Research and Teaching: Conditions for a positive link [1]
Teaching in Higher Education, 6 (2001), pp 43 – 56.
Lewis Elton
University College London
Abstract
It has become increasingly clear over the past decade that the question of a positive link between research and
teaching has no simple or general answer. At the same time, there may well be a positive link under particular
conditions. This paper argues that a positive link can be due primarily to the processes, rather than the outcomes,
inherent in research and teaching and that, in particular, student centred teaching and learning processes are
intrinsically favourable towards a positive link, while more traditional teaching methods may at best lead to a
positive link for the most able students, who in the perception of traditional academics are of course the future
university teachers. This finding in turn leads to a rational explanation of the persistent myth of a general positive
link. Finally, it is argued that pedagogic research and its outcomes could play an important role in strengthening
the link.
Introduction
In the past decade, discussion of and research into the question of a link between research and teaching has
proliferated. Although in the process much of significance has been learned, general insights have only rarely
emerged. The purpose of this paper is not to add to the primary research in the area, nor to analyse earlier research,
but to obtain a better understanding through reflection on what has emerged from other studies, through a
combination of conceptual clarification and an argument for a specific position (see 1. below), with the conceptual
clarification as a continuous thread in the paper. No attempt will be made to comprehensively review the
substantial literature on the subject.
Three insights which emerge from the process of reflection are:
1. The specific position which will be arrived at is that a positive research and teaching link primarily depends on
the nature of students’ learning experiences, resulting from appropriate teaching and learning processes, rather
than on particular inputs or outcomes.
2. In certain circumstances, a positive link may well depend strongly on the abilities of students.
3. A rational explanation of the persistent myth of a general positive link will be given.
4. All good teaching is an act of translation – from the level of the teacher to that of the learner. And as in all
translating, there is inevitably some distortion.
All these insights depend of course on the assumption that teachers wish to link their teaching to research; teachers
– and there are many who legitimately hold this view – who see their primary role in developing their students’
abilities in eg employment oriented and life skills inevitably have other priorities.
Mythology and Early Studies
There is a strongly held belief among the majority of academics that teaching in higher education should take
place in a research atmosphere (see eg Jensen 1988, Millar 1991, Smeby 1998), although the opposite is rarely
stressed. While this belief is vocal, it is only as a belief that it is substantiated by research (see eg Neumann 1992,
1993, Robertson 1999) and can therefore justifiably be called a mythology. More worryingly, the myth has
become - at least in Britain - institutionalised through the finding of an apparent positive relationship between
research and teaching, based on the external evaluations of teaching and research in British universities. This
finding which, if confirmed, could have serious consequences on university funding, can however be explained
much more readily and convincingly on the grounds that (a) assessors tended to consider research performance
ipso facto evidence of good teaching, a matter that deserves further investigation, (b) leading research universities
had for many years been better funded and had substantially more favourable staff-student ratios (HEFCE 1995,
paras 94 - 112), and (c) the inspection teams were predominantly academics who were respected by their peers in
the main for their professionalism in research which was public knowledge; their teaching abilities being largely
unknown in an academic culture where teaching is an essentially private activity conducted by amateurs.This latter
Research and Teaching, 13 April, 2000
1
point is mentioned largely to show that enquiries into the problem of the research-teaching link have been
bedevilled by simplistic investigations which would not pass muster in any other research area. Unfortunately, the
current interest in the relationship between teaching and research has been biassed by managerial considerations. If
there is no positive link, then the two can be functionally separated; universities can divide their staff into
researchers and teachers and no doubt pay the latter less. This in turn reinforces the myth in the eyes of academics
who may fear for their jobs. Not a good climate in which to conduct dispassionate enquiry.
Two other deeply flawed forms of investigations should be mentioned. The first consists of enquiries from
practising academics (see eg Jensen 1988) which in reality investigate in the main their personal views, often
expressed with considerable strength, and thus reinforce the mythology of the subject; the second consists of
investigations in the so-called ‘scientific’ mode, in which uni-dimensional quantitative performance indicators for
individuals - such as the number of publications for research and scores on student evaluation forms for teaching are correlated. Unsurprisingly, results proved contradictory (Flood Page 1972, 1985, Ramsden and Moses 1992).
