When we have a means of learning and scholarship that has been established as the one true way of learning, we need to take heed of that, trust that people who decided that are inherently correct, and follow the path they have set out. When you work through the process of creating academic works, you learn a lot about your field of study, and the objective is to become something of an expert. Over time, the scholar begins to make his or her own contributions to the body of knowledge, following on the lead of others and working with the current knowledge in the field.
The concept of the scholar-practitioner is an interesting one. Traditional scholarship reflects a method of learning that focuses entirely on books and journals. The scholar-practitioner concept places value on personal experience outside of the ivory tower. By synthesizing the expert knowledge in journals with one's own practical experience, the scholar-practitioner can gain insights that scholarship alone, without practical experience, cannot gain.
I think for myself the scholar-practitioner concept has a lot of merit. There is a role for real world learning. While one cannot run a regression analysis on personal experience, no doubt to the confusion of many modern scholars, personal experience provides a unique filter by which to understand the concepts presented in the scholarship side. I would suspect that any one...
Sometimes, scholarship is removed from practice, reducing its ability to actually benefit society. But when the scholars are the practitioners, then the value of scholarship increases significantly because its lessons can be directly applied to real world situations. I see this symbiosis as being one of the more valuable academic concepts, and I hope that I myself can use the knowledge I gain from my scholarship not only to advance my career but to make a contribution that transcends what I would be able to achieve as a scholar or practitioner alone.
Works Cited:
Jalbert, J. (2009). What does scholar-practitioner mean? Examiner.com. Retrieved April 19, 2012 from http://www.examiner.com/grad-school-in-los-angeles/what-does-scholar-practitioner-mean
University of Hong Kong. (2012). The research process: Conducting an academic investigation. University of Hong Kong. Retrieved April 19, 2012 from http://www4.caes.hku.hk/acadgrammar/report/resProc/one.htm
