Reshaping the University: New Relationships Between Research, Scholarship and Teaching

Citation

Ling, P. (2007), "Reshaping the University: New Relationships Between Research, Scholarship and Teaching", Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 15 No. 4, pp. 449-451. https://doi.org/10.1108/09684880710830008

Reshaping the University is a bold title, but this book can make a claim to addressing the fundamental activities of the contemporary university, to critiquing its operations, and to proposing some alternative arrangements. The book will do little for those absorbed with the mechanics and metrics of quality assurance in higher education except insofar as it gives pause for thinking about the constitution of the key components of the university, as the sub‐title of the work indicates.

The title provides the context for this discussion of the relationship between teaching and research and context, which is vital because any relationship between these activities is contingent on institution. Barnett commences this compilation with the observation that there are opposing schools of thought on relationships between teaching and research; the one seeing a “necessarily close and positive relationship” (p. 1) and the other seeing the two as “quite distinct activities” (p. 1). Why should there be any intersection of these activities? A research institute is not obliged to teach; a teaching college must be able to defend what it teaches, and thus to be informed in its teaching, but this does not mean the individual teacher, a teaching department or even the college need engage in original research. The obligation for some form of nexus between teaching and research arises from the nature of a university. Flexner (1930), Boyer (1990), and Kerr (2001) each argue that the existence of a nexus between teaching and research is inherent in the nature of a university; that without some sort of a relationship between teaching and research you would indeed have research institutes and/or teaching institutions but not universities.

Barnett too sees research, teaching and scholarship as the dominant activities of universities but what he asks is whether the relationships between these activities might be redefined and practiced in more beneficial ways. It is the notion of relationships – using a metaphor of space and shapes to represent the key activities of universities – that gives this edited volume integrity. What is explored in this volume is the variety of ways in which research, scholarship and teaching may be related in contemporary universities (setting aside whether it is possible to define the contemporary university when the institutions are everything from traditional to virtual). The various contributors to the work come up with some novel possibilities and ones that acknowledge that the university operating in a neo‐liberal context has a wider compass than teaching and research.

The first part of the book is taken up with “myths” about the nexus between research, scholarship and teaching, together with laments about the market‐oriented forces driving the neo‐liberal environment in which the contemporary university operates. These are significant consideration if one is planning any action around a research‐teaching nexus. The desirability of promoting a nexus needs to be assessed in the light of the lived roles and relationships of research and teaching, and the forces underpinning the directions of research and teaching in universities today. Traditional notions of scholarship may not be the driving force; economic application and market considerations are likely to be major influences in universities that rely on fee‐paying students, business‐funded research and public funds conditionally provided by governments with neo‐liberal or neo‐conservative agendas.

Barnett makes reference to gloomy mutterings about the loss of academic freedom, but one could also observe that the university is constituted (constituted in the sense Giddens (1984) uses the term) by a variety of interests, including some academics who regard it as a community of scholars and their managers who see it as a business enterprise. Relationships between teaching and research are bound to be complex in this situation. Neumann (1996), investigating the possible connection of teaching and research roles of academic work, found from the study and a review of the literature that “the nexus is complex, and its subtle, arcane aspects appear to outweigh the more concrete, explicit ones” The second part of Barnett's book examines the complexities of current practice. These include public research funding devices that tend to separate research and teaching academic staff on the one hand and phenomena such as professional doctorates that blur the boundaries on the other. The apparent complexities in relations between research and teaching arise in part, Mike Healey contributes, through differences between disciplines in their approaches to research and to pedagogy. He distinguishes usefully between various approaches to research‐influenced teaching. (pp. 69‐70) (One could also look at ways in which teaching may influence research, for example in encouraging researchers to codify underlying concepts or to involve students in aspects of their research.)

Preserving links between research and teaching and – more particularly – devising new relationships requires involvement of many parties. In the third and concluding part of the book Barnett opens possibilities – “spaces” – not only for maintaining research‐informed teaching but also for other research/teaching relationships, and for interaction of the multiple functions of universities including public and private service provision. Possibilities include researching teaching (not a new notion and one fraught with difficulties when it comes to recognition of the activity as research), configurations of doctoral degrees, various form of student engagement in (quasi) research activities as part of their learning. Academics in research and teaching roles can play a key part – particularly when working as a community – but there are also possibilities for active engagement of students in the process and a need for commitment by university leaders and managers.

Held together by the loose logic of spaces, this book does not provide prescriptions for good practice but it does suggest some vital elements in inter‐relating the key functions of universities. These include the various elements in the university acting as communities, and establishing an environment that values performance – in a theatrical sense – rather than the “performativity”[1] demanded by regulatory bodies. For the leadership of universities this requires a substantial commitment, rather than a rhetorical mention of some sort of nexus between teaching and research in strategic plans. This book does indeed convey the complexity of relationships between research, scholarship and teaching in the contemporary university and possibilities and challenges in reshaping the university.