Institutionalizing a Broader View of Scholarship through Boyer's Four Domains (review)

Written over a decade ago, Ernest L. Boyer's Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (Princeton, NJ: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990) has inspired a significant body of literature and considerable scholarly discussion. Braxton, Luckey, and Helland have written their book in response to "a need for a stock-taking of this literature" (p. iii). Drawing on extensive review of the literature as well as the results of a study based on a national sample of 1,424 faculty members at five types of higher education institutions and in four disciplines, Braxton and his colleagues have produced a thorough analysis of the extent to which the four domains of scholarship Boyer advocated—application, discovery, integration, and teaching—have been institutionalized into the work of faculty members. Essentially, they have grappled with the compelling question of whether and how the conceptualization of a broader definition of scholarship, as presented in Boyer's work, has made a difference in American higher education.

Five central questions frame the book: (a) What is the extent of faculty engagement in Boyer's four domains of scholarship, and how do these levels of engagement compare to previous research findings concerning general publication productivity? (b) To what extent do the levels of faculty engagement in the different domains of scholarship parallel Boyer's assessment of the appropriate emphases in scholarship of different institutional types? (c) Does the productivity in the four domains of scholarship "mirror the level of general publication productivity exhibited across different types of colleges and universities?" (p. 3) (d) How does level of faculty engagement in the different domains of scholarship relate to academic disciplines? (e) What are the relationships between various faculty characteristics and faculty engagement in the different forms of scholarship? The book also is organized around the concept that an innovation's institutionalization may occur at three different levels within an organization: structural (the innovation is understood), procedural (related behaviors and policies are standard within the organization), and incorporation (related values and norms are well embedded in the culture).

After a succinct introduction, a first chapter reviews the literature that either anticipated Boyer's work or has been written in response. The next four chapters each focus on one of the domains. Each defines and describes the particular form of scholarship, presents data on the level of engagement of faculty with this form, and addresses the guiding research questions.

The next chapter analyzes factors that affect the institutionalization of a broader definition of scholarship, with attention to institutionalization at the structural, procedural, and incorporation levels. Among the factors judged particularly important in affecting the extent of institutionalization at the deepest level (incorporation) are the academic reward system and the impact of graduate education. Chapter 8 presents specific strategies for incorporating a broader definition of scholarship deeper in the American higher education system. One strategy is to bring academic reward structures into alignment with institutional missions; another is to establish clear criteria for evaluating the quality of diverse forms of scholarship.

Guided by their research questions and conceptualization of levels of institutionalization, Braxton and his colleagues offer several empirically based conclusions. Especially noteworthy is that the "scholarship of discovery persists as the most legitimate and preferred objective of faculty scholarly engagement across the spectrum of institutions of higher education" (p. 104). Nevertheless, they find evidence that "values espoused for faculty engagement in the scholarships of application, integration, and teaching match Boyer's recommendations for institutional domain emphasis" (p. 103)—that is, the kind of scholarship that faculty do varies by institutional type in the ways recommended by Boyer. The authors also assert that the academic reward structure and the influence of graduate education represent...