other disciplines and sciences19JACAabout the work we do. Our Greek heritage created rhetoric as a useful art that enhanced thequality of public life—the study of rhetoric was essential to a democratic society. While thenecessity of communication studies in the academy is obvious to most of us, we are alsofamiliar with the difficulty that some colleagues have had with other faculty about theseriousness of scholarship for those faculty engaged in debate/forensics, directing produc-tions on the stage or the studio, producing videos, researching communication in organizationalsettings, studying communication in the classroom, etc. Boyer's schemata provides us witha structure and vocabulary for promoting these activities within the scholarship rubric.Within the scholarship of teaching, the portfolio method also allows us to expand the structureand vocabulary for the evaluation and improvement of teaching.THE CONTEXT: SCHOLARSHIP RECONSIDERED'S CONTRIBUTIONSBoyer argues simply that we need to change the definition ofthe work of faculty "in waysthat reflect more realistically the full range of academic and civic mandates" (p. 16). Inessence the book argues to change the traditional reliance on research and publication as theonly measures of a faculty. Harvard's President Bok observed, "Collectively, however,faculties often seem distressingly sluggish and unwilling to change" (1986, p. 184). Afterdocumenting the dissatisfaction among college faculties about the present system, Boyerprovides a rhetorical answer in keeping the word "scholarship" in four phrases to describefaculty activity. To do this the book argues for four separate, yet overlapping functions.Closest to what academics speak of as traditional research is the concept "scholarshipof discovery," which is the discovery of new knowledge by "disciplined, investigativeefforts within the academy" (p. 17). The outcomes, the process, and the passion of originalresearch define this category.Also valuable is the "scholarship of integration" by which Boyer means "...makingconnections across the disciplines, placing the specialties in larger context, illuminating datain a revealing way, often educating nonspecialist too" (p. 18). These ideas come fromdisciplined work that seeks to interpret, draw together, and bring new insight to bear onoriginal research." Kenneth Anderson's classic article on ethos is this type of work. Boyernotes:The distinction we are drawing here between "discovery" and "integration"can be best understood, perhaps, by the questions posed. Those engagedin discovery ask, "What is to be known, what is yet to be found?" Thoseengaged in integration ask, "What do the findings mean? Is it possible tointerpret what's been discovered in ways that provide a larger, morecomprehensive understanding?" (p. 19).The writer is looking for pattems that connect and, as such, often is working at interdiscipli-nary boundaries. The connection between knowledge and audience is not only a communi-cative concem but one based on the desire to help others understand what people have addedto the field of the known. Societal problems often demand integration of knowledge. Theformer president of the University of Hawaii, Harlan Cleveland noted:The academy's students, and its outside critics too, notice that the verticalacademic disciplines, built around clusters of related methodologies, arenot in themselves very helpful in solving problems. No real world problemcan be fitted into the jurisdiction of a single academic department (1972,p. 13).20BoileauThe third area, "the scholarship of application," explores those areas in which thescholar asks, "How can knowledge be responsibly applied to consequential problems? Howcan it be helpful to individuals as well as institutions?" (p.22). Here a distinction must bedrawn between those activities of citizenship within the civic and academic communities andthose activities that relate to "one's special field of knowledge and relate to, and flow directlyout of, this professional activity" (p.22). Work in this area often responds to those areas whereproblems of society define the needs and vagaries of action. A work like Mark Hickson andDon Stacks (1992), Effective Communication for Academic Chairs, meets this standard asknowledge of the communication discipline is applied in each of those article to the needs ofacademic chairs. It is a service for all chairs in providing approaches to overcoming thechallenges of being a department chair.The last area is the important area of the "scholarship of teaching," which deals withthose areas in which the transmitting, transformation, and extension of knowledge occurs.This area moves between the vitality of changing the classroom to promote better leamingto the development of pedagogical writings. "Great teachers create a common ground ofintellectual commitment...and encourage students to be critical, creative thinkers" (p. 24).The base of such activity comes from knowing as "Those who teach must, above all be wellinformed, and steeped in the knowledge of their fields. Teaching can be well regarded onlyas professors are widely read and intellectually engaged" (p. 23). The thoughtful educatorParker Palmer in his (1993) American Association of Higher Education keynote addressremarked about the distinctiveness of teaching as part of a unique community of highereducation—one that does not reflect the therapeutic, civic, or business communities. For himthis scholarship of teaching is inherent in the research we do, not in a dichotomy of doing oneor the other, but in the way that our research informs and develops our teaching.Essential to Boyer's view is that these four forms of scholarship form an interdependentwhole in ways that allow us to expand the narrowness of "publish or perish" with its corollarythat true scholarship is research. It prevents the narrowness of claiming that textbooks orarticles in the Journal of Applied Communication are not suitable for consideration of tenureand promotion (Boyer, p. 35). This expanded view of contributions by scholarship still leaveus with the valuative question about what is excellence, what is a national reputation, and/or what has advanced the field. In these questions one discovers the contributions ofthoughtful scholarship.It is not that these contributions should not be evaluated rigorously, but that scholarshipof any type "...can reveal a professor's knowledge of the field, illuminate essential integrativethemes, and powerfully contribute to excellence in teaching" (p.35). The challenge becomeshow to take these concems to go beyond the usual ranking of research publications to measurescholarship. In the 1989 Camegie Foundation national survey of faculty some 68 percentagreed to the statement that "at my institution we need better ways, besides publications, toevaluate the scholarly performance of the faculty" (Boyer, p. 34). (Note that the communitycolleges had the lowest rate of agreement at 55 percent while the comprehensive universityhad the highest at 80 percent.)Given this major problem facing faculty, of how do we evaluate these other forms ofteaching the realistic question created by Scholarship