Research as a model for university teaching

✍ Scribed by Bruce M. Shore; Susan Pinker; Mary Bates

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1990
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 863 KB
• Volume: 19
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0018-1560
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00142021

✦ Synopsis

Forty-nine active researchers in 28 university departments were interviewed about their research and teaching. Though most disciplines were clustered within specific research types, lectures were almost universally prescribed for teaching large and undergraduate classes. Except fo r seminars, commonly chosen for graduate classes in the humanities, teaching methods did not reflect how professors pursued their own learning. A second study replicated the first with 22 English and 18 chemistry professors. Nearly all the chemistry staff did experimental research, and nearly all the English did analytical. Lectures dominated teaching prescriptions of the former, and lectures and seminars the latter; had teaching and research been closely related, there should have been much less overlap and dispersion in the teaching prescriptions. Finally, only a few instructors in either study traced their research directly to experiences involving teaching. Although general methods by which teacher-researchers pursue knowledge do not appear to be reflected in undergraduate teaching, and research does not widely benefit directly from teaching, the strong belief that the two interact may suggest they should, perhaps in more subtle ways, and the implementation of this interaction is not inconceivable.