This chapter examines how the scholarship of practice is being used within applied disciplines and offers recommendations for colleges and universities regarding the implementation of the scholarship of practice for the discipline of higher education.

The aim of this article is to explore what the concept of interdisciplinarity can bring to our developing understanding of education as a field of enquiry. We shall draw upon some recent writing on the disciplines of education in order to explore the potentially negative consequences of the way in which the disciplines are institutionalised and…

The nature of academic development in contemporary universities has been a recent focus in the literature. Highlighting the diversity of practices that exist under its name, "academic development" has been described by some as an ambiguous project and a fragmented field, while others suggest a more coherent project, pointing out a near…

As a discipline, sociology has produced a rich understanding of social processes, and yet the pedagogical implications of this scholarship remain largely untapped. In this paper, we employ a framework of sociology as pedagogy to show how sociology can enhance and inform teaching and learning. We select examples from a range of classical and…

At the 2007 annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, we presented a workshop entitled "How to do the Scholarship of Teaching." The workshop had three main goals: to introduce participants to the literature on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and to various SoTL outlets, to guide participants in the process of doing…

Higher education's contemporary emergence as a scholarly specialty is compared with the development of some other specialities--economics, political science, sociology. An interpretation of how fields become disciplines is offered and some parallels between the social sciences at the turn of the century and higher education today are explored.…

At a recent conference, it was proposed that college teaching will be considered a scholarly activity only when professors conceptualize pedagogy as tightly linked to scholarship, that the core curriculum provides an opportunity to communicate about pedagogy, and that faculty should discuss instruction as freely as they do research. (MSE)

A special Research on Higher Education Program in Sweden is described, and a bibliography of approximately 450 studies of higher education and research is presented. Studies sponsored by the program cover four main fields: higher education and society; the content and organization of higher education; the research function; and the educational…

In Western Europe, the advent of higher education as a self-sustaining field of research began two decades ago. The place of higher education research in academia, government policy formulation, and the type of inquiry undertaken in Sweden in comparison with counterparts in France and Britain are examined. (Author/MLW)

In the University of California (Davis) Program in College Teaching, graduate teaching assistants develop and fulfill contractual agreements for faculty-guided investigations into their disciplines, with supporting individualized activities about practices and issues of college teaching. Aspects of the program's development and effectiveness are…