The Nature of Scholarship in Computing Education: An Approach from IEEE Transactions on Education

Scholarship in computing education, like scholarship in engineering education more broadly, is an emerg­ ing multidisciplinary field, and, as in any emerging field, scholars face challenges describing the nature of their work. In his 1990 book Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, Ernest Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching from 1979 to 1995, described a framework iden­ tifying four categories of educational scholarship—discovery, applica­ tion, integration, and teaching—that has proved influential across many different fields. I find that apply­ ing Boyer’s framework provides a productive approach to addressing questions about the nature of schol­ arship in computing education. Since its inception in 1957 as IRE Transactions on Education, IEEE Transactions on Education has published original scholarly con­ tributions spanning considerable intellectual territory. When in 2013 the editorial board decided to revise the review criteria for the Transactions, it seemed important to develop guidelines that matched the breadth of these contributions, and Boyer’s framework, with its encom­ passing scholarly scope, provided an excellent foundation on which to base our efforts. Because the Transactions has historically focused on matters of education in electrical engineering, computer engineering, and other fields within the scope of IEEE, teaching as a category of scholarship didn't seem necessary, so the board considered in detail contributions involving Boyer’s three remaining areas of scholarship: dis­ covery, application, and integration. In all three areas, scholarly contri­ butions can take a variety of forms.