Commonly known, commonly not known, totally unknown a framework for students becoming researchers

1、commonly known, commonly not known, totally unknown: a framework for students becoming researchers john willison* and kerry oregancentre for learning and professional development, university of adelaide, south australia.this is a preprint of an article whose final and definitive form has been publis

2、hed in the higher education research and development 26 (4)december 2007 pp393-409. higher education research and development is available online at http:/journalsonline.tandf.co.au. the article is available at * corresponding author. centre for learning and professional development, university of a

3、delaide , north tce, adelaide, 5005, south australia. email: .au providing undergraduate students with research experience has been asserted as a way of reinventing university education. this assertion lacks both substantial empirical evidence and a coherent theoretical fram

4、ework. in this paper, the authors consider both research and theory relating to undergraduate research and present the research skill development framework, which can be used to both chart and monitor students research skill development. an example is given of the practical application of this frame

5、work, together with associated preliminary research findings. further related research directions are also suggested.i am neither especially clever nor especially gifted. i am only very, very curious. -albert einsteinintroductionsince the time of the boyer commission, (1998) undergraduate student re

6、search has become an imperative for research-intensive universities. this has been correlated with increased participation in postgraduate research (lopatto, 2004; gonzalez-espada & zaras, 2006), with one study (bauer & bennett, 2003) suggesting that phd completion rates were doubled for students wh

7、o had participated in undergraduate research. increased completion rates will be of major interest to research-focused academics, because they are part of the funded measures of research-excellence in some countries (the research assessment exercise in the united kingdom, performance-based research

8、funding in new zealand and probably the anticipated research quality framework in australia). undergraduate research has also been associated with higher levels of student satisfaction and with their perceptions of generic skill development (kardash, 2000; ishiyama, 2002; hathaway, nagda & gregerman

9、, 2002; bauer & bennett, 2003; seymour et al., 2004). as well as being of considerable educational significance, in australia at least, measures of such indicators are linked to the substantial dispensation of money as per the teaching and learning performance fund (dest, 2006). curiously, studies o

10、f undergraduate student research typically lack a strong empirical basis, with a scarcity of research findings upon which sound evaluation strategies might be grounded (seymour et al., 2004, p.493). one of the reasons for this may be the lack of theoretical framework from which to conceptualise unde

11、rgraduate research across all disciplines.this paper posits research and the development of research skills as both a product and a process of university education. this involves students learning how to research within a specific discipline, akin to griffiths (2004) research-orientated teaching; it

12、 also involves students conducting their own research, as per griffiths research-based teaching. we represent student research as a continuum of knowledge production, from knowledge new to the learner to knowledge new to humankind, moving from the commonly known, to the commonly not known, to the to

13、tally unknown. students may be positioned at various stages along that continuum. many commence undergraduate studies already familiar with the process of developing knowledge new to themselves. few come to postgraduate studies ready to explore or create knowledge new to humankind. a dilemma for sta

14、ff and students alike is how to chart the movement along this research continuum and how to facilitate that movement.this paper is developed on the premise that, in order to engage in meaningful research, students would benefit from the explicit development of their research skills, as would the sta

15、ff guiding that development. the focus of this paper, then, is to present a framework for the research skill development (rsd) of coursework students. the framework is for lecturers who want to conceptualise how they will facilitate this development. it is also for educational leaders concerned abou

16、t student ratings and research funding issues and for researchers wanting to study research skill development and the links between teaching and research. in the paper we first explore the relationship between undergraduate education and university research. next, we consider just what is understood

17、 by research skill development and outline studies which have been carried out into the concept in the undergraduate years. we then present our rsd framework and its application to a particular course of study, and the findings of a one-year pilot study with emergent research questions for the main

18、study currently underway.undergraduate education and university researchundergraduate education has historically been seen in conflict with academics research agenda (lane, 1996; sample, 1972). boyers revolutionary reconceptualisation of scholarship, motivated by a concern to break out of the tired

19、old teaching versus research debate (boyer 1990, p. xii) suggested possibilities other than that seemingly entrenched truth of research and teaching as necessarily competing endeavours. teaching and research may not be in opposition; they may be inextricably linked with each other (brew, 2006). this

20、 corresponds to boyers vision of a more inclusive view of what it means to be a scholar (1990, p.24). within this vision, universities are perceived as ecosystems made up of communities of learners (the boyer commission on educating undergraduates in a research university, 1998). this ecology, the b

