Teaching and Learning > DOCUMENTS
Linking Teaching and Research
Danielle Lamb
Introduction
Ever since the publication of the 2003 White Paper on Higher Education, there has been widespread debate as to whether teaching is better conducted in the context of subject research. In general, academics believe that it is; the Government believes that it isn't; and educationalists believe that there is no empirical evidence either way, but that teaching is likely to be better if there is a deliberate strategy for linking teaching and research at the institutional and departmental level. Increasingly, institutions have been developing teaching strategies centred on the link between teaching and research; and in October 2005, the HEFCE announced additional funding of £25m during 2006-2008 for institutions to enhance teaching and research relations, distributed in inverse proportion to their research allocation.
In parallel, the Higher Education Academy has funded a project (Supporting New Academic Staff, Theme 3 - SNAS3) to gather case studies across the disciplines of how individual departments have integrated teaching and research. Some disciplines such as history have generated a large number of case studies, whereas others have so far generated rather few.
When academics say they believe in the link between teaching and research, they often mean that students should be taught only by teachers who are at the cutting edge of research in the subject. It is this extreme claim that is rejected by the Government, on the grounds that most undergraduate teaching is not done by leading experts in the subject taught, and that much state-of-the-art research is too difficult for undergraduates to understand. Obviously teachers need to have up-to-date knowledge of what they teach; but such knowledge does not presuppose active involvement in research. However, if it is accepted that high-level university teaching can take place in institutions where there is no research, the Humboldtian ideal of the indivisibility of the research and teaching mission of the university will be lost. The point of the SNAS3 project is to find a middle way between the extremes of insisting that all teaching is subordinate to research, and of entirely abandoning any positive link between teaching and research. It aims to show how the student learning experience is significantly better than it would otherwise be if there is an explicit link between teaching and research.
In some respects this is easier to bring about in humanities disciplines than in the sciences, because the research is more comprehensible to students, and there is less of a divorce between teaching and research. Philosophers and theologians don't go away to laboratories to do their research, and what they do as researchers is more similar to what they do as teachers. Apart from introducing students to the teacher's latest discoveries, the principal ways in which teaching can be linked to research are:
- by requiring students to carry out projects that are small versions of the research projects of mature academics - in our disciplines, dissertations are comparable to journal articles, and it is possible to design more empirical projects in areas such as religious studies or applied philosophy;
- by ensuring that teaching focuses on developing the intellectual skills that teachers use in their own research - although only a small minority of graduates will become researchers, the research skills they develop will be at least a sub-set of the skills they need for any graduate profession.
For further reading, see the excellent pamphlet on Institutional Strategies to Link Teaching and Research by Jenkins and Healey (2005) at:
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources.asp?process=full_record§ion=generic&id=585
Case studies
Submissions are still encouraged, beyond the initial deadline. Please use the standard proforma, and return it to george@prs.heacademy.ac.uk. Whenever 25 new case studies have been added across all disciplines, there will be a prize draw for a £50 Amazon voucher.
1. Community of inquiry: students as active researchers in class
2. 3rd Year Module on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
This page was originally on the website of The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies. It was transfered here following the closure of the Subject Centre at the end of 2011.
