Postgraduate and research experiences parallel sessions

The first paper focused on design based research in an educational context by Natalie and Celine. This project required active involvement of schools and teachers in educational research and to see it as beneficial. This was a large scale research design with 5 institutions and 36 schools. The plan was to develop effective interventions and practitioners and researchers worked together in different cycles of the innovations. The researchers went to the schools and stayed as this was action research and would have an impact on the school. Over 40 linked organisations were also contacted. There were four experimental tracks which were teaching methods and assessment, information and communication, networking and mapping existing initiatives. There was a discussion with each school about which track they had an interest in but some schools did not stick to their original track. There was a formulation of tracks in a different way ad this meant there were eventually 9 tracks that were flexible. There were also different schools in terms of approach so E+ was a school that had experimental guidance for the innovation and developed materials with the researchers, E- was an experimental school but got given materials and no guidance and the last school C was a control a school. Schools started to collaborate and so shared information which then impacted on the research. In addition as soon as the researchers stepped into the school other processes of change occurred. There was a question around the culture of the school and mutual expectations and need. Where there was strong leadership there was strong school policy which makes a difference. It took a long time to bring innovation into the classroom and do the research.

The second paper by Annemarie was on article, book format, or both? Shared criteria adopted for the double doctoral thesis format and language in a European/International joint networked PhD programme. This was about which format to adopt and sharing expertise and experience. In 1993 a joint programme was developed and this has changed over the 23 years it has run. The initial network had 13 countries involved but this has continued to grow. This is very positive but does mean that on occasion conflict management strategies are needed and some of the partners are now outside normal academic institutions. In order to decide what format there had to be a view about current institutional practices and what would work from a quality perspective. There is some flexibility so a book with a short article or a collection of articles. These are also often submitted in the national language and English however these are today nearly all in English. The book format is 250 – 400 pages. The articles have to have been submitted for peer review and there is a viva. The mid forma between the book and the article has been 40 – 80 pages and there is substantial pressure to publish. There are also concerns about the journal impact factors, university ranking and citation. There has also been pressure on students to write rather than read. Institutional collaboration must have agreement on the project format.

Marielle discussed her paper walking the teaching, research and community – engagement tightrope: dynamics, reflections and lessons learned. This was about community engagement in research. The university sees knowledge production as important and the order of things is that there is teaching, research and community engagement. This is a shared responsibility of HEI’s which is mutually beneficial. Boyer’s scholarship of engagement is a focus. In 1997 there was a white paper in South Africa, and HE policy became inclusive. Academic duties and responsibilities were clarified alongside performance indicators, a workload breakdown and appraisal. In the department of computer science there was a 3 year BSc, an MSc and a PhD programme. There is also a centre of excellence in ICT for development. There is a focus on research informed teaching and applied research to augment student learning. Service learning included volunteers, field trips and internships. Participatory action research was undertaken. Lessons that were learnt included community engagement must be tied to the context, discipline specific and allow for reflection.

How do academics view the research-teaching nexus? A review of literature was a paper given by Kinga. This focused on a project to explore the links between research and teaching. There was little correlation between research and teaching. The study wanted to look at the impact of integrating research with teaching. A literature review retrieved 38 studies that were similar and 11 of these were excluded and then from the 27 left a matrix was developed. The literature showed that there were values attached to the views, there were differences between academics and others and the context was important. The studies had very diverse outcomes and most academics saw their role as not linked to research. The consequences of this project is that through this nexus students were stimulated to develop critical thinking and academics did gain a better sense of teaching.

Sarah presented the last paper which was about making sense of self-initiated expatriate academic careers in Japan. There was quite a lot of academic mobility in the business and management faculty. The study explored how these academics make sense of their choice to expand their current career. It was an exploratory study with 30 interviews which were 20 males and 10 females. A snowballing technique was used to recruit participants. The coding was done in 3 steps and used bracketing and labelling. There were a range of reason that people had taken a job in Japan which included adventure and a possible long term relationship but most had no intention of staying. They all had a sense of increased marketability with better knowledge of their skills and how these can transfer. They felt they had influence due to their social and cultural knowledge. They took on roles that included administration, teaching and research.