ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to make connections between scholarship, research, teaching/learning and professional development in the context of higher education. The implications of the connections are used to demonstrate how the development of academic teachers and the reflexive process of learning require understanding that can be gained through professional development activities related to academic disciplines. The chapter brings the notion of teaching as scholarship and its role within a research-based university centre stage. Ernest Boyer's analysis of scholarship identified four key roles: the scholarship of teaching, of discovery, of application and of integration. He considered teaching not simply as a matter of dissemination or transmission of knowledge, but as a form of scholarship, by which he meant transforming and extending knowledge through the process of classroom debate and a continual examination and challenge of both content and pedagogy. To improve teaching and its value, there needs to be a relationship between professional development, learning and the scholarship of teaching.
