Rethinking the Scholarly

Abstract

In the Humanities the notion of scholarship is fundamental to professional identity and prestige. Among historians scholarship is still overwhelmingly identified with research, and research of a particular kind, which has come to dominate ideas of what it means to be a professional historian. The valuing of one aspect of professional practice has diverted attention from pedagogic issues, and relegated teaching and learning to a secondary status within the discipline. This article challenges this prevailing orthodoxy, and explores recent efforts to forge a more flexible conception of disciplinary scholarship that can address and acknowledge teaching and learning in a more serious fashion. It considers and elaborates on the notion of the scholarship of teaching in history, and provides an account of recent developments in practice towards the creation of a disciplinary identity better able to serve the needs of faculty, students and the discipline as a whole in the 21st century.