21、oyer commission says:depends on a deep and abiding understanding that inquiry, investigation, and discovery are at the heart of the enterprise everyone at a university should be a discoverer, a learner the teaching responsibility of the university is to make all its students participate in the missi

22、on (the boyer commission on educating undergraduates in a research university, 1998, p.9).within this paradigm, students are perceived as researchers who observe and participate in the process of both discovery and communication of knowledge (the boyer commission on educating undergraduates in a res

23、earch university, 1998, p.18). universities are scholarly communities (huber, 2003) and the purpose of undergraduate education is to induct students into that community. lave and wenger (1991) speak of learning as being configured through the process of the learner becoming a full participant in a s

24、ociocultural practice (p. 29), with learning corresponding to increasing participation in communities of practice (p. 47). the beginner develops an increasing understanding of how, when and what about old-timers collaborate, collude and collide (p. 95); they learn to become members of a research com

25、munity (coppola, 2001; brew, 2003a). this initiation is an integral part of all education. lane (1996) cites one of the best examples of the integration of teaching and research as the cracker-jack first grade teacher questioning his or her class (p. 1), leading them in a process of inquiry to creat

26、e their own knowledge by guiding their inquiries and reinforcing their discoveries (p. 1). research skill development can be seen as an underlying principle of all education and not restricted to researchers engaging in activities which compete with their teaching demands.undergraduate research theo

27、ry and practicea key issue is to define undergraduate research. dominick et al. (2000) reviewed 400 articles on undergraduate research, concluding that few of them address this basic question. most simply accepted the proposition that research was whatever a faculty member and student decided what i

28、t was (p. 5). lane (1996), too, acknowledged the problem of definition, citing a us supreme court judges comment in relation to obscenity, that i cant define it but i know it when i see it. others have striven for a definition of what undergraduate research experience might entail. healey (2003), fo

29、r example, specifies the aim of research experience, namely to develop students understanding of, and abilities to carry out, research. he says that programs should induct students into the role of research in their discipline and present knowledge as created, uncertain and contested (p.15), this co

30、nflicting with the notion of teaching and learning as primarily concerned with the transmission and assimilation of knowledge. in terms of actual practice, bauer and bennett (2003) report that, before the mid 1980s, there was little commitment to undergraduate research and that the basic structures

31、and methods of undergraduate instruction in the nations research universities have remained largely unchanged (p.211). the boyer commission on educating undergraduates in the research university (1998) claimed that the efforts made up until that time were timid, sporadic, limited, and unavailing, bu

32、t, a few years later, seymour, et al., found a large number of programs and models (2004, p.494) associated with undergraduate research. the incidence of undergraduate research may be somewhat dependent on the particular discipline area. there has been a considerable tradition of research among scie

33、nce undergraduates (reisberg, 1998; evans & witkosky, 2004), though perhaps less so in the physical sciences (healey, 2003). the imbalance of research education towards the sciences and away from the humanities may relate to the typical research processes and traditions within the disciplines (reisb

34、erg, 1998), science research often being carried out by teams while research in the humanities is more often a solitary activity (healey, 2003). students within different disciplines also report different perceptions of research activity. a study by robertson and blackler (2006) found that students

35、from the discipline of english perceived themselves to be engaged in research, in collaboration with lecturers, from the first year of study, whereas physics students perceived that it was their lecturers alone who undertook research.as well as interdisciplinary variations, there are also different

36、approaches to providing undergraduate research experiences. one, which closely mimics traditional postgraduate research, has students carrying out a project under the supervision or mentorship of a staff member. this may involve the student pursuing the research alone (reisberg, 1998; ward, bennett

37、& bauer, 2003) or in collaboration with the staff member (evans & witkosky, 2004). a variation of this is for students to work collaboratively on a short- or long-term research project (johnson, herd & tisdall, 2002; healey, 2003). some programs require students to communicate their findings through

38、 mini-conferences or in journals (sivilotti & weide, 2004; dominick et al., 2000; brew, 2003b), sometimes incorporating processes of peer editing (coppola, 2001). in some cases, whole programs are constructed using a project-based inquiry model (major, 2002; healey, 2003). studies into undergraduate

39、 research studies have been carried out into the perceived learning outcomes of undergraduate research. bauer and bennett (2003) report that most of these studies indicate high levels of satisfaction for students with the associated learning outcomes in terms of research-specific skills. in their ow

