During a workshop on teaching recognition at Harper Adams University, I was involved in discussion with colleagues about ‘what is scholarship in the context of teaching and supporting learning?’ This discussion is not new of course. Boyer’s four types of scholarship provide a common reference point to answer this recurring question. Locating types of scholarship seemed not to fully capture our group’s perceptions of their own scholarship though; what about the informal, the discursive, the self-review and inquiring mind? What about the underpinning, hard to quantify, desire to enhance and learn? What about growing and using social capital or networks to respond to events emerging (something akin to collective reflection in action)? What about scholarship as routine, habit or modus operandi? What about scholarship as critical and thoughtful engagement. All of this is very tricky to measure or locate. It is more wrapped together as a package we called ‘living scholarship’. Although with some danger of being self congratulatory about finding a label for scholarship as being, I rather liked it 🙂

Living Scholarship: Combining aspects of scholarship, with a persistent, passionate and committed search for enhanced practice; Scholarship which can be sensed as well as seen; Scholarship which is private as well as public, natural rather than additional, not always necessarily explicit, and which is underpinned by thoughtfulness and self awareness.