Research into Your Teaching

To expect faculty to be good teachers, as well as good researchers, is to set a demanding standard. Still, it is at the research university, more than any other, where the two must come together.
(Boyer, 1990, p.58)

What about research into one's own teaching? How important or useful is it?

If academic life is a profession and if teaching is an integral part of that profession, then the expectation would be that the academics will devote some time to the research and development of their teaching. Some might argue that research should be left to the experts, and therefore research into teaching should be the domain of cognitive psychologist and education experts. Although research and practice are closely linked in some areas, the divergence between teaching practice and educational research seems to have resulted in many academics gaining little from the teaching research literature. Alternatively some academics have attempted to forcibly fit practice into inappropriate models. To avoid this gap or conflict, Schon (1983) suggests that practitioners should become reflective researchers. The teacher as a reflective researcher could work in collaboration with the experts. This type of research into teaching is neither rare nor impracticable as shown by the growing number of reports in journals and conferences; sometimes this takes the form of action research (Scholarship Revisited, 1998). There are also those who prefer to investigate their teaching on their own, with minimal or no input from others.

So, how might you delve deeper into your teaching?

• Boyer, E.L. (1990). Scholarship Reconsidered. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc.
• Scholarship Revisited. (1998). Issues of Teaching and Learning, 4(2).
• Schon, D.A. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner. USA: Basic Books Inc.