Faculty Priorities Reconsidered: Rewarding Multiple Forms of Scholarship (review)
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Faculty Priorities Reconsidered maps the genealogy and ongoing development of one of the most enduring reform movements in higher education—the effort to enlarge the conception of scholarly work to include not only discovery (research), but also engagement, integration, and teaching/learning. The volume begins with a foreword by Russell Edgerton, president emeritus of the now defunct American Association of Higher Education and an early and continuing supporter of the ideas proposed in Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (1990). After more than a decade of conversations hosted by AAHE's Forum on Faculty Roles and change efforts on campuses nationwide, Edgerton asks whether faculty roles and reward structures have truly changed.
KerryAnn O'Meara and R. Eugene Rice, with the assistance of more than two dozen contributors and survey data from more than 700 chief academic officers, take on that question. Part 1 of their volume begins with the basics. Rice (their chapters are separately authored) reviews the origins and intentions of the movement to acknowledge and define "multiple forms of scholarship" and places it in historical context. Chapters 2 and 3 contain succinct reflections by "pioneers" in the movement who describe their efforts to promote the four types of scholarship and ground-breaking projects. Authors such as Lee Shulman, Patricia Hutchings, Robert Diamond, and Jerry Gaff identify critical issues in the debates surrounding faculty rewards, but brevity precludes in-depth examinations. Those new to the concept of multiple forms of scholarship will benefit most from this overview.
The struggle to move the concept from prototype to practice is vividly demonstrated in the nine chapters of Part 2. Authored by campus administrators, the chapters describe (some more effectively than others) local change efforts in a diverse set of institutions. The chapters also catalogue continuing resistance to, and confusion about, the nature and scope of the types of scholarship. Institutional mission emerges as a strong influence: Teaching-oriented colleges try to convince faculty to engage in the scholarship of discovery while doctoral and research universities cope with tensions arising from increased emphasis on the scholarship of teaching, application, and integration.
Campus leaders will learn lessons from campuses most like their own, but the brief summary of these chapters (Introduction) whetted my appetite for an extended analysis that would explore the interactions between change strategies and campus contexts and thus close Part 2. Instead, O'Meara weaves bits of information from the campus studies into Part 3. Her Chapter 13 ("Effects of Encouraging Multiple Forms of Scholarship Nationwide and across Institutional Types") includes some examples from the campus studies but is primarily a report of findings from the survey of CAOs, which measured the extent to which institutions changed their formal reward systems to encourage multiple forms of scholarship and the impact of those changes over a 10-year period. In Chapter 14, O'Meara summarizes "principles of good practice" gathered from the campus studies and surveys and focus groups with CAOs.
More than 700 administrators participated in the CAO survey (a 50% response rate). About two-thirds of the sample are "reform-institution CAOs" who reported that their institutions made formal changes to mission, planning documents, and/or faculty evaluation policies in the decade prior to the study. One-third are "traditional-institution CAOs" who reported that their institutions preserved the definition of scholarship as primarily "abstract and analytical research" (p. 260). O'Meara reports on the most common barriers (by institutional type) and mines the campus studies for relevant strategies.
The greatest surprise and disappointment may be the extent to which the enlarged definition of scholarship has generated ambiguities about what should count for promotion and tenure. Moreover, O'Meara reports that research expectations have increased (a finding consistent with prior studies)—even as more campuses adopt multiple forms of scholarship. She addresses problems such as "the overloaded plate" in Chapter 14 with a substantial list: socialization, assessment and evaluation, resources, collaboration, and institutional identity...