40、n study, bauer and bennett took a wider perspective, surveying alumni regarding their development of general cognitive and personal abilities and skills and correlating those with whether and how much the respondents had participated in undergraduate research, this being defined as collaboration bet

41、ween undergraduates and their faculty research sponsors (bauer & bennett, 2003, p. 215). their findings were that those who had participated in undergraduate research rated that experience highly, the highest ratings being given by those who had spent the greatest amount of time in undergraduate res

42、earch. those with undergraduate research experience also reported significantly greater enhancement of eight identified cognitive and personal skills and abilities compared to those not in such programs, and, as noted earlier, were more likely to undertake a higher degree, being twice as likely as n

43、on-participants to complete doctoral studies. similarly, a study by ward, bennett and bauer (2003) indicated that students perceived that engaging in research facilitated learning to a greater extent than traditional courses. students specifically acknowledged the extent to which their practical and

44、 advanced technical skills had been developed and frequently included words such as joy and wonderful when speaking of their research experience. similar benefits were identified by reisberg (1998) who found that, for students, researching was more exciting and academically rewarding than lecture-ba

45、sed approaches to teaching and learning. dominick et al. (2000) claimed that, through research activities, students gained deeper understanding for their subject matter. seymour et al. (2004, p.493) identified a raft of skill and attitude-based benefits including personal/professional gains, improve

46、d thinking as a scientist, clarification or confirmation of career plans and enhanced career/graduate studies preparation. as well as enabling students to learn more efficiently, evans and witkosky (2004) identified another benefit, namely that staff were encouraged to maintain their research effort

47、s, a sentiment echoed by jonte-pace (2003) who claimed that the impetus provided by undergraduate student research enabled staff to move forward more efficiently and productively with their own research. these positive views are not shared by all. reisberg (1998) reported that while staff identified

48、 good outcomes for students, providing undergraduate students with research experience ate into the time available for their own research. he also judged such experiences as sometimes trivial in purpose, citing ronald dotterer, dean of the liberal arts college at salisbury state as saying that it wa

49、s sometimes difficult to tell the difference between a research project and, say, a challenging homework assignment (p. a46). evans and witkosky (2004) expressed other reservations in relation to undergraduate research programs. they maintained that not all students were suited to research, that it

50、conflicted with a general approach to learning which involved convergent processes with pre-determined outcomes, that research facilities were inadequate and that undergraduate research programs often entailed students carrying out the professors research rather than undertaking their own. healey (2

51、005) similarly reported students perceiving themselves as primarily recipients of research, rather then actors in its production (p.194).despite concerns such as these, the prevailing perspective is generally one of support for the notion of undergraduate research. the boyer commission on educating

52、undergraduates in the research university (1998) was particularly committed to that possibility, in accord with the dewey principle that learning is primarily based on discovery guided by mentoring rather than on the transmission of information (p. 15). they advocate that, commencing with the freshm

53、an year, students should be provided with as many research opportunities as possible, exploring diverse fields, through internships and collaborative projects and communicating the results of their enquiries. this, they say, should be followed through in subsequent years culminating in a capstone ex

54、perience in their final year. they identify the most important task facing universities now as being to define in more creative ways what it means to be a research university committed to teaching undergraduates (p.38). a framework for research skill developmentthe sentiment inherent in much of the

55、discussion in the earlier sections is that research is an entity separate from and unrelated to student coursework and assignments. this suggests that, at some stage, perhaps enrolling in the honours year, masters or phd, a student suddenly begins to research, no development of research skills havin

56、g occurred in the undergraduate years. the alternative view we presented constructs research much more broadly, such that:the word research is used to cover a whole range of activities including very high level, professional focused research right through to a quick online search for references . an

57、d everything in between (johnstone cited in lane, 2006, p. 226).johnstones explanation of why there are such differing understandings of the term research fits with the concept being treated as a continuum which ranges from researching a few articles to engaging in professional focussed research. su

58、ch a continuum is quite visionary, allowing research to be seen as a learning endeavour from the quick online search end to the professional focused research end. if all enquiry tasks are considered to play a part in student research skill development, even from the earliest years of schooling, then

59、 a more holistic, coherent and continuous view of student research may evolve.the emerging question is why there has been only limited recognition of explicit undergraduate research. undergraduate research is possible; it is presently being conducted in some disciplines, yet many of the problems raised