SAILS
Principle 1: Scholarship

Command of scientific methods and systematized subject matter liberates individuals; it enables them to see new problems, devise new procedures, and in general, makes for diversification rather than for set uniformity.
- John Dewey, 1929

Theme: Linking Scholarship to Practice
At the initial level, scholarship involves both acquiring a theoretical knowledge base and developing the technical and communication skills necessary to link scholarship and practice. Scholarship at the advanced level involves extending that knowledge base through higher levels of research, practice and professional expertise. In both cases, the Unit seeks to create professional educators who are able to impart the knowledge and expertise their students will need to gain employment in a technologically changing and culturally rich society. Educator-scholars who are lifelong learners will create the conditions that will improve our educational systems.

Learning Outcomes
The candidate:

• Demonstrates the content knowledge needed to teach an academic discipline.
• Demonstrates the pedagogical knowledge needed to teach an academic discipline.
• Plans for effective instruction.
• Assesses student performance and incorporates that assessment into planning and teaching.
• Is able to use technology

Knowledge Base
Scholarship enables the acquisition and extension of knowledge; it connotes the capacity to find, analyze, and evaluate information, and to make pragmatic and conceptual connections among concepts, experiences, and practices. It presents a methodical, reflective, and evaluative template for solving a wide variety of problems (Fraenkel & Wallen, 1990). Cronon (1999) describes a scholarly, liberally educated person as an individual who is able to respect rigor, not so much for its own sake, but as a way of seeking. Scholarship provides a roadmap to excellent teaching in that a teacher is a reflective-analytic thinker and decision-maker who systematically uses pedagogical and content area knowledge to root their instructional decisions (Barr, Sadow, & Blanchowicz, 1990). Excellent teachers have honed their problem-solving abilities and their abilities to think critically and creatively. As a way of seeking, scholarship provides the foundation for lifelong teaching and learning (Duckworth, 1987). Darling-Hammond (2000) has found that successful teacher education programs create learning opportunities for their teacher candidates to learn from teaching. Learning to teach is a developmental process that one never finishes. It is the responsibility of a teacher education program to develop the capacity of their teacher candidates “to inquire sensitively and systematically into the nature of learning and the effects of teaching” (Darling-Hammond, 2000, p. 170). It is the job of teacher education programs to create the conditions that foster motivation and curiosity in their students, to demonstrate ways to be flexible and open-minded in their teaching, and to question and investigate differences in philosophical beliefs through their teaching. In short, excellent teachers are scholars who develop in their students a passion for knowing via teaching and learning as a way of seeking–as a way of being. (Bloom, 1985; Brubacher, Case, & Reagan, 1994; Dewey, 1916; Duckworth, 1987; Feldman, 1999; Lambert, 1995; National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 1996; Reynolds, 1989; Sternberg & Spear, 1997; Vygotsky, 1962;).

Though their scholarly activities and teaching, candidates demonstrate both their knowledge of content and their knowledge of pedagogy (Maher & Tetreault, 1999; Shulman, 1987).