Scholarship as process

Some writers describe scholarship as the sine qua non for higher education faculty (Wisniewski & Ducharme, 1989). Although many rewards and benefits are tied to scholarly productivity, few faculty engage in scholarly productivity as measured by refereed publications consistently across careers. In this article, I identify what scholarly productivity is and why it is desirable; explore why scholarly productivity is not typical in schools, colleges, and departments of education (SCDEs); and provide insights from productive scholars for promising ways to encourage scholarship. Scholarship Defined Scholarship in higher education is a formal, ongoing process of developing and sharing work with peers who evaluate the merits of the contribution. The crux of this process is careful preparation of work contributing to a body of knowledge that informed and critical audiences will scrutinize. The dialogue evolving as part of the review process can help extend the thoughts and the potential value of authors' contributions. Because the review process is usually a blind review, scholarship is often a private process. The private nature of the process of scholarship can be problematic for higher education administrators who must find ways to quantify the results. A need to quantify scholarship exists for purposes of allocating resources; evaluating contributions of faculty to community, societal, or professional needs; and distributing rewards. For these and other reasons, a proxy measure for the process of scholarship has commonly been accepted. Proxy measures most commonly appear as selected products, often in the form of any work that, as a result of peer review, is subsequently published, funded, or accepted for presentation at a professional conference or meeting. Books, journal articles, grant applications, and professional conference presentations reviewed by more than one qualified peer prior to publication, funding, or presentation qualify as proxy measures of scholarship. This operational definition of scholarship includes a somewhat arbitrary distinction of when a particular project is sufficiently evolved to be identifiable--a point of contention in most definitions of process concepts. Does the process exist with the first ruminations on a topic while driving to work, the first visit to the library, a first draft, receipt of the first reviewer's comments, or, upon publication, presentation, or funding? For purposes of salary merit increments and promotion and tenure decisions, the critical indicator of scholarship is the publication, presentation, or point of funding. But true scholarship is about more than a single proxy product. For the general public, paying for faculty to engage in scholarship becomes defensible only if and when the work has a direct application to the needs and problems of everyday life. Scholarship is an ongoing process of sustained inquiry that makes use of proxy measures problematic. Not all attributes of the proxy match up with the construct represented. The pursuit of truth and insight is a quest most often unfolding over a long period of time. This ongoing process of sustained inquiry becomes reduced to single, isolated products. Out of context, these disjointed pieces are then subject to criticism. Aspiring scholars are often misguided into believing scholarship is one or two individual products rather than an ongoing and cumulative process. This is undoubtedly an unintended consequence of a socially constructed mechanism (cf. Berger & Luckmann, 1966) initially designed to quantify scholarly efforts. What started as a convenient way to quantify progress on annual reports of faculty professional activities has taken on a life of its own. New cadres of faculty members are now confronted with explicit expectations for publication counts in respected journals. Although encouraging faculty to be active scholars has merit, mentoring by senior faculty to provide context to this productivity is all too often lacking. …