More recently, starting with Ben-David (1977), this extraordinarily naive approach has been replaced by more
sophisticated and mainly qualitative approaches. Excellent summaries of what is known from detailed research,
both quantitative and qualitative, regarding the research and teaching link, have been provided by Hattie and
Marsh (1996), Neumann (1996) and Jenkins (1999).
The Programme for the University of Berlin
The starting point for the present analysis of the link, which - as has been stated - will not produce new research
data, will be what may well be the oldest relevant statement on the subject. It occurs in the monograph of
Humboldt on the future of the new University of Berlin. Humboldt (1810) wrote - and the passage is quoted first
in German, as it loses in translation:
“Es ist ferner eine Eigentümlichkeit der höheren wissenschaftlichen Anstalten, daß sie die Wissenschaft immer als
ein noch nicht ganz aufgelöstes Problem behandeln und daher immer im Forschen bleiben, da die Schule es nur
mit fertigen und abgemachten Kenntnissen zu tun hat und lernt. Das Verhältnis zwischen Lehrer und Schüler wird
daher durchaus ein anderes als vorher. Der erstere ist nicht für die letzteren, beide sind für die Wissenschaft da.”
In my translation of this very densely packed passage, in which I to some extent follow an earlier translation
(Humboldt 1970), I will use both ‘scholarship’ and ‘learning’ as being closest in different ways and in different
circumstances to the difficult word ‘Wissenschaft’, where ‘scholarship’ is defined as a deep understanding of a
subject and ‘learning’ is both a process and an outcome - for both teachers and students - of the application of
scholarship to research or teaching (for an excellent analysis of the relationship between German academic words
and possible English equivalents, see Pritchard 1998):
“It is furthermore a peculiarity of the institutions of higher learning that they treat higher learning always in terms
of not yet completely solved problems, remaining at all times in a research mode [ie being engaged in an
unceasing process of inquiry]. Schools, in contrast, treat only closed and settled bodies of knowledge. The
relationship between teacher and learner is therefore completely different in higher learning from what it is in
schools. At the higher level, the teacher is not there for the sake of the student, both have their justification in the
service of scholarship.”
In one stroke, a master stroke, Humboldt has abolished the problematic nature of the research-teaching link per
definitionem: university teaching only deserves that title if it involves a joint endeavour between teacher and
learner, between professor and student, in a common search for knowledge. The outcome of both research and
teaching is new learning, wholly new in the case of research and new to the learners - who may traditionally be
labelled ‘professors’ and/or ‘students’ - in the case of teaching. In spite of what Humboldt says, some of this
undoubtedly also goes on now in schools, but it is in the nature of schools and of those in them that a school can
never become as totally a community of learning as universities can and should. In schools predominantly and
rightly, teachers teach and students learn. Whether the same should be the case in the earlier undergraduate years
is highly arguable; Humboldt would certainly not have thought so.
This could be the end of this paper, but it turns out that there is after all more to the link than was dreamt of in
Humboldt’s philosophy.
Multi-dimensionality and measures
Research and Teaching, 13 April, 2000
2
The first step in all good practice of problem solving consists of further analysis and perhaps redefinition of the
problem. In the process it will be appropriate to descend from Humboldt’s Olympian heights and recognise the
realities of universities at the turn of the millennium.
Firstly, it is now accepted that the relationship between research and teaching is multi-dimensional. Some of the
dimensions are indicated by the following questions:
•
Whether the unit of assessment is an individual, a department or an institution (Moses undated; Elton
1998, on teaching; McNay 1999, on research);
•
Whether the comparison is at the level of competence or excellence? (Elton 1996a, on teaching;
HEFCE 1996, on research);
•
Whether the comparison is being made from the perspectives of academic staff (see eg Millar et al 1991),
students (Jenkins et al 1998), administrators (Neumann 1993) or funding bodies (McNay 1999);
•
Whether the comparison depends on the discipline investigated and if so, how (Moses 1990);
•
Whether there are cultural factors which are different in different institutions (Jenkins et al 1998) and
different countries (Gellert, Leitner and Schramm 1990, Whiston and Geiger 1992);
•
Whether different performance measures yield different results (Tomlin 1998, Ham & Marshall 1998).
