Praksisnær undervisning – nytt begrep og ny realitet?

The task of mediating meanings of what may be constituted as ‘practice’ and ‘theory’ – its differences of kind and essence – and their commonalities or unions in the everyday of students – and the professions they are being prepared for, is demanding. The introductory chapter seeks to introduce a multitude of angels to view the phenomenon by. There is a political angle about how we make students better prepared for their future vocational contribution to the society, so that their human capital is realised as soon as possible in the knowledge economy. The humanistic angle suggested in the chapter deals with the personal and social development of the students. There is also a philosophical angle available to interprete how thinking and reasoning is a matter of shifting modes with acting and doing – and reflecting on the relations between them. The chapter uses the framework adapted from Ernest Boyer to project where we as academics are in the landscape of higher education: in the disciplines or in education of professionals.

Engagement, Publishing, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Following a critical appraisal of research and teaching in U.S. higher education, Ernest Boyer advocated that teaching should be recognized and rewarded as an activity that was at least as important as traditional disciplinary scholarship. He insisted that teaching had its own scholarly component which deserved fuller recognition, appreciation, and dissemination. This chapter explores Boyer's reconsideration of the activities and priorities of higher education and the emerging history of what would become known as the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). From an early stage in its historical trajectory, SoTL explorations were linked to a publication imperative. Publication was seen as essential for consolidating the discipline's status and for improving the efficacy of teaching. The chapter reconsiders the publication requirement, its impact on the vision and mission of SoTL, and the degree to which it has repositioned and reprioritized teaching in the academy. It also provides suggestions for furthering SoTL's impact and for new directions for research, practice, and publication.

Equity, Inclusion, and Beyond: Today’s Urban Chief Diversity Officer

This paper, based primarily on the author’s perspective as president of SUNY Empire State College, will explore the need for and means of leveraging the chief diversity officer’s role in creating an equitable and inclusive environment within the distributed world that is Empire State College’s “campus” and, specifically, within SUNY Empire’s urban environments. Empire State College fills a unique role in today’s higher-education landscape. It was founded in 1971 by Ernest Boyer, then the chancellor of the State University of New York, to make education accessible outside the confines of traditional curricular and delivery structures, and to better meet the needs of New Yorkers with locations, academic programming, and student services responsive to diverse communities and learners. Today, Empire State College continues to embrace and fulfill that mission, with individualized education as its cornerstone and nearly 18,000 undergraduate and graduate students in 34 academic centers around the state of New York, in several countries overseas and online around the world. The vast majority of its undergraduate students have attended at least one previous institution, are employed, and are likely to have family and dependent-care obligations. The college is purposefully nonresidential, designed to be where our students live and work. Students can choose structured or individualized academic programs, depending on discipline, and have the options of classroom-based, online, or independent study, as well as weekend residencies, or a hybrid of education delivery via these modes.

The Rise of Teaching Focused Academics in Universities

This paper describes developments in the rise and implementation of teaching focused positions in universities. We note that such development is not without challenge given the research priority of many universities, and we note that teaching focused academics need to be across developments in the disciplinary knowledge of their field and able to integrate these into their teaching practice. We argue that teaching scholars must be different but equal to those engaged in research and/or research and teaching, we note the Importance of Ernest Boyer and we highlight the role of scholarship in teaching focussed positions. We provide examples of universities that have implemented teaching focused positions and identify implications for Chinese universities.

The Rising Tide of Outreach and Engagement in State and Land-Grant Universities in the United States: What are the Implications for University Continuing Education Units in Canada?

In this paper, we describe the outreach and engagement movement in the United States and explore the implications of this movement for university continuing education units in Canada. Across the United States, major universities have adopted the vocabulary of “outreach and engagement” to foster a shift in the relationships of those universities with communities and organizations beyond the traditional boundaries of the institution. This vocabulary has its roots in the work of Ernest Boyer (1990, 1996) and the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities (1999, 2000). In the past decade, many American universities have adopted new leadership and organizational structures to make an operational commitment to outreach and engagement. In Canada, university continuing education units have traditionally been involved in activities that fit within the concept of outreach and engagement, and leaders of such units should consider the implications of the outreach and engagement movement.

Peer review of teaching to promote learning outcomes

In 1990, American educator Ernest Boyer asked us to reconsider scholarship. In doing this he recognised not only the importance of teaching, but also that it was undervalued. Boyer concluded that for teaching to become valued it needed to be evaluated as rigorously as research is and suggested, among other things, that peer evaluation was an effective means of assessing quality ? just as it is in research. Boyer noted that peer evaluation of teaching was not commonly practised in American higher education. The situation remains similar to this day in Australia with peer review of teaching (PRT) being uncommon.