What Is Education Scholarship?

According to the Canadian Association for Medical Education :

Education scholarship is an umbrella term which can encompass both research and innovation in health professions education. Quality in education scholarship is attained through work that is: peer-reviewed, publicly disseminated and provides a platform that others can build on.

Van Melle, E, et al. (2012)

Education scholarship encompasses a wide range of academic activities, as outlined by Ernest Boyer in The Scholarship of Teaching.

Scholarship of teaching

Developing innovative teaching tools, conceptual frameworks, faculty development programs or courses or scholarly programs.

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Scholarship of application

Making the connection between research findings and practice, or applying knowledge to contextual examples.

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Scholarship of integration

Projects that are interdisciplinary, or connect across time, or use knowledge from one field and apply it to another, or interpret another discipline’s research into your field and making meaning along the way.

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Scholarship of discovery

Examples include projects that produce new knowledge. These are typically considered to be ‘research’ projects.

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Some helpful introductory references on education scholarship:

Cook DA, Bordage G, Schmidt HG. Description, justification and clarification: a framework for classifying the purposes of research in medical education. Medical education. 2008 Feb 1;42(2):128-33. PDF
Ringsted C, Hodges B, Scherpbier A. ‘The research compass’: An introduction to research in medical education: AMEE Guide No. 56. Medical teacher. 2011 Sep 1;33(9):695-709. PDF