Only some of these points can be addressed within the limits of this paper.
Secondly, possible measures have to be identified, presumably not simplistically quantitative ones, on which a
comparison can be made. How can one estimate whether either research or teaching is in some sense ‘good’?
What is considered ‘good’ will undoubtedly depend on who judges it so. In the case of the research-teaching link,
there are at least three very different kinds of stake holders who can take on the role of judges:
•
academic staff, who believe that their professional judgment enables them to identify what is ‘good’. This
has been characterised as ‘connoisseurship’ (Eisner 1985);
•
students, whose satisfaction with what is offered to them depends on their motivation which can be very
varied (Elton 1988, 1996b, Neumann 1994, Jenkins et al 1998);
•
administrators and funding bodies, who - in different ways - are preoccupied with considerations of cost
effectiveness (Neumann 1992, 1993).
Clearly, the research-teaching link may be seen quite differently by different stake holders. Research into it has so
far been based almost wholly on the perceptions of academic staff, and these, ever since the seminal work of
Halsey and Trow (1971), have been consistent and, incidentally, essentially independent of age. The views of
other stake holders are only just beginning to be considered (see eg Brown 1998) and, while I am happy to leave to
others a discussion of the legitimate interests of administrators and funding bodies, much more will be said below
about the interests of students.
Student interests are of three kinds:
1.
The self-interest in passing examinations, which teachers must never devalue. It is one in which students
naturally take the lead.
2.
Interest in the subject, which is primarily a task for teachers to develop.
3.
Interest in developing abilities which will be of value long after leaving formal education. These abilities
may be ‘academic’, eg the ability to analyse, synthesise and make judgments (see eg Ramsden 1992, p. 20 for an
extended list), or related to life skills, eg the ability to see a task through to its conclusion (see eg Association of
Graduate Recruiters 1995, p. 21 for an extended list). The development of such abilities requires in general a close
collaboration between teachers and students.
All three kinds of interest are wholly legitimate; all too often it is the third that is neglected.
Correlations and interpretations
As has been stated, the bulk of the early research on the teaching-research link has been quantitative, but such
work can at best establish relationships, not causality. There are four ways in which such relationships may be
connected causally:
•
Good research causes good teaching
Research and Teaching, 13 April, 2000
3
•
•
•
Good teaching causes good research
The relationship between good research and good teaching is dialectic, ie they support each other
There are one or more additional factors which, if present, cause the correlation.
To distinguish between these four possibilities, it is helpful to postulate an underlying theory. Since the research
has produced such varied and even contradictory results, it would appear most natural to search for a theory which
is based on the last of these possibilities and to look for a factor or factors, which may or may not be present in a
particular investigation.
Two such factors have indeed been proposed, without which a relationship may not be expected. The first of these,
which goes back to Humboldt, is ‘scholarship’, ie a deep understanding of what is currently known in a discipline
and which illuminates both research and teaching in that discipline (Elton 1986). The second is ‘learning’, ie good
research and good teaching both lead to good learning: in the first case of something that is genuinely new, in the
second case of something that is new to the learner (Brew and Boud 1995). Clearly, the first of these, scholarship,
is an input, ie it is argued that without the input of scholarship good learning does not occur. The second, learning,
is not only an output, but, as Brew and Boud rightly stress, also a process. Thus it may be postulated that an input
of scholarship is necessary, if a correlation between ‘good’ research and ‘good’ teaching is to exist, and that if it
does exist, then it can be verified through the process of learning and through the ‘good’ learning that follows.
[Recognition that the word ‘learning’ can be both a verb and a noun, is important here.]
It should be noted that while learning as a process is accepted in conjunction with teaching, this is not so in
research where, as Brew and Boud point out, research is normally presented as the communication of ideas
detached from the processes from which they are derived. Their conclusion is that “teaching and research are
correlated where they are co-related, ie when what is being related are two aspects of the same activity: learning”.
