ABSTRACT
The new scholarship, says Schön, implies action research, a form of practical theorising in action which is appropriate to all professional contexts. ‘If teaching is to be seen as a form of scholarship, then the practice must be seen as giving rise to new forms of knowledge. If community outreach is to be seen as a form of scholarship, then it is the practice of reaching out and providing service to a community that must be seen as raising important issues whose investigation may lead to generalisations of prospective relevance and actionability’ (p. 31). If management is to be seen as a form of scholarship, then the practice of managing must be seen as enabling others to understand their relationships and practices as contexts of professional learning where identities may be created through discourses in which freedom of mind is valued and people are regarded as on equal footing. If organisational study is to be seen as a form of scholarship, then it is the practice of raising questions about human purpose and the development of sustainable social orders through personal and collective enquiry.
