International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Volume 1, Number 2, 2007
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Excerpt
Is there a Mastodon in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Room?
A response to Pat Hutchings’, “Theory: The Elephant in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Room,” International Journal on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Volume 1, Number 1 (January 2007)
In her article Pat Hutchings makes an excellent case for more theory in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, particularly in relation to the discipline specific pedagogic area, as opposed to the generic area. It is, however, important to stress that these two areas are not wholly separate; there is a synergy between them. To give just one example – enquiry-based learning is very different in medicine (where it has grown out of problem-based learning) and in e.g. English literature (Hutchings and O’Rourke 2002), but there is also a commonality between the two in e.g. the transfer of authority from teacher to learner. Similarly, the research – teaching nexus (Elton 2005), which has to be seen as “learning in a research mode” in both research and teaching, requires a synthesis of both disciplinary and generic concepts. Underlying fundamental theory cannot then be restricted to theories relevant to generic and discipline specific pedagogy, but must include aspects of the general theory of Hegelian synthesis, going back to Kant (Elton 2006a).
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Lewis Elton
University of Manchester
Manchester, England
l.elton@pcps.ucl.ac.uk
I am Visiting Professor of Higher Education, University of Manchester, Honorary Professor of Higher Education, University College London,
Professor Emeritus of Higher Education and Visiting Distinguished Scholar, University of Surrey, Fellow of the American Institute of Physics and of the Society for Research into Higher Education. I hold Doctorates (honoris causa) from the University of Kent at Canterbury and the University of Gloucestershire, have been presented with a Festschrift by my former students [P. Ashwin (ed), Changing Higher Education: The Development of Learning and Teaching, Routledge Education], and received the Times Higher Lifetime Achievement Award, 2005. In recent years I have developed a Postgraduate course, through distance learning, on ‘Research and Development in Higher Education’ for experienced academic teachers and have been the External Examiner for similar courses at the Universities of Oxford, Hong Kong, and at the Dublin Institute of Technology. My most recent work has been concerned with the scholarship of teaching and learning, including the research/teaching nexus in higher education, and the balance between collegial and ‘top down’ management in universities.