Reshaping understandings, practices and policies to enhance the links between teaching and research (original) (raw)
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The research-teaching nexus revisited
Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: Perspectives from UCL, 2018
Universities have a dual role: they are the key locations for research as well as higher education. These are obviously complementary in that students are learning in the environment where the latest discoveries are being made or discussed. However, the two make very different demands on staff attention, particularly since 1986 when the UK government linked funding directly with research outputs through the ‘Research Excellence Framework’ (as it is currently known). This effectively made teaching the lesser sibling of the two, and education suffered as a result. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that a successful researcher will make a successful teacher and vice versa, even though academia is full of people who do manage both. Gourlay and Oliver provide an overview of how this ‘nexus’ of research and teaching has been positioned in recent years, and the various ways that people have attempted to think through the relationship between the two. One result of these discussions and experimentation, as they explain, has been a significant expansion in what we understand ‘education’ (and particularly ‘higher’ education) to be. Versions of ‘research-based education’ have been somewhere in the conversation for centuries, even if it has proven harder to implement than one might have thought.
Relationships Between Teaching and Research in Higher Education in England
Higher Education Quarterly, 2001
Although there is a popular conception that research enhances teaching, evidence of such synergistic relationships is inconclusive. Recent research, undertaken as part of the Higher Education Funding Council for England's (HEFCE) fundamental review of research policy and funding, indicated that there are a range of relationships -both positive and negative -between teaching and research. While the ideal relationship might be perceived by many academics to be a positive one, there are a number of factors that shape the ways in which teaching and research can have a negative influence on each other, or even be driven apart. These factors include pressures to compartmentalize teaching and research through accountability and funding mechanisms, management strategies of academic staff time that treat teaching and research separately, and the competition for scarce resources. If teaching and research are to complement each other, new ways of managing the teaching and research relationship need to be considered.
the ‘level of action’ is a useful way of conceiving the issues and setting out a range of strategies that can be taken to realise the desired nexus. Thus having started from a review of the available research evidence, we have now considered what individuals and course teams can do; and then the role of academic institutions and departments. As we have moved up the levels we have emphasised that suggested actions are often not as well grounded on the research evidence as we think is needed. In making suggestions for academics and policy makers we hope that in previous chapters we have been sensitive to disciplinary and institutional variations. Such sensitivity is perhaps even more important as we turn to the national (and international) levels. For national higher education systems vary greatly in culture, purposes, organisation and funding arrangements. We are well aware that one cannot take one element from a national system, and ‘simply’ transplant it elsewhere. We also recognise that our thinking is strongly shaped by working in the British system, which is far more a national, centrally directed system and very different from say the more diverse and more privately funded US system. Clearly our perspective is also shaped by working in a ‘national’ culture which has both valued the teaching /research nexus and in recent years ‘challenged’ that link. Perhaps at times the spectre of the UK Research Assessment Exercise does hang over this chapter?
The Research/Teaching Relation: A View from the Edge
Higher Education, 2005
The relation between teaching and research is a defining feature of a modern university and of academic identity. Many universities claim a close relation between the two as well as a strong critical orientation. Yet the gap between claims and practice in higher education appears to be widening as government and institutional policies increasingly treat research and teaching as separate entities. Studies of the relation reflect these events. Such studies are not only contradictory but point to an increasing gap between research and teaching.
Teaching and Research: A Vulnerable Linkage?
Teaching and Research in Contemporary Higher Education, 2013
The comparative project "The Changing Academic Profession (CAP)" brought together almost 100 scholars from various countries of the world. They collaborated for many years, even though their conceptual frameworks, methodological approaches and working styles were based on a bewilderingly wide range of disciplinary and paradigmatic biases as well as cultural backgrounds. This is eye-opening and creative in many respects. But it poses a considerable challenge to the editors of a book who seek to present a collection of parallel papers neatly following the same format and overarching framework. The readers of the chapters of this book will discover manifold findings and interpretations. But they will not fi nd a well-structured set of major results. It becomes the task of this fi nal chapter to offer a selection of a few issues that stand out amongst these notions and observations. 21.2 In Favour of a Linkage but Not a Balance The international comparative survey on the academic profession clearly suggests that the credo of the academic profession that is generally viewed to be indicative for the modern university has remained alive for about two centuries: Three quarters
Research-Teaching Linkages: Practice and Policy
2010
The third annual conference of the National Academy for Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning was held at Trinity College Dublin on 11-12 November 2009, and was attended by over 300 delegates. The theme-Research-Teaching Linkages: Practice and Policy-was timely and generated some fascinating papers, workshops and debates, demonstrating that the research-teaching nexus is not only to the forefront of, but crucial to, current national discussions on the impact and future of higher education. Moreover, the importance of the research-teaching nexus is now central to dialogue surrounding strategies of investment in third-and fourth-level Ireland. This publication, which I am delighted to introduce, provides insight into some of the innovative, inspirational and highly effective methods used by third and fourth-level teachers in classrooms, laboratories and centres for teaching and learning both nationally and internationally. The success of NAIRTL, and the continued interest in its grant initiative, awards programme for excellence in teaching, workshops and conferences, publications and other activities points towards the importance of the objectives of the National Academy in the modern Irish educational landscape. The relevance of this progressive organisation is particularly apparent at a time of increased emphasis on higher education , knowledge transfer and the creation of a knowledge economy where the importance of integrating research, teaching and learning is recognised. Research, teaching and learning are in fact inextricably linked, and that linkage is a critical part of the education continuum; NAIRTL, through its activities and its support of research-teaching linkages on four levels, encourages teachers to speak about their own research, engage students in authentic research, investigate the inculcation of a research ethos and conduct research into teaching and learning itself. The latterthe Scholarship of Teaching and Learning-has universally and undeniably demonstrated the positive impact of that relationship at all educational levels. The sense that we are all researchers and, importantly, all learners, emerged from the NAIRTL conference and prevails in this volume. This recognition is extremely valuable since it privileges the educational rather than the productive aspect of research, making that link to teaching and learning more obvious and natural. The papers and posters presented here, concerned with graduate education and scholarship as well as research-enhanced teaching and learning, highlight that research finds a healthy, productive place in primary, post-primary and undergraduate education just as learning extends into research environments at fourth-level. Peter Scott, the former Vice-Chancellor of Kingston University, once said that all students are now researchers; we might extend this to make the point that all students need to learn to be researchers, to develop their research skills, and to hone their abilities to perform in a knowledge society, using the processes and mechanisms that they acquire in the higher education system to transfer their knowledge and learning in meaningful ways. A key aspect of this conference was the interactive roundtable discussion (which you can view on the CD Rom that is provided with this volume) involving representatives of the major educational funding bodies in Ireland. The discussion, which was concerned broadly with the impact of research organisations and their funding strategies on teaching and learning, was multifaceted and engaging; however there seemed to be general consensus that a shift is underway in terms of the evaluation and assessment of the impact of research funding on teaching and learning. That shift in focus has been from a quantitative attitude towards research products (e.g. how many modules/new courses and so on have been created as a result of investment) to the real impact of enquiry-led teaching which, through the work of centres for teaching and learning and the National Academy, is increasingly recognised as encouraging collaboration, new methods, new research and better learning. The best way to transfer knowledge is through education; this has been emphasised at Government level and is now a key policy of most of the major funding bodies, and will positively