Endorsed by Duke AHEAD Steering Committee, November 18, 2015 (Last updated 11/18/15)
Significance
It is acknowledged that scholarship is an integral component of the health professions educator role and can come in many forms (Boyer 1990), that teaching practices should be evidence-based (just as clinical practices are), and that teaching itself can be thought of as a scholarly activity. Scholarship incorporates a spirit of inquiry, self-reflection, and unrelenting inquisitiveness.
Scholars are continually curious, vigorously inquiring, impelled by a sense of wonder, intellectually passionate, contemplative, and creative. They use imagination and intuition, ask questions that are worth asking, seek a deep understanding, challenge the status quo, are tolerant of many points of view, encourage consent and dissent, and engage in honest self-criticism.
A noted sociologist (Mills, 1959, p. 196) once said, “Scholarship is a choice of how to live, as well as a choice of career.” The key characteristics of educational scholars are creativity, perseverance, courage and integrity.
- Boyer E.L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. Princeton, N.J: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
- Mills, C.W. (1959). The sociological imagination (Appendix, “On Intellectual Craftsmanship,” pp. 195-226). London: Oxford University Press.
