Bloom, Boyer, Chimney (An Americanized version of three familiar initials)
The challenge of synthesizing assumes that one is confronted with a puzzle that one wants to make sense of. It entails the capacity to take in and retain large amounts of information or “data” and the aspiration that one can arrange and rearrange the information until it makes sense and illuminates the looming puzzle. Once one feels reasonably satisfied with the arrangement made, one should run it by others who have some knowledge of the puzzling topic and get their critique. Finally, when one feels ready—or when the paper or report is due! – one presents the synthesis to the wider world.
One might think that learning how to synthesize would be a major goal of any educational system—particularly after the first years of school. And indeed, one can certainly find credible examples of “education for synthesis” in certain classes in certain schools in certain societies.
And yet, if one searches through the educational literature on speaking or writing or editing for synthesis, one comes up with very little possible reason for this dearth: it’s hard to simulate synthesizing in the psychological laboratory and so one is left with lore, rather than with data and directions…or with measures so simple that they make a mockery of the challenging art of synthesis.
Or so I thought.
But in fact, in reviewing the literature more carefully, I discovered that two well-known and well-respected educational scholars actually did address the issue of synthesis.
Benjamin Bloom (Source: University of Chicago photographic archive)
In his famous “taxonomy of educational objectives,” Benjamin Bloom listed synthesis as the most sophisticated goal—ahead of four others: (1) acquiring knowledge; (2) comprehending information; (3) applying principles or methods to concrete situations; (4) analyzing a complex idea into its constituent parts.
Finally, as a culmination, there is (5) synthesis, defined as: “construction of ideas and concepts from multiple sources to form complex ideas into new, integrated, and meaningful patterns, subject to given constraints.”
So far, so good. And yet, mysteriously, between one edition and the next edition of his taxonomy, Bloom dropped this impressive and worthwhile objective. And as far as I can ascertain, none of his surviving acolytes have been able to explain why synthesis did not survive pruning.
The other equally well-known scholar—Ernest Boyer—did not explicitly used the term “synthesis.” But in his magnum opus Scholarship Reconsidered, he tackled a difficult question: What types of scholarship should be expected of college professors who seek a permanent (tenured) position?
Boyer proposed the following varieties:
The scholarship of discovery: This encompasses original contributions to the existing fields of knowledge. A discovery confronts an unknown area in the disciplinary landscape and makes a substantive contribution to that area.
The scholarship of application: In contrast to discovery, where all options are open, application focuses sharply on the application of knowledge to existing problems. Nowadays, it would be seen as practical, and it is particularly valued when colleges and universities are asked whether—and, if so, how—the scholarship of their teacher addresses current problems and challenges…especially those nearby.
The scholarship of teaching: This is probably Boyer’s most original and perhaps most consequential suggestion. The focus here is on how best to describe, summarize, present extant knowledge to students—indeed to any and all contemporaries—in a form that is effective, and then to demonstrate to a perhaps eager but also skeptical world how best to present this material to various potential audiences. Certainly, educational institutions that seek to prove their efficacy with students would be well-advised to highlight this form of scholarship.
But for my purposes—and for the purposes of this essay—here’s Boyer’s most interesting and pertinent application: the scholarship of integration, in his words, “making connections across the disciplines, placing the specialties in larger context, illuminating data in a revealing way… what we mean is serious disciplined work that seeks to interpret, draw together, and bring new insight to bear on original research.”
And Boyer adds, “the scholarship of integration also means interpretation, fitting one’s own research—or the research of others—into larger intellectual patterns…Those engaged in integration ask, ‘What do the findings mean? Is it possible to interpret what’s been discovered in ways that provide a larger, more comprehensive understanding?’”
Ernest Boyer (Source: Boyer Center Archives)
Granted, Boyer did not write extensively about what he had in mind, when he called for integrative scholarship—but clearly it comes closer than the others to my definition of synthesizing. The synthesizer is not primarily concerned with new discoveries within an established discipline—let alone, in launching a new discipline. Rather, the synthesizer seeks to put what is already known, already available, into forms that are accessible, illuminating, helpful to others.
Where I differ from Boyer: My insistence is that the best synthesizers are driven by larger questions and issues that have not, and perhaps cannot be, approached simply using the extant disciplinary tools and data. In that sense, the synthesizer is involved in discovery, and of course, the greatest synthesizers—Charles Darwin in biology, Edward Gibbon in history, and (more recently) E. O. Wilson in sociobiology, Thomas Kuhn in history of science—are now seen as major discoverers.
In any event, whether it’s termed integration or synthesizing, this is the type of work that some scholars and writers, including me, seek to do—and some of us have even been rewarded for doing so.
So much for Ben Bloom and Ernie Boyer (as they were known to their peers).
Where does the chimney come in?
My beloved adviser in graduate school, Roger Brown, valued my scholarship. He hoped that I would one day get an appointment at a major university. But, wagging his finger one day, Roger warned me, “It will have to be a chimney appointment!”
I looked at him with bewilderment. “What do you mean, Roger?”
He came right back to me: “From the top down.”
This still wasn’t quite clear. Noting my frown, Roger added, “It means, Howard, that the president or the provost has to award you a position. It’s not going to happen from your peers in a department of psychology—they are looking for a different form of scholarship…” (Paraphrasing Ernie Boyer, he might have added, “they are looking for the scholarship of discovery…not the scholarship of integration.”)
As one who was fortunate ultimately to receive a professorship—by whatever means—I am very grateful. And I do think that a priority for the scholarship of discovery is appropriate, especially at research universities and research labs or institutions. But once one focuses on colleges—and indeed, any educational institution that has as its primary audience individuals in search of a general or a vocational education—there should be ample room for the other kinds of scholarship.
References
Bloom, B. S., & Engelhart, M. D. (1956). Cognitive domain. David McKay.
Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered priorities of the Professoriate. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.