It is often said that research is not always compatible with teaching in the Academy. This statement can lead to individualistic strategies that affect both the outlines of scientific disciplines and the quality of teaching. Moreover, other institutional factors (fusion of administrative units, managerial innovation) also influence the development of scientific fields. This is why it is extremely important to integrate research outcomes in teaching activities. In an article published in the journal Higher Education, the research-informed teaching is analyzed as a key-factor in the consolidation of discipline identity. Based on a qualitative investigation in a UK university, the author perceives the research-teaching nexus as a win-win situation that avoids the contradiction between research and teaching.
Feeling as a part of a research community can be difficult for some researchers who are quite isolated and who experience the pressure of administrative tasks. According to the author, postcolonial literary theories with a focus on specific narratives can enlighten the dilemmas that many academics face during their careers. The academic narratives are constituted by semi-structured interviews which look like personal stories about their experience of the relation between research and teaching activities.
The author interviewed eight academics in a UK university (the anonymity of the respondents and the university was preserved) who designed research-informed teaching in their field. These academics worked in eight different disciplinary contexts, law, business, nursing, architecture, digital animation, media, innovation design and history. The analysis of the interview transcriptions gave interesting details on how these academics negotiated the relation between research and teaching.
First of all, these researchers were aware of the institutional decisions that linked or split teaching to research. In some narratives, researchers had to reshape undergraduate syllabus and developed a model of enquiry-based teaching. By transforming students into professional partners, they could use their results in research and act as experts without splitting research from teaching. The curriculae were not designed with the latest research; on the contrary, they helped students to test research activities and be considered as professional practitioners. In this perspective, other interviewees saw their institutional mission as a way of balancing critical thinking, academic freedom and collegiality. It is striking to notice here that the notion of collegiality includes both colleagues and students.
Then, the article analyzed the academic narratives where teaching tasks were isolated from research. In this case, the rationalization of teaching activities generated incomes for the departments. However, it was almost impossible to implement research-informed teaching. The academics tried to design curriculae with the most recent research in their department, but they had difficulties to engage students in research activities. The article also showed that teaching activities could redesign some research goals among the colleagues. In other words, the strategy consisting of the separation of teaching and research could lead to research practices that depended on the content of the courses.
Postcolonial literary theories reveal that the discipline is often the result of the social construction of academics that can influence the outlines of administrative units (departments, research centers) with the connection of research with teaching. Even if there are different modalities of constructing the relation between teaching and research, the most important measure would be to develop these academic narratives in order to develop a critical discipline culture. The institutional changes could benefit from these academic narratives as they show how the field is influenced by both research and teaching.
Comment: Many academics find it difficult to devote time to their own research. It often reflects the fragmentation of disciplines inside a diversity of institutional contexts. The career of academics is most of the time evaluated through criteria targeting the scientific, pedagogic and administrative skills. This individualistic approach needs to be questioned as it often encourages a certain feeling of frustration. The article showed different strategies to implement research-informed activities. There are in fact three ideal-types of the relation between teaching and research. In the first situation, teaching can deepen research activities, in the second one, research is used to design syllabus and courses. The third situation would mix strategies where teaching and research are intertwined. In a nutshell, the use of academic narratives could be experienced as a participatory way of selecting the best scenario for an institutional context. What is the expected role of the students in these social practices and how can they relate to the research community? The development of academic narratives could be an efficient method to create a real academic community where teaching and research are never separate from each other.
Text: Christophe Premat, Department of Romance Studies and Classics