Ben David (1977) concluded that the teaching-research relationship can be both supportive and conflicting, and
that the balance of these is strongly subject dependent. In particular, he contrasted the humanities, where
originality lay mainly in creative scholarship, with the sciences, where it lay in the discovery of new knowledge
through experimental research, and suggested that it is only in the former that a strong positive link between
research and teaching was and could be established. In contrast, Schwartzman (1984) argued that in the Germanic
- but perhaps not always in the Anglo-Saxon - context, the pursuit of both science and the humanities includes a
component, namely scholarship (or Wissenschaft), which links teaching and research. This conclusion, in which of
course Schwartzman follows Humboldt, although he does not quote him, led to the heretical suggestion (Elton
1986) that scholarship is perhaps insufficiently valued in the Anglo-Saxon pursuit of science.
However, scholarship should be viewed (Boyer 1987, Rice 1991, Elton 1992) as not only supporting research (the
creation of new knowledge) and teaching (the transmission of knowledge [2]), but also practice (the application of
knowledge) and integration (the synthesis of knowledge). All academic activities, including incidentally the
management of knowledge, should be influenced by scholarship and, if they are, then it may well be true that there
exists this link between them and research (in its widest sense). This extension of the meaning of scholarship, and
also of research, is a generalisation, in the sense that mathematicians use this word, which raises the question as to
whether it allows the extension of a possible research and teaching link to these generalised concepts. There is
little if any research on this so far.
Having identified scholarship as the input, learning (verb) as the process and learning (noun) as the output, there
remains the question of the more detailed nature of the process which links input to output. What forms of
teaching, what forms of learning, what curricula in the widest sense, can lead from scholarship to learning? Now,
there is a very basic point of learning theory, namely that learning with understanding, so-called ‘deep’ learning,
requires learners to integrate new knowledge with existing knowledge (for a discussion of the evidence see eg
Ramsden 1992, ch. 4). For this to happen, students must be actively involved in the learning process and indeed
come - at least in part - to own it. This is the very antithesis of learning through didactic teaching, which in most
instances can lead to only superficial learning. Unfortunately, much of assessment confines itself to assessing such
superficial learning and hence a change in assessment methods forms an important aspect of any desired new
curriculum. The conclusion that the nature of the link between research and teaching depends primarily on the
process of the student curriculum rather than on the outcomes in either research or teaching is arguably the most
important insight obtained in this paper.
Looked at in this way, it is also possible to identify curriculum designs (see also Brown 1998, Jenkins 1999) which
favour such good learning outcomes, although they naturally cannot guarantee it, through involving students
Research and Teaching, 13 April, 2000
4
actively in their learning and allowing them to own it at least in part. One such curriculum design, which will
serve as an example, is problem based learning (Boud, D and Felleti, G (eds) 1991), which has spread from
medicine to other disciplines. In this approach, little, if anything should be taught didactically, all should be
learned problematically, where ‘problematically’ may well refer to any or all of Boyer’s conceptions of
scholarship. Another example, on a smaller scale, is the development of a style of history teaching, in which
teachers ‘expose’ themselves to their students instead of exposing the subject to them (Currie 2000).
The shift in the process from teacher centred to student centred learning is profound. Research based criteria for
good teaching in relation to student centred learning have been given by Ramsden (1992), p. 89. It may be noted
that the famous Oxbridge tutorial is firmly teacher centred and, except for the most able students may not normally
lead to deep learning.
Why has it taken so long (2000 years?) for this understanding to come about? The answer lies in the perception
which academic teachers have of teaching, namely that teacher knows and professes, while student does not know
and absorbs new knowledge. Only the best students can learn in this way and make the knowledge acquired in this
way their own. The rest frequently learn superficially, without real understanding. For them - and indeed for the
best students too - it is better to learn, however inadequately, from solving problems which they own.
