1. Scholar, Practitioner, Leader (SPL)
Model

2. Topics After viewing this presentation, you should be able to:
Describe the SPL Model
Summarize the origins of the SPL Model
Explain how the SPL Model is different
Explain how the SPL Model works

3. SAS Mission
To develop leaders who will create new models that explain, predict, and improve organizational performance. These leaders are scholar-practitioners who conduct research as a foundation for creative action, influence policy decision, and guide diverse organizations through effective decision- making.

4. What is the Scholar, Practitioner, Leader Model?
Personifies the School of Advanced Studies’ Mission
Outgrowth of reflection and development of our programs
Dynamic and evolving
SPL Model
Practice
Scholarship
Leadership
A unique component of the University of Phoenix School of Advanced Studies scholarship, practice, and leadership model is that it recognizes and includes both the cognitive and affective domains of learning. The School of Advanced Studies strives to develop learners who gain knowledge and internalize their knowledge and their learning in practical terms. Through this process learners develop an understanding of the personal meaning of both and become able to discuss their understanding. This meta-cognitive introspection and awareness positions SAS learners to integrate their advanced studies in a uniquely powerful way. This skill is based in part on the insights of Kegan (2001) who noted one cannot know something in an exclusively cognitive or affective way.
Reference:
Kegan, R., & Lahey, L. (2001). How the way we talk can change the way we work: seven languages for transformation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

5. How is the SPL Model Different?
Traditional program with traditional curriculum:
Focus primarily on cognitive learning (knowledge)
Ignore learners’ experiences, values, and individuals’ core identity
High priority is placed on scholarship, not application

6. How Does the SPL Model Differentiate SAS and You?
SAS Curriculum:
High standard of rigor
Fosters a culture of inquiry
Focuses on contributions from both the academic and practitioner communities
Conscious of both cognitive and affective domains of learning (knowledge and internalization)
Includes Boyer’s Model of Scholarship with equal attention to the scholarship of discovery, integration, application and teaching/learning

7. What Does SPL Look Like? SAS Coursework:
Centers on students’ rich experience
Deep understanding of concepts, theories, and practice
Enriched with metacognitive introspection
How does the new knowledge integrate with your own experiences and beliefs?
Leads to scholarly discourse

8. Where Did SPL Originate?
Robert Kegan (2001)
Cannot know something in an exclusively cognitive or exclusively affective way
Always using both
Boyer (1990)
The scholarship of discovery that includes original research that advances knowledge
The scholarship of integration that involves synthesis of information across disciplines, across topics within a discipline, or across time
The scholarship of application (also later called the scholarship of engagement)
The scholarship of teaching and learning that the systematic study of teaching and learning processes
UOPX's scholarship, practice, and leadership model grew out of research on the domains and sub-domains represented in assignments, examining the differences between course objectives and core competencies in the doctoral degree programs, contrasting the objectives with Bloom’s revised taxonomy, and examining the focus of assignments in the final year of the programs (Burdick, Coe, & Key, 2008).
The tri-partite structure makes writing in UOPX classes more demanding than the typical undergraduate or Master’s level paper. Learners discover it is important to think about much of their study and writing from these three perspectives. By practicing this thinking, it becomes second nature and helps learners become better decision makers and leaders. 
Competence as a scholar, practitioner, and leader enables graduates to know and act appropriately as informed leaders in their fields.

9. Why Scholar, Practitioner, Leader?
SAS Graduates need the competence to know and to act in their field
Graduates will be agents of change
Problem:
Scholars – often think about problems without a solution in mind
Practitioners – depend on results to be effective day-to-day
Traditional thinking says that there is a tension between scholars and practitioners
SAS graduates differentiate themselves by integrating scholarship, practice and leadership

10. Why Scholar, Practitioner, Leader?
Leadership is the key third element
Leadership provides a balance between the competing interests of the scholar and practitioner
Leadership is the competence, knowledge, and foresight to make decisions that honor both theory and experience
Leadership informs and is informed by knowledge and experience, i.e.: scholarship and practice
The Leadership perspective is the final key component for the UOPX School of Advanced Studies model. One aspect making the UOPX program unique in higher education is this commitment first and foremost to developing leaders. In fact, the mission of SAS is:
. . . To develop leaders who will create new models that will explain, predict, and improve organizational performance. These leaders are scholar-practitioners who conduct research as a foundation for creative action, influence policy decisions, and guide diverse organizations through effective decision-making.
Doctoral Learners in the SAS program have leadership majors. First and foremost they study leadership and work toward becoming “leaders who will create new models that explain, predict, and improve organizational performance. “
It is helpful for SAS doctoral learners to understand the University of Phoenix programs are leadership programs.

11. How Does SPL Work? In the classroom: Participation in dialogue
Researching peer-reviewed sources
Integrating application-based knowledge
Weekly self-reflection
For the student:
Translation of classroom learning (scholarship) into effective leadership behaviors (practice)
The journey of students in the SAS doctoral program is one that challenges and changes their thinking. Every class and assignment builds on the objectives students have as they internalize the scholarship, practice, and leadership model and become introspective and extrospective professionals and leaders. This internalization is NOT the same for every student but evolves out of a back and forth interplay between knowledge, beliefs, and practice.

12. How Does SPL Work?
Complementary integration of scholarship, practice, and leadership into course content as well as personal and professional lives
In the interchange between the academic and practical worlds leaders emerge ready to face challenges of today and tomorrow
Internalization is vital to the model since it is through this internalization the model becomes a lived experience for SAS learners. This deeply felt understanding makes the SPL model much more than simply another theoretical or academic model.
The experience of the model becomes embodied in the learner’s thinking and reflection. Awareness and incorporation of the SPL model within the SAS programs is a extension and direct application of the hermeneutic phenomenological human science approach advocated by Van Manen (1990) in “Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy.” SPL is not simply another explanation, but rather, a deep sense and awareness reflecting a different kind of thinking for doctoral learners.
The application of the model also addresses Argyris’s (1978) encouragement that by bringing students’ “espoused theories” (their advocated positions) into closer alignment with their “theories in use” we inform and improve professional practice.
It is an exciting, challenging journey for University of Phoenix doctoral students.