Annual General Assembly 2006 - Dalian

Project Session 1

Reconsidered Scholarship - A Utilitarian Paradigm For Maritime Education

Don Zingale

ABSTRACT

In Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities for the Professoriate (1990), the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching delivers a powerful challenge: ...the work of the scholar... means stepping back from one's investigation, looking for connections, building bridges between theory and practice, and communicating one's knowledge effectively to students.
Maritime colleges are in a unique position to affect the constantly changing nature of teaching and learning as well as the challenges surrounding the future of "faculty work." Scholarship Reconsidered should be the catalyst for redefining maritime education, with a focus on a seamless and interdependent relationship of learner centered activities. Maritime education, with its effective degree productivity and assessment, should serve as an exemplar for other professional preparation programs as well as for the traditional arts, sciences and humanities disciplines on comprehensive campuses. But, this will require that our faculties possess the same "intentionality" we strive to imbue in our students. And, if our faculties are to be able to intentionally share best practices with their students and peers in a two-way efficacious manner, our maritime institutions need to support their professional development, particularly in terms of addressing any shortcomings associated with narrowly focused or otherwise limited preparation for an academic position.

Keywords: scholarship; faculty; development; education; teaching.

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