Unfortunately, to convince academics, who in the process are turned from didactic teachers into facilitators of
learning, is not easy. It not only requires them to take a very different attitude to their teaching tasks, but it
inevitably results in their becoming less secure in their positions vis-a-vis their students (see eg Rowland 1996, p
15).
The teaching-research link - is student centred learning the only way?
What has so far been established is that the teaching-research link can exist if the teaching takes place through
student centred learning, of which one example is problem based learning. In the process the focus has been
shifted from the excellence of the teacher to the excellence of the learning experience, ie if the conditions for
learning are right and there is an input of scholarship, then the positive link becomes the norm. Thus the nature of
the student learning experience, and indeed the nature of the link, have been changed as, nearly two hundred years
after Humboldt, his ideas have been built into curriculum design and extended by Boyer to all kinds of learning.
The research aspect of the learning experience is now more a natural outcome of the teaching-learning system and
depends less on the quality of the teacher, while the nature of the link may no longer depend on the research
excellence of teachers, but rather on their ability to encourage and facilitate in their students a problematic
approach to learning.
The teaching-research link in traditional teaching
However, it would be unrealistic to expect all teachers suddenly to become effective facilitators of learning, not
only because of the traditionalism inherent in the profession, but also because – in spite of the many differences
between different institutions of higher education - institutional management and external pressures all reinforce
such traditionalism. There remains therefore the question, whether more traditional forms of teaching can also lead
to positive correlations between teaching and research.
In attempts to investigate the teaching-research link in traditional teaching, it is only because of the ascendance of
research in the university ethos that the comparison made is always between teaching which is linked to research
and teaching which is not. Investigations of situations where there might be favourable non-research influences on
teaching are rare and in the UK they are becoming rarer, as the originally teaching oriented so called new
universities are increasingly, as a result of the Research Assessment Exercise, forced into putting research before
teaching.
What is crucial in all such investigations is that they are carried out in terms of the student learning experience, as
Neumann (1994) had already argued, and not in terms of the teachers’ perception of it. However, the student’s
learning experience is not a simple concept. Since one of the purposes of teaching is to change the learner, a
student’s learning experience is expected to change in response to his or her learning, and while, as was suggested
earlier, initially a student’s learning motivation may be extrinsic, eg to succeed in examinations, it may in due
course rise to the much higher level of intrinsic interest in the subject being studied.
A general review of students’ learning experience has recently been provided by Biggs (1999), but this does not
cover the specific issue of the link between teaching and research, which has – probably for the first time – been
addressed by Jenkins et al (1998). This investigation was carried out at a ‘new’ university, where some, but not all
teachers were researchers, but its results are not easy to interpret. The authors found that students felt that they
Research and Teaching, 13 April, 2000
5
benefited from staff research, in that the teaching was more up-to-date and more scholarly, but they saw
disadvantages in that research oriented teachers tended to be less available to them, were often preoccupied with
their research at the expense of their teaching, excluded their students from stake holding in their research and at
times distorted the curriculum towards their research. This last point is particularly interesting, because it so
clearly demonstrates the teacher driven nature of the resulting student learning experience. Nevertheless, the
authors conclude, admittedly speculatively, that from the student perspective there is a largely positive teachingresearch link, while the main adverse impacts can - at least in part - be resolved through effective management. In
this last respect one may be less sanguine, since the students’ negative points are all familiar from the experiences
of students in heavily research oriented institutions (see eg Thomson 1999), where the bias of staff towards
research is likely to be stronger.
One aspect which has been ignored in the Jenkins study is that, given a heavily research biassed national system,
in a university which changes from a teaching to a research orientation, it is likely to be the more enterprising staff
who make the change first. Could it be that in some sense they are simply ‘better’ at whatever they do and that the
results obtained might change once the institution had reached a new steady state? In traditional universities,
where all or nearly all staff are research active, the kind of investigation conducted by Jenkins et al could never
have been made and it becomes an article of faith that teaching in a research oriented university is better than in a
non-research oriented university, though even in the former, many staff may be far from being genuinely research
active. This is then reflected in university statements, like the one from my own institution, University College
London (1999), which states:
‘The UCL Learning and Teaching Strategy reflects the fact that students who come to UCL are offered an
experience which reflects the ‘five star’ research quality of this university. The courses which they follow are
developed within a departmental culture based upon leading-edge research and it is this which characterises
UCL’s strategic approach to learning and teaching.’
