Monday, February 16, 2009

Naliyah's 1st blog post Research Versus Teaching

Teaching Sociology Vol. 34 2006 October: 325-340

"Bridging The Gap Between Cultures of Teaching and Cultures of Research" by Edward Kain

I chose to report on the article because it highlights the persistent and controversial tension of splitting one’s time between research and teaching within institutions. As a future professor this is something, which is of great concern to me because I know that I would like to focus more on teaching. The author, Edward Kain, looks at how job expectations fluctuate in merging these activities within the academic realm. He specifically examines the way in which sociology positions are announced and how such position advertisements have changed since 1980 when Goldsmid and Wilson noted a “curious gulf” amid teaching and research within sociology programs. Kain uses content analysis to examine job listings published in the American Sociological Association Employment Bulletin during three separate decades (1977, 1987, 1997). He looked for patterns and trends within the language of the job descriptions that emphasized teaching, research or both while noting the institution type. The author believes reducing the distance between teaching and research cultures will strengthen sociology departments. His research questions were:

1) has the trend of a decline in the emphasis upon teaching continued since Rau and Baker’s research in the late 1980s, or has it reversed?
2) How do job descriptions differ by type of institution?
3) How do the position descriptions vary by rank?
4) What are some of the implications of these patterns and trends?

Kain concludes that the data show, regardless of institution type, the demand for blending of teaching and research has increased. The expectations that faculty in institutions focused on teaching will also do research and vice versa for research based institutions seem to be the norm. Kain offers four suggestions for continuing to help reduce the gap between teaching and research cultures:

1) rejecting the dichotomy of teaching versus research,
2) implementing a cumulative curriculum,
3) building structures that link the multiple functions within departments of sociology,
4) making certain that our reward structures reflect a change in values.

The point Kain makes, which I agree with the most, is that when teaching and research are set in opposition to each other it is not beneficial and causes education to suffer. His suggestion is to reconceptualize them as mutually supportive activities. Some of the ways he suggests this could be done are by involving undergraduates in research opportunities with faculty and graduate students, as well as, using undergraduates as teaching assistants. Kain also notes the significance of introducing research skills in sociology 101 courses. I find this discussion to be most critical; often sociology professors tend to lean more toward teaching or research depending on their own preference and job position and thus may emphasize the importance of one over the other in how they teach the subject to students. Therefore, from the first course a student may be taught with a focus on research versus teaching or teaching versus research and thus the “gap” is already being set into place for the student in how they view the discipline. Myself included, many students tend to be intimidated by research and view it as difficult and frustrating because they are not coached on the skills of breaking the work into manageable pieces, finding the love of researching something they are interested in, or are unaware of the different types of research methods. For instance, I thought research inherently meant math and statistics which I found to be very difficult. Later I was introduced to qualitative research methods such as ethnography that drew my interest. Here again, we have a dichotomy that arises –qualitative versus quantitative- methods of research, which also need to be merged. It is important to note that Kain’s research was done in 2006 and only looked at ASA job postings. While he found an increase in the desire for teaching faculty to increase their research skills and vice versa for research faculty I wonder if in fact this is true across the board. When speaking with faculty and looking at job postings within my department research tends to be the point of focus- the most notable reason being that universities are looking to be viewed as prestigious and for faculty who can bring in the biggest research grants and maintain publications in the most well known journals. Ultimately, I believe faculty are hired, kept, and promoted based on how big of a cash cow they are for the college and this means research not teaching skills, which often do not bring the same cash and prestige associated with research.

3 comments:

  1. That is interesting. I agree that the trend is based in economics and prestige and who can bring in money/make the department more attractive and respected in the field. However, do you think that blending research and teaching (especially if you are teaching at the intro/200 level) is possible? Or do you think that we should move towards an instructor, evaluated based on teaching, handling the 100 and 200 level courses, which would free up researchers to only teach major/minor students?
    Also, do you think that the way we have structured sociological journals leads professors to know a lot about one specific niche, and not much about the rest of the discipline?
    BTW I also agree that the whole qualitative verse quantitative debate is a false dichotomy that needs to be broken down.

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  2. When reading this I remembered the history teacher who pulled out several maps and spread them across his office floor, and then made us crawl across them and analyze the landscape in order to understand the influence of terrain on history. He had just visited the area in question, and was reimagining his work based on his new knowledge, and we were there when he was doing it. It still remains for me a perfect marriage of research and teaching, and the way they can feed each other. So I applaud your aim, Naliya, even as you accurately characterize so many department's hiring policies. Re your comment, Jason, I think that if we cut very active researchers out from 100 + 200-level classes then we cut students out from the passions (some admittedly esoteric) that drive individuals into teaching and research in the first place, and communicate the fire of creativity? Worth continued discussion, though....especially as

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  3. hmm very interesting comments, well I don't agree with his idea of using undergrads as teaching assistants but I think maybe research assistants who would be monitored closely possibly working with grad students and the professor to learn the research and thus see that it is not some overwhelming thing that they cannot do as undergraduates. I agree that we shouldn't necessary limit teachers to specific course loads but I do wonder if we should necessarily ask researchers to teach. Perhaps some should simply be researchers who work closely with teaching staff who do lighter loads of research. I do not think anyone can be a teacher nor vice versa but someone who is a straight researcher forced to teach is not a good situation... so there are lots of ways to think about it ...

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