Contrasting perspectives on the relationship between teaching and research

✍ Scribed by John M. Braxton

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1996
• Weight: 592 KB
• Volume: 1996
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0271-0579
• DOI: 10.1002/ir.37019969003

✦ Synopsis

In the current climate of accountability, the research activities of university faculty receive public scrutiny and criticism both from members of the academy and the lay public. Such members of the academy as Kerr (1963), Veysey (1963, and Clark (1987) hold that research and teaching conflict and that undergraduate education suffers as a result. Boyer (1990) gives form to this conflict in Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. He asserts that research activity competes with teaching obligations for time and content. To accommodate research activity, faculty teaching loads are reduced, and teaching assistants are assigned to large undergraduate courses (Boyer, 1990). Thus, the perception emerges that student needs are ignored because faculty pursue their own scholarly interests.

This perception runs contrary to the expectations of the lay public-parents, legislators, students, and members of boards of trustees. The public expects faculty members to concentrate more of their efforts on teaching undergraduates than on their scholarly and research activities (Volkwein and Carbone, 1994). This expectation led to the scrutiny of faculty teaching loads in five states (Cage, 1991).

Moreover, Massy and Zemsky (1994) contend that colleges and universities are unable to control costs and to set institutional priorities because of the discretionary time faculty have available to them. Reduced teaching loads create such discretionary time. The "academic ratchet" is the term Massy and Zemsky use to describe increments in the use of discretionary time at the expense of teaching.