Faculty Research
Research and Teaching
Research and teaching are intricately woven to produce quality outputs of various kinds. Research strengthens the teaching program, funds more faculty and graduate assistants, and improves the effectiveness of teaching. Research is often about teaching. Teaching that does not involve inquiry and does not find application in the real world is dead. Service that fails to teach or to inquire as to efficient processes and outcomes is fruitless. Research that fails to teach in real time what books can only foreshadow, and that is oblivious to the needs of continuity in service, is unloved.
In higher education, productivity is generally measured in terms of teaching, research, and service. Productivity is one of the more reliable ways to do well and to be recognized for doing well, even in areas of self-interest such as pay increases, promotion, and tenure. Service involves such things as being an officer in a professional society, serving on a committee, or delivering training. As a College composed of individuals with varying strengths and interests, we try to do well in teaching, research, and service simultaneously, achieving a degree of balance between efforts in the three areas. Sometimes faculty are held to specific performance expectations in each area, such as publishing four research articles a year, teaching two or more classes per semester, and participating in a number of service opportunities. To some degree, faculty members are encouraged to achieve relative balance in all three areas in every year of their early career. After tenure, some faculty may focus more on research while others focus more on teaching, and both engage in service delivery. Some colleges allow this differential emphasis relatively earlier in the career through dual researcher-teacher or teacher-researcher tracks.
When we speak of balancing teaching, research, and service, it is as though they are distinct enterprises from one another when in reality they are intertwined in the best circumstances. Teaching that does not involve inquiry and does not find application in the real world is dead. Students will not listen long or well to a teacher who touts supposed truths without compelling evidence, or to a teacher who does not actively and dynamically involve them in the search for new truths. Only a few students are content to ramble and banter about truths on a superficial level, discounting all evidence, merely for the pleasure of the mental exercise or verbal interchange. Most students seek a practical outcome from learning in which they can be invested in some way for the betterment of themselves and others.
Service that fails to teach or to inquire as to efficient processes and outcomes is fruitless. Of several hundred school violence prevention curricula I recently examined using rigorous evaluation methods, only a dozen had appreciable effects on reducing violence despite high investment and cost. All are promoted and used by well-meaning educators who believe they are making a difference although most are not. Embarrassed officials are being called into account about this now, as stronger investment in research and evaluation is being urged upon them and upon the educators they fund. Service too often masquerades under a halo, as if people are worthy of praise merely for stooping to help regardless of the consequence of their actions. A blind eye cannot long be turned toward service that fails or corrupts despite any true good reaped or any good intentions involved. We must evaluate even our service to maximize efficiency in delivering meaningful outcomes.
Research that fails to teach in real time what books can only foreshadow, and that is oblivious to the needs of continuity in service, is unloved. I have participated in bringing researchers and teachers together in summer programs to assure that the very latest technology finds application in curricula that will be implemented immediately following the program. To my surprise, the researchers loved the discipline of making their findings practical, and of seeing immediate changes in practice as a result, and teachers listened raptly to the researchers, deriding their out-dated textbooks and reveling in their direct involvement in improving efficiency and outcomes. Rapid flow of appropriate new technology toward ultimate users is one of the new frontiers in which we can make further improvements in Education.
Research, teaching, and service can be intricately woven together in various ways toward the benefit of all. Those who are engaged in the preparation of teachers must research teaching strategies, contexts, resources, and processes to assure the effectiveness of their efforts. They appraise the knowledge gains and skill increases of their student teachers, as well as attitudes, beliefs, values, and behaviors altered toward the improvement of teaching outcomes. Their work is tested by the success of their student teachers in improving the academic performance of those who learn from them. While some can research particular aspects of K-12 education, others can study college teaching, serving the broader university faculty in their area of expertise.
Research, teaching, and service, are not equally valued by the broader University organization, by University-wide tenure and promotion committees, or by the funding mechanisms which sustain this enterprise. Truth be told, all three can be equally valued only when they draw in resources in equivalent amounts. The College, as the vanguard of the teaching profession, chooses to create an insulated world in which the three are equally valued, so it must effectively insulate itself from exterior structures which would impress their opposing will upon it. Failing in this, most Colleges of Education continue to lie to themselves and to their members concerning university rewards structures, misleading their members to their peril.
The mechanisms for effective insulation are the subject of best practices discourse rather than of empirical research, yet they are knowable. Tripartite “tracks” or “specialization series” may be pressed upon the tenure and promotion functions of the University if adequate support from University-wide faculty is achieved. Within the College, tracks for teaching and service may be honored outside the tenure and promotion structures of the broader University. Structures within RCUH may be pressed to support continuity and job security among faculty-level teaching staff. These mechanisms are all long-term processes. In the interim, balance between teaching, research, and service is achieved through strengthening each member’s ability to do all three well.