Pedagogic Background to Research Informed Teaching

The changing world to be faced by today's students demands unprecedented skills of intellectual flexibility, analysis and enquiry. Teaching students to be enquiring or research based in their approach is not just a throwback to quaint notions of enlightenment or liberal education but central to the hard-nosed skills required of the future graduate workforce (Hammond, in Jenkins, Healey and Zetter, 2007).

As noted in the Learning teaching and enhancement strategy 2006/07-2008/9, "the University recognises the importance of the reciprocal relationship between teaching and research in enhancing the students’ learning experience.  In the University Research and Enterprise Strategy, for example, it is stated that applied research activity will underpin the student experience through its support of learning and teaching, and many staff already make good use of their research in the teaching context."

We recognise that the form of, and the possibilities for, teaching-research connections will vary between disciplines and departments. 

This web-area not only presents some of the research informed teaching projects that have been undertaken at Staffordshire University as a result of the Learning and Teaching Action Plan but also gathers together links to other Research informed Activity in the HE sector and links to possible funding opportunities for further research. 

More on the fundamentals of Research informed Teaching

The framework developed by Griffiths (2004) and added to by Healey (2005) is a useful way of envisaging current courses and institutional policies and practices and in adapting innovations from elsewhere.  Their combined views state that teaching can be:

• Research-led: where students learn about research findings, the curriculum content is dominated by faculty research interests, and information transmission is the main teaching mode;

• Research-oriented: where students learn about research processes, the curriculum emphasises as much the processes by which knowledge is produced as learning knowledge that has been achieved, and faculty try to engender a research ethos through their teaching; or

• Research-based: where students learn as researchers, the curriculum is largely designed around inquiry-based activities, and the division of roles between teacher and student is minimised.

• Research tutored where students learn in small group discussions with a teacher about research findings.

Healey (2005, 70) has expressed these differences diagrammatically using two axes (Fig 1).  The vertical axis classifies approaches to linking teaching and research according to the extent to which they are teacher-focused and students are treated as the audience or student-focused and treat students as participants, while the second, horizontal, axis classifies the approach as emphasising research content or research processes and problems. A variant on this matrix has been proposed by Levy and Petrulis (2007, 3).  They also have a staff-led and student-led axis and another axis distinguishing between information-led and discovery-led inquiry in which the former is based on existing knowledge and the latter on new knowledge (Fig 2).

HTML version of Figure 1

At Staffordshire University we have interpreted Research informed Teaching as:

• Understanding how to link teaching and research/consultancy.  Research informed teaching projects aim to highlight innovative ways of demonstrating and promoting the research-teaching link.  Research informed teaching activity can include:

• Developing student appreciation of research/consultancy in the discipline and research/consultancy skills in addition to other disciplinary and generic skills.

• Using teaching and learning based processes which simulate research processes

• Using assignments which involve elements of research processes

• Giving students first hand experience of research based consultancy

• Bringing data/findings from staff research/consultancy into the curriculum

Given this interpretation of Research informed Teaching, the continuing developments in technology supported learning and e-pedagogy (identified in our elearning policy) and the importance of information literacy (recognised in our statement of good practice) it is our view that there is an opportunity for triangulation and synergy between these approaches.

In our view inquiry-based approaches which underpin Research informed Teaching can be scaffolded using the information literacy process.  Often technology supported learning is a useful means for facilitating this endeavour and several of our projects have explored this synergy.

For further information on the projects listed below, please see the previous projects page.

Project Titles from 2005 include:

• Tim Harris & Fiona Tweed, Classic Glacial Landforms: The Deglaciation of Glen Etive, South-West Scottish Highlands 

• Dr John Casella, Development of a basic research culture amongst undergraduate Forensic Science

• Geoff Walton & Dr Jamie Barker, Using information literacy as a means of promoting the research process in Level 1 students in Sport and Exercise

• Yuelu Huang & Wyn Jenkins, Expectations and perceptions of a particular group of Chinese MBA students and graduates

• David Cheshire, Neil Hart, Tony Smith, Huw Thomas and Adrian Tooth, Alternative methods for distributing learning material in graphic based subjects
  

For further information on the projects listed below, please see the current projects page.

Links to a list of selected external funding information with web links.

Current information on Research informed Teaching events such as conferences, seminars and the journal club held at Staffordshire University.  Read more about Research informed Teaching events here.