Scholarship Assessed: Evaluation of the Professoriate

Excerpts from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching report, Scholarship Assessed, draw connections to Ernest Boyer's Scholarship Reconsidered, and suggest standards for documenting scholarship. The report is lengthy and includes results from the foundation's National Survey on the Reexamination of Faculty Roles and Rewards. This excerpt focuses on the standards for evaluating scholarly work.

In 1990, The Carnegie Foundation published the report "Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate," offering a new paradigm for recognizing the full range of scholarly activity by college and university faculty. Since then, campuses across the country have been reexamining traditional ideas about scholarship against the new, more inclusive vision we proposed—one that goes beyond research or, as we prefer to call it, the scholarship of discovery, to encourage scholarship in teaching, integration and application as well (p. 5).

It has become clear, however, that an essential piece is missing. The effort to broaden the meaning of scholarship simply cannot succeed until the academy has clear standards for evaluating this wider range of scholarly work. After all, administrators and professors accord full academic value only to work they can confidently judge.

To give the four kinds of scholarly activities the weight that each deserves, they all must be held to the same standards of scholarly performance. The paradox is this: in order to recognize discovery, integration, application and teaching as legitimate forms of scholarship, the academy must evaluate them by a set of standards that capture and acknowledge what they share as scholarly acts.

What are the common features that enable scholars involved in different fields of study and different types of scholarly work to feel they are engaged in a common task?...In an attempt to answer these essential questions, we accumulated a voluminous file of documents, including guidelines on hiring, tenure and promotion practices from dozens of colleges...responses from 51 granting agencies and from editors and directors of 31 scholarly journals and 58 university presses, whom we asked about the standards they use to decide the scholarly merit of proposals and manuscripts. In addition, we collected many of the forms that institutions provide to students and occasionally to faculty peers to evaluate college teaching.

The most remarkable feature of these various guidelines...[is] the degree to which they share elements. Our survey of standards indicates that the key to these commonalties lies in the process of scholarship itself...We conclude that there is a common language in which to discuss the standards for scholarly work of all kinds...[and] acknowledge that these six standards...define phases of an intellectual process that are in reality not so neatly categorized:

1. Clear goals—Does the scholar state the basic purposes of his or her work clearly? Does the scholar define objectives that are realistic and achievable? Does the scholar identify important questions in the field?
2. Adequate preparation—Does the scholar show an understanding of existing scholarship in the field? Does the scholar bring the necessary skills to his or her work? Does the scholar bring together the resources necessary to move the project forward?
3. Appropriate methods—Does the scholar use methods appropriate to the goals? Does the scholar apply effectively the methods selected? Does the scholar modify procedures in response to changing circumstances?
4. Significant results—Does the scholar achieve the goals? Does the scholar's work add consequentially to the field? Does the scholar's work open additional areas for further exploration?
5. Effective presentation—Does the scholar use a suitable style and effective organization to present his or her work? Does the scholar use appropriate forums for communicating work to its intended audiences? Does the scholar present his or her message with clarity and integrity?
6. Reflective critique—Does the scholar critically evaluate his or her own work? Does the scholar bring an appropriate breadth of evidence to his or her critique? Does the scholar use evaluation to improve the quality of future work?

Glassick, C. E., M. T. Huber, and G. I. Maeroff. 1997. Scholarship assessed: Evaluation of the professoriate. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, Inc.

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