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The
Connection between Teaching and Research
For many years it’s been teaching versus research—the
relationship between the two being fundamentally
adversarial. Many thought (and some still believe) that
excellence in research meant lesser instructional
effectiveness and that excellence in teaching often
predicted little or no research productivity. Extensive
research (much of it summarized in previous issues of
this newsletter) disavows this negative correlation,
establishing instead that excellence in research and
excellence in teaching are not related.
To
many of us, the absence of any relationship does not
make good intuitive sense (even admitting that intuitive
senses can sometimes be wrong). How can teaching and
research be disconnected when they are so intertwined
with the content and methods of the discipline? Perhaps
the methods used to analyze the relationship do not
capture what may be a unique configuration of
influences. Historically, the view has been that
research positively influences teaching by keeping
faculty current and confronting unanswered questions.
William Becker and Peter Kennedy were troubled by the
failure to consider the relationship from the opposite
direction: what are the prospects of teaching enhancing
research?
Their interest in the question led them to survey 150
active researchers in their field, economics. They asked
each if they could cite a specific instance in which
their research had been influenced by their teaching.
Fifty percent said yes and cited an example. Another 35
percent did not cite an example but without prompting
responded that teaching did positively benefit their
research. Becker and Kennedy summarize their results
this way: “the main message is that teaching plays a far
more important role in enhancing research than the
literature suggests.”
When they more closely analyzed the examples offered by
this cohort of researchers, they were able to identify
13 ways in which teaching supported the research work of
the faculty surveyed. Some examples pointed to supports
most would probably not consider surprising. For
example, some faculty identified examples illustrating
how teaching hones understanding, meaning it develops a
deeper and richer understanding of some aspect of
content. Others pointed out things they had learned
through teaching. In these cases the insights were new.
Still others cited examples of how in the process of
preparing for class, they discovered new information
that stimulated new thinking. And others offered
examples of how explaining things to students enabled
them to see connections more clearly or revealed flaws
in logical coherence.
Other supports for research provided by teaching are not
as intuitive. Among the examples cited were some
illustrating how classroom discussion was used as a
testing ground for ideas under development. Some
identified instances in which students asked questions
that the faculty member could not answer or that led the
faculty member to consider an issue from a very
different perspective. Similarly, some pointed to
examples of research questions that actually first began
as exam questions.
And these supports for research provided by experiences
in the classroom were not the only ones offered by
faculty surveyed in this study—the remainder can be
found in the article referenced below. However, even
this sample challenges assumptions about the nature of
the relationship between teaching and research. It
suggests the presence of a relationship and a direction
for the relationship that are quite the opposite of
those most often proposed in the literature. Perhaps it
is time to abandon the teaching-versus-research paradigm
and think more seriously about how the teaching and
research connection might work constructively.
Reference: Becker,
W. E. & Kennedy, P. E. (2005). Does teaching enhance
research in economics? American Economic Review,
Papers and Proceedings, 95(2),
forthcoming.
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