The Cinderella of academia: Is higher education pedagogic research undervalued in UK research assessment?

Abstract

Academic research is increasingly driven by research assessment exercises (in the UK, by the Research Excellence Framework). These aim to compare outputs of researchers in each university with those elsewhere, but evaluation efforts have suffered from widespread criticism. The status of pedagogic research in HE-once described as the 'Cinderella' of academia, but now an increasing part of university research activity-has also prompted some controversy. Both policy-makers and academics have raised questions about whether such research is appropriate for submission, and confusion exists over the distinction between pedagogic research and 'scholarship of teaching and learning'. This project, funded by the UK Higher Education Academy, explored the experiences of HE pedagogic researchers in REF2014, and found evidence of barriers to participation. These included concerns about quality, expertise of reviewers, and local and intra-institutional politics, all of which may have limited the inclusion of HE pedagogic research.

What constitutes high quality higher education pedagogical research?

“…The role of pedagogical research in relation to 'excellence' in teaching has historically been contested (Gordon et al 2003). The field has been perceived as lacking respect across universities (Yorke 2000; Tierney 2020), offering 'little intellectual value' (Macfarlane 2011), being only of relevance to those in 'lesser' or 'teaching-only' roles (Cotton, Miller, and Kneale 2018). Pedagogy 'emphasizes the interrelationships between policy, theory, knowledge and rationale, all framed by political and social agendas, cultures of practice and power relations' (Waring and Evans 2015, 27).…”

“…Judged on journal-based and funding metrics alone, pedagogical research has lower levels of recognition and esteem than other areas of research and scholarly pursuits (Cotton, Miller, and Kneale 2018). The field has been hampered by a stigma of being under-researched and undertheorized (West and Rich 2012;Felton 2013;Cleaver, Lintern, and McLinden 2014;Curtin and Hall 2018).…”

Teaching and learning research in higher education in Colombia: a literature review

“…While the term 'SOTL' is widely used in the North, this term, and its Spanish equivalents, are rarely used in the teaching and learning research produced in Colombia. This may be because academics who engage in learning and teaching research in Colombia do not see "pedagogic research" (Cotton, Miller & Kneale 2018:1625 as inherently different to disciplinary research. If this is the case, it provides a perspective that is contrary to that of Boyer (1990), who sought to distinguish between disciplinary research, or what he termed the Scholarship of Discovery, with pedagogical research, or the Scholarship of Teaching, in order to make visible the scholarly work of teachers.…”

“…Additionally, the conflation of disciplinary and pedagogical research seems unlikely in Colombia given the emphasis on disciplinary research over teaching and learning research. Aligned with this, the confusion about what SOTL encompasses (Cotton et al 2018), and the absence of a common meta-language in the academy in Colombia to talk about SOTL, may be due to a lack of awareness of SOTL as a research movement. In either case, the lack of common terms to talk about and search for teaching and learning research from Colombia contributes to its invisibility.…”

The Institute of Coding

“…A perverse, but totally natural, consequence of the REF has been the marginalisation of pedagogy research in the UK [7]. This is particularly acute in Computing; dissemination of good practice is also low: [17] was the first survey of its kind in the UK, despite the fact that they had been running for many years elsewhere [21].…”