Reconsidered—one must considerthe efforts of the American Association of Higher Education (AAHE) to move teachingevaluation beyond the usual student opinion ratings as some type of systematic, just systemfor the area of the scholarship of teaching. The teaching portfolio movement has the similarimpact as Boyer's work in expanding the horizons of those interested in the evaluation ofteaching.21JACATEACHING PORTFOLIOS PROMOTE THE SCHOLARSHIP OE TEACHINGAt most institutions, lip service is paid to teaching by the use of student evaluations. Atmy own institution, six university level questions are used for all faculty, while thedepartments and individuals can add their own for individual purposes. The last provosturged that departments add their own observation systems and an analysis of syllabi. Lastyear, the provost's office, on the recommendation of the University Life Committee, held aconvocation to consider the use of portfolios as a way to improve teaching and to give facultythe option of using them as part of the record for establishing judgments about effectiveteaching.Definition: The Portfolio Movement serves as a way to document teachingefforts by taking advantage of (a) reflective thinking on one's teaching; (b)sharing of what one does with a mentor or colleague as a way to create adialogue on teaching; and (c) the creation of dialogue on campus aboutteaching as a way to end the privatization of teaching.Portfolios are generally three-ring binders that create teaching records includingmost often three types of materials:1. Products of Good Teaching (examples of graded essays along with comments,students' publications or other student work, statements by alumni on thequality of work);2. Material from Oneself (a reflective statement describing one's personal teachingphilosophy, strategies, and objectives, statement of teaching responsibilities,representative syllabi, description of curricular revisions, steps taken to improveteaching, creative assignments and tests); and3. Materials from Others (observation reports on one's teaching, student courseand teaching evaluation data, teaching award information, invitations to presentideas on teaching at conferences, statements from colleagues who have reviewedthe teaching materials of the course).Functions: Portfolios increase the dialogue on teaching by helping to create"conversations" with:(a) A mentor and/or colleague. Often a mentor from another discipline will beforced to ask "WHY?" more often, not knowing the links within the discipline,while the colleague from the discipline helps with content;(b) An evaluation committee. The portfolio switches the measurement of teachingfrom data points to a wide range of teaching activities and measurements. Abetter gestalt of teaching is created; and(c) Evidence of teaching for joh searches. The portfolio serves as evidence ofteaching that committees can examine during hiring processes. Universitiesshould be asking for evidence of teaching effectiveness—the portfolio isbecoming a nationally acceptable way of documenting teaching activity.22BoileauWhile this paper is more concemed with the first two functions of increasing dialogue aboutteaching as a way to legitimize teaching conversations and evaluation, the third functionflows from the others and is one that administrators should consider as part ofthe evaluationof candidates. Portfolios definitely are a way to provide evidence of teaching effectivenessby the candidates.The major contribution most advocates of portfolios mention is the perceived im-provement of teaching. Portfolios increase reflection and action about teaching by:(a) giving focus on teaching as part of a professor's expected activities;(b) encouraging faculty to seek ways to improve their teaching by attendingconference meetings on teaching, reading about teaching techniques, andcreating discussions about teaching within the department and university;and(c) stimulating formal and informal research on teaching.As someone having to evaluate faculty constantly on teaching, the idea of expandingitems to include for the scholarship of teaching is enticing. Among the 49 items listed byEdgerton, et. al. (1991, p. 8) that relate specifically to our discipline are:1. "Publications by students on course-related work"—could be papers atstudent panels at conventions; papers at several of the national honorsconferences for students; forensic speeches in communication analysis;videos done in competitions.2. "Setting up or running a successful internship"—a common feature of mostof our departments, but definitely a way to look at a different type ofteaching activity.3. "Meetings intended to improve teaching"—the many basic course work-shops, short courses at SCA and the regional, summer conferences, e.g., thesmall college series at Hope College, the C-SPAN workshops, are ways toenhance this standard.4. "A media interview on a successful teaching innovation"—many of theactivities in our classes would qualify as the normal procedures for groupwork and class debates often draw upon the expertise of our field; the SCAand ECA series on "Teachers on Teaching" provides evidence of nationalrecognition of teaching skill.The other 45 items have a generic quality to them. No matter what form it is in, this expandedvision of what EVIDENCE one can provide acknowledges teaching activity. A lot of detailcan be added, but my purpose in this article is to link portfolios to the consideration ofthescholarship of teaching. Both ideas not only help the profession in general, but also help ourdiscipline expand the ways to document what we do to help students leam.REFERENCES AND NOTESDon M. Boileau (Ph.D., University of Oregon, 1972) is Chair of the CommunicationDepartment at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA 22030.This article is based upon a paper presentation at the Eastem Communication AssociationConvention on April 29, 1993 in New Haven, CT.23JACABok, D. (1986). Higher Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Boyer. E.L. (1990). Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities ofthe Professoriate. Princeton,NJ: The Camegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.Cleveland, H. (January, 1974). Seven Everyday Collisions in American Higher Education(Occasional Paper #9). Intemational Council for Educational Development.Edgerton, R., Hutchins, & Quinlan, K. (1991). The Teaching Portfolio: Capturing theScholarship in Teaching. Washington, D.C: American Association for HigherEducation.Hickson, M.. & Stacks, D.W. (1992). Effective Communication for Academic Chairs.Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Seldin,P. and Associates. (1993). Successful Use of Teaching Portfolios. Bolton,MA: AnkerPublishing Company.24

Scholarship Reconsidered: A Challenge to Use Teaching Portfolios to Document the Scholarship of Teaching

https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1325&context=jaca

Scholarship Reconsidered: A Challenge to Use Teaching Portfolios to Document the Scholarship of Teaching

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

University of Central Florida (UCF): STARS (Showcase of Text, Archives, Research & Scholarship)