Resources

Academia is one of the professions in which socially constructed fictions have tremendous power. Years of graduate study and the power of academic mentors creates an environment which deeply socializes future academics. The image of the academic professional which is currently promulgated emerged during the expansionist (post-World War II) period of higher education. In this conception, the scholar is seen primarily as a researcher pursuing knowledge for its own sake. The teaching role has been given much less emphasis. During this same expansionist period, higher education began to serve a much broader and more diverse clientele with more varied academic needs. For these two transformations to now become compatible, a broader conception of scholarship is urgently needed. Such a conception would have at least four elements. While new knowledge acquired through reasoning and analytical theory-building is valuable, knowledge gained through experience must also be seen as legitimate. Second, specialized knowledge must be reintegrated. That is, scholars must look for new relationships between the parts and the whole. This synthesis can be achieved through an emphasis on interdisciplinarity. Third, scholarship must begin to address the pragmatic needs of the larger world. The pursuit of knowledge to solve societal problems must be valued as scholarship of the first order. Finally, the scholarship of teaching, in which research is conducted on effective and appropriate teaching methods, must be emphasized for all scholars. Teaching that is not grounded in the most recent research is not appropriate for a college or university setting. A 21-item bibliography is included. (PAA)

What is the relationship between the life of the intellect and the life of the spirit? This is complex and painful question. In this paper I would like to approach the problem, not by jumping into the middle to answer the whole of it, but by pondering with you only one part of it having to do with what it means for a Christian to think rationally. As members of our own culture, all of us have been reared to believe at some level that even for the Christian, intellect and spirit are and need to be kept separate. A good deal of my education, even my Christian education, over the years, and yours too, I suspect, was based in the conviction that our human minds are only really trustworthy, that is, "objective," when we are able to discard from our thought processes in own particular, individual perceptions of the world, our own particular experiences, our own particular points of view, and our own values. In short, in order to meet the criteria of acceptable thought we have not only tried to make a division between intellect and the spiritual. We have actually tried to throw out of our definition of what it means to think a good deal of what we know and who we are as human beings and as Christians. In order to help us think about this, I would like to tell a story. It is my story, but I tell it because I suspect large parts of it are your story as well.

Parker Palmer insists that there is a "capricious chemistry" to good teaching that is ultimately irreducible to a simple technical formula. He advises against making the student a spectator simply watching the teacher as he or she lays out a catalog of "objective" facts. Instead, the subject under study must get inside the student as the teacher facilitate the linking of the subject's insights with the student's own biography. Palmer cautions against the tendency to try to cover every fact in a field of study and suggests alternative methods of evaluating students that facilitates learning. Palmer believes that fear of conflict is one of the most significant obstacles to teachers creating hospitable space for shared discourse. Good teaching, Palmer claims, requires unusual courage as teachers must expose their ignorance along with their insight, remain open to contradiction as well as invite consent and relinquish some measure of control to a class so that the students are empowered.