Integrating research, teaching and practice in the context of new institutional policies: a social practice approach

Abstract

Most research on the implementation of research-informed teaching has focused on influencing the individual practices of academics. However, social practice theory has criticised individualist approaches, arguing that attention must be paid to the context of practice, which in the academic context requires a focus on how academics articulate agency in their teaching practices in relation to specific contextual opportunities and constraints. This small-scale qualitative study in a UK university explores how academics across eight disciplines reshaped their understandings and practices of research-informed teaching in the context of a change in institutional mission from teaching and professional practice to incorporate expectations around research, drawing on developments in social practice theory when applied to academic workgroups. Understandings of identity and agency developed in postcolonial literary theory are used to further explore the academic work involved in creating new narratives for researchinformed teaching in the context of changing, and often contradictory discourses of research, teaching and practice. This has implications for approaches to implementing researchinformed teaching, which should recognise the work of academics in developing new narratives for research-informed teaching in the context of unique configurations of the nexus between research, teaching and practice in different disciplines. Social practice theory provides a lens for considering the contextual elements impacting on academic approaches to researchinformed teaching, while approaches to narrative borrowed from postcolonial literary theory foreground the agency of academics in working across contradictions that surfaced with changes to the nexus between research, teaching and practice, to create emergent practices of research-informed teaching.

“Teaching, my passion; publishing, my pain”: unpacking academics’ professional identity tensions through the lens of emotional resilience

“…For policy makers and researchers in this field, commonly shared dilemmas such as hectic workloads and insufficient academic training provoke considerable thoughts since if we do not answer them, our use of neoliberal practices may not prove as productive as they might be. The integration of research and teaching cannot be assumed, but has to be actively constructed (Mathieson 2019 ).…”

“…(Young) Subject to top-down mandates, academics must be research-engaged, but research seems to be undertaken as an isolated activity away from their daily practice (Xu 2014). Consequently, tensions in time and energy were perceived, ignoring the potential of research-informed teaching (Mathieson 2019). Song, for example, claimed to do research only for "utilitarian purposes," namely academic rank and salary increase.…”

Change and stability in academic agency in higher education curriculum reform

“…Brew, 2003) in curriculum change was capital that engaged both scholars in the process, but it is also capital that academic institutions value (cf. Mathieson, 2019). Here, their habitus emerged as 'structuring structure' (Bourdieu, 1990) and as elastic identity (Shams, 2019)-trying to make sense of the reform in a way that would be meaningful for them as scholars and focusing on what is thinkable and doable in their local communities.…”

“…Curriculum-making is often regarded as a teaching-related activity, and because of that, academics' response to curriculum change may reflect the existing tensions between teaching and research duties (e.g. Mathieson, 2019). In particular, the question of time economy becomes vital in the decisions about where and how it is wise to invest time in order to gain valuable capital in the field of academia (Bourdieu, 1988, pp.…”

Being a Higher Education Teacher: Living in the Professional Space and Creating the Professional Body

“…Then integration and harmonization form a holistic picture of HETs' complex performance or academic professional activities that a part of creating the professional body. Mathieson (2019) adds that such integration provides for HETs to implement research-informed teaching; nevertheless, HETs could have different beliefs about learning and teaching.…”