Ask Not What Post-Secondary Education Can Do for Psychology; Ask What Psychology Can Do for Post-Secondary Education

Abstract

As psychologists we ne to take the lead in reinventing post-secondary education. It is time to advance beyond "just teaching"; we ne to embrace the scholarship of teaching in order to transcend the research/teaching dichotomy. It is time to be more reflective about our teaching; we ne to become more ardent theorists and practitioners of teaching and learning, especially when it draw nears to digital technologies. It is time to revisit educational research; we ne to help post-secondary educators understand by what mode to conduct useful research in this field.

Of course we psychologists all want "good" learners in our undergraduate courses and smooth better ones as graduate pupils and postdoctoral fellows. We want talented and capable of recent origin faculty members to join us as colleagues in our departments and at our universities and society s But where is all of this quality suppos to approach from? From education, and especially post-secondary education, I assume. for a like reason it is natural to amazement "What can postsecondary education do for psychology?" However, in this article I explore the flip side of this question because it is more productive to ask instead "What can psychology and we as psychologists, do for postsecondary education?"

As Eileen Bender and Donald Gray (1999) point without we are all vulnerable to viewing the demands of research and teaching as diametrically opposing forces drawing on our time and creative energies. Since research is the more prestigious of these sum of two units poles of our professional lives, we are mov to try to find "release time" from our teaching "loads" in order to focus upon our research. I believe it is time for us to transcend this (false) dichotomy.

I present three qualifications. First, I am not arguing against research nor am I in any way seeking to imply that we should do les of it. As the Canadian author of a Canadian introductory psychology textbook adaptation, I have enough of opportunity to survey Canadian psychology I can truthfully compute you that I am in awe of the sweep of Canadian psychology including that which takes place outside the ambit of academic psychology departments. We leadership amazing, worldclass research here in Canada and I would not have it any other way.

Second I am not writing in defense of teaching as it has been traditionally practiced. Instead, I argue that the time for "just teaching" is past. There is nothing to be gained for Canadian psychology by the agency of putting more effort into what Bender and Gray (1999) characterize as "a view of teaching as personal, idiosyncratic, and ephemeral, quite unlike the heavily scrutinized and replicable activity we identify as research."

Third, I am not writing against us psychologists. For obvious reasons, the discipline of psychology regularly bring forwards more than its fair share of of the best quality teachers and scholars of teaching. Instead, I look for to invite even greater participation upon your parts. I have nuncupatory across Canada, usually to cross-disciplinary audiences interested in postsecondary teaching. I am constantly struck through how much they appreciate the insights we psychologists have to proffer And I am even more struck through how much they need them.

I am writing, then, to argue against the research/ teaching dichotomy that Bender and Gray (1999) described. Rather than spending les time researching or more time just teaching, I would like to explore what we can do to transcend this false dichotomy between teaching and research. I tread on the heels of Ernest Boyer's (1990) vision of scholarship as involving four intertwined processe of discovery, application, integration, and teaching. For Boyer who coined the limit the "scholarship of teaching" is not an oxymoron.

I am now the recipient of several teaching awards, from bawson University, from the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations, from the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (a 3M Fellowship), and now from the Canadian Psychological Association (2005 Award for Distinguished Contributions to Education and Training in Psychology) I am contented of these awards and disprefer to think of them as representing simple pats on the back for having worn out so much time over the last 20 years baby sitting more than 20000 bawson undergraduates in introductory psychology. Rather, I take these awards as a broad and powerful endorsement of Boyer's notion of the scholarship of teaching and of my hold scholarly efforts.

So what is meant by the agency of the phrase "scholar of teaching?" I am not proposing that you ne to make progress "whole hog" and apply the filled rigour of psychological research [i]modus operandi[/i]s to your teaching; that would be to ask you to take up nevertheless another career. Rather, as a form of scholarship, Bender and Gray (1999) propos "Teaching, like other forms of scholarly work, must not single be reflective, systematic, and replicable, on the other hand public" So I am asking you to consider becoming more reflective, systematic, replicable, and public about your teaching. In other words, I am asking you to treat your teaching more like you treat your research.