An explanation of the myth
Is then the firm belief in traditional universities that research has a beneficial effect on teaching really no more
than a myth that cannot stand up to any investigation? Not quite. There are charismatic researchers who can
inspire students through their teaching. But one must ask, how many of their students? One of the most
charismatic of teachers of the last fifty years beyond any argument was the late Richard Feynman, whose famous
introductory course in physics undoubtedly provided an integration of research and teaching through deep
scholarship. Yet the considered verdict on the lectures (Goldstein and Neugebauer 1995) was:
‘Through the distant veil of memory, many of the students and faculty attending the lectures have said that having
two years of physics with Feynman was the experience of a lifetime. But that’s not how it seemed at the time.
Many of the students dreaded the class, and as the course wore on, attendance by the registered students dropped
alarmingly. But at the same time, more and more faculty and graduate students started attending. . . . Even when
he thought he was explaining things lucidly to freshmen or sophomores, it was not really they who were able to
benefit most from what he was doing. It was his peers - scientists, physicists and professors - who would be the
main beneficiaries of his magnificent achievement.’
This verdict is in line with Feynman’s own (Feynman 1963):
‘When I look at the way the majority of the students handled the problems on the examinations, I think that the
system is a failure. Of course, my friends point out to me that there were one or two dozen students who - very
surprisingly - understood almost everything in all of the lectures. These people have now, I believe, a first rate
background in physics - and they are after all, the ones I was trying to get at. But then, “the power of instruction is
seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous”. (Gibbon)’
Here and in similar experiences may lie the origin of the myth. Even Goldstein and Neugebauer must have been
taken in by the ‘distant veil of memory’, because in the light of the ‘alarming’ drop in student attendance at
Feynman’s lectures, the first ‘many’ in the above quotation cannot really have been so many and probably were
Feynman’s “one or two dozen students”, while the second ‘many’ - for the same reason - presumably were truly
many. Academic teachers think of students in terms of their own student experience and rarely if ever verify how
typical it is from the point of view of their own students. Since only a very small proportion of students ever
become academics, it is of course the very opposite of typical; yet it is the experience which for a long time has
been dominant in the minds of academics. This suggests that there is a second and very different kind of positive
teaching-research link, based not on the quality of teaching and learning, as is the case with student centred
Research and Teaching, 13 April, 2000
6
learning, but on the quality of the students. Furthermore, it is the quality of the students as perceived by their
teachers, which in turn is strongly linked to the students‘ intrinsic motivation, ie love of subject (Breed and
Lindsay 1999). It thus becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy and a ‘good’ student is one who in due course becomes a
research oriented university teacher.
The Role of Scholarship
But process is not all, and the input of scholarship, ie the deeper understanding of what is known in the subject
taught or researched, remains crucial (Elton 1986). However, while in research the level of understanding must be
that of the researcher, in teaching it must be that of the student, not of the teacher. Thus teachers have to perform
an act of translation - from their own level to that of their students. This is not a ‘dumbing down’, but a
recognition of the differences in levels of sophistication, and in the best of teaching it results in the raising of the
student’s sophistication level. Similarly, there is in general a difference in levels of understanding between the
level of a particular researcher and that of the top savants in the field. It is in this sense that the statement by Brew
and Boud, that “teaching and research are correlated where they are co-related, ie when what is being related are
two aspects of the same activity: learning”. should be interpreted. Could another reason for Feynman’s failure be
that he did not recognise the need of translating from his level to that of his audience?
Clearly, teachers as facilitators of learning must have teaching skills, well beyond those needed by traditional
teachers, and they have to be well versed in the scholarship of their discipline. They also need to be well versed in
the pedagogy of their discipline and in its scholarship (see below), but it would appear that they need not
necessarily be active researchers in their discipline.
It follows that the idea that a good researcher is ipso facto a good teacher does not stand up to serious examination.
