The “New” Scholarship: Implications for Engagement and Extension

The engagement movement in higher education is related to the groundbreaking work of the late Ernest Boyer. The magnitude of Boyer’s contribution is considerable, reflected certainly in the words of the late Donald Schon—a prolific contributor in his own right—when he interpreted Boyer’s proposals as “the new scholarship.” Despite his admiration for Boyer, Schon was not enthusiastic about the prospects for change in higher education. He believed that the academy’s prevailing institutional paradigm, what Schon called “technical rationality,” stood in conflict with the new scholarship. In this paper we summarize and interpret Schon’s argument. We then discuss the implications of the new scholarship for the engagement movement. We close by considering implications of the new scholarship for cooperative extension, a higher education organization that actively affirms scholarship and engagement.