Presents a continuum of the development and growth toward a scholarship of teaching. Explores whether a scholar of teaching studies teaching as a discipline in itself or whether teaching is studied through another discipline. Suggests how the isolation of the scholarship of teaching from the primary work of the disciplines and of departments might…

To transform humanists with Ph.D.'s into academic librarians is the purpose of an initiative recently launched by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The equivalent of an apprenticeship, the program revolves postdoctoral work in an academic library in lieu of earning a master's degree from a library and information studies…

Assessment practitioners and policymakers have focused a good deal of their attention in the past several years on the general intellectual skills that students acquire in college. The American Association of Colleges and Universities' Greater Expectations Project, the Pew Forum on Undergraduate Learning, and the National Forum on College-Level…

This article presents a statement of the Board of Directors of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, which was endorsed by member representatives at the association's 2006 annual meeting. In their statement, the Board of Directors revisit the basic principles and discuss the role of academic freedom. Four misconceptions about…

In this article, we critically evaluate the expectations of assistant professors as perceived by junior and senior faculty (n=22) across seven disciplines at two universities. Our research shows that there are similarities and differences within Sociology departments, across disciplines, and across the teaching and research schools where we…

How should history of education be written? To put the question is far more easier than to provide a concrete answer. In contemporary research, there continue to be pedagogistic complaints about finding answers to present-day educational problems via history. In our view, such an ahistorical utilitarianism as well as the legitimizing and/or…

The terms "learning about" and "learning from" religion have now become firmly established in the lexicon of religious education (RE). The publication of a national Non-statutory Framework for RE in October 2004 gave them official status. But what is actually meant by these terms? Certainly teachers have been less confident…

Teaching of History of Psychology is likely to become increasingly important as the British Psychological Society's 2002 guidelines for approved undergraduate courses are implemented. Results of a survey of History of Psychology teaching during the academic year 1999-2000 are summarised and discussed in the light of these new requirements. While…

This paper argues that the teaching of a subject can change our understanding of what it means to know, to teach and learn that subject. It also argues that when our understanding is questioned and changes then academic work can become an emotionally charged endeavour. This paper reports on a study where, over a semester's teaching, around two…

This paper reports the outcomes of a study, undertaken from a phenomenographic perspective, of university academics' experiences of their own growth and development, i.e., what it means to them, what they are trying to achieve, how they go about it, why they do things that way... The outcomes presented are based on a series of interviews with…

The author is a part-time English faculty at a wealthy, 95 percent Anglo, liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, and she is a candidate for a PhD in Native American studies. College administrators and her colleagues know that she is a tribally enrolled Native American (Shawnee). She used her tribal enrollment card for Form I-9 identification when…

During the past 35 years, Seymour Martin Lipset and his collaborators have generated a series of studies and reports on the political alignment in academia. They have all found the social sciences and humanities to be preponderantly Democratic. In the past decade there has been little scholarly inquiry into the political orientation of faculty.…

This paper considers the generic structure of "Conclusion" chapters in PhD theses or dissertations. From a corpus of 45 PhD theses covering a range of disciplines, chapters playing a concluding role were identified and analysed for their functional moves and steps. Most "Conclusions" were found to restate purpose, consolidate research space with a…

In the simplest terms, academic freedom means unfettered scholarly inquiry, a scholar's fundamental right of research, publication, and instruction free of institutional constraint. This indispensable principle of scholarship is the precious gift of independent intellectual judgment--an endowment of open inquiry, free investigation, speculation,…

This article proposes that we extend our information literacy instruction programs to include tenets of genre theory as a way to move toward a more critical stance in our pedagogy. By developing an anthropologist's sensitivity to culture, academic librarians can learn the characteristics of the academic disciplines and then help students learn…