Johnston (1999), who, although now an academic, has not lost the ability of looking back on her student days,
surely represents the views of many students:
‘If a good researcher, ie one with lots of research skills, does not have the necessary teaching skills, then the
teaching/learning experience can be pretty unsatisfactory for the student. I am thinking here particularly of my past
experiences as a student - eminent researchers, but unable to communicate with students at an appropriate level or
pace, unable to break down teaching and learning into manageable pieces, unable to give students the necessary
confidence-building treatment. Certainly one is really lucky if one finds a teacher/researcher who combines skills
in both fields. That can be a very inspiring experience as one is taught by someone with a deep love/understanding
of his/her subject and able to communicate this and a sense of its importance.’
And yet, Feynman and those like him often convey their love for their subject in a way that goes beyond
understanding, that ‘passeth understanding’. Rowland et al (1998) have argued that love of knowledge is central to
the identity of the academic worker - whether as researcher or teacher - and that it is their religion. In turn, this
may change the student’s learning experience, as was indicated earlier, and may even lead to what in the religious
field is termed a conversion. Here we enter dangerous waters - for such conversion can be uncritical. At this point
the question as to the nature of knowledge (Brew 1999) enters the debate, which thereby will receive a new and
profound impetus.
What is the relevance of pedagogic research?
Finally, there is the possible link between pedagogic research and disciplinary teaching. This could be as a result
of:
•
a transfer of pedagogic research results to teaching practice (recently the UK Economic and Social
Research Council has suggested that teaching practice should be ‘evidence based’ on relevant research);
•
the improvement of teaching practice through evaluatory research;
•
action research, in which academics combine the roles of researcher and teacher by researching into their
own teaching;
•
teachers who are also pedagogic researchers.
The first of these is highly problematic, since teaching is far too complicated an activity for pedagogic research to
be able to give unequivocal results as to what is ‘good’ teaching, although it can more readily identify what is not
good teaching. The second should be normal practice and the fact that so often there is little self-reflection, let
alone evaluatory research, is to be deplored. The third and fourth, on the other hand, are potentially of great value.
They lead to teaching being treated as a researchable and researched activity, surely in the spirit of Humboldt.
Research and Teaching, 13 April, 2000
7
Conclusions
The conclusions emerging from this paper are indeed in line with the programme presented in the Introduction, but
they also indicate that the problem of the teaching-research link is not only multidimensional, but that almost none
of the dimensions lend themselves to ‘scientific’ approaches for their solution. The problem is perhaps not unlike
the problem in Lewis Carroll’s ‘The Hunting of the Snark’ including even the splendid line ‘What I tell you three
times is true’ (Carroll 1939, Fit 1), but that would be unfair. It may be hoped that this paper has established that
the real locus of the teaching-research link does not lie in teachers or even in learners, but in the curriculum
process - to be interpreted in its widest sense, ie all that contributes to the learning experience of students - in
which both are engaged. Other positive appearances of the link are likely to be more haphazard and questionable.
Unlike the conclusion that student centred learning can readily lead to a positive connection between teaching and
research, the case for other teaching and learning methods is at best not proven. Connoisseurs of Carroll will know
that in his case the solution lay in the Snark being a Boojum, an unidentified entity which ‘had softly and suddenly
vanished away’ (Carroll, 1939, Fit 8); it may be hoped that the problem of the teaching-research link in modes
other than student centred learning will not prove equally intractable. It well may.
Acknowledgment
My thanks are due to all who have commented so constructively on this paper: Reva Brown, Pat Cryer, Ron
Gardiner, Alan Jenkins, Brenda Johnston, Ruth Neumann, Stephen Rowland, and participants at the 1999 Oslo
CHER Conference on ‘The Research Function in Higher Education’. I can only hope that I have done their
comments justice.
Notes
[1] I have departed from the recent tradition to call such a link a ‘nexus’, since the latter is sometimes
misunderstood.
[2] The word ‘transmission’, as used by Rice (1991), implies the broad transmission from one generation to
another, not the kind of transmission from teacher to student which characterises memory learning.
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