Bundled or unbundled? A multi‐text corpus‐assisted discourse analysis of the relationship between teaching and research in UK universities

Abstract

Creating and disseminating knowledge through research and teaching has long been regarded as the hallmark of the modern university. However, new university business models have called into question the 'bundling' of teaching and research, and sustained research on the relationship between teaching and research has found little evidence of an insoluble connection between the two activities. In this article, we explore the relationship between teaching and research from the perspective of universities' institutional discourse. We use corpus-assisted discourse analysis to examine the relationship between research and teaching as presented in two sets of institutional texts currently influential in UK Higher Education: Research Excellence Framework environment statements and Teaching Excellence Framework provider submissions (a total of 2143 documents and 12,492,071 words). Our findings show that, while universities emphasise the value of research to their teaching, they do not always emphasise (or sometimes even decry

The effect of research on the perceived quality of teaching: a cross-sectional study among university students in Lebanon

“…This value permitted to overcome interindividual and interinstitutional differences, thus confirming the association between research and teaching. Indeed, the analysis [ 15 ] of more than 2000 documents could demonstrate that research is perceived as a positive element in the context of teaching. Nevertheless, a previous study [ 36 ] among a cross-disciplinary sample of academics within a research-oriented university showed a positive relationship between teaching quality and research quality but not research productivity.…”

“…This value permitted to overcome interindividual and interinstitutional differences, thus confirming the association between research and teaching. Indeed, the analysis [15] of more than 2000 documents could demonstrate that research is perceived as a positive element in the context of teaching. Nevertheless, a previous study [36] among a cross-disciplinary sample of academics within Regarding the difference between student evaluations of teaching quality when thinking about the instructor with the highest compared to lowest research activity, our results have shown that instructors with the highest research activities had a better-perceived teaching quality than those with the lowest.…”

“…Ronald Barnett, who perceives that teaching and research are mutually exclusive, claims that faculty members’ preoccupation with research interferes with teaching or that teaching takes up valuable research time [ 12 ]. Although it is simpler to manage research and teaching as distinct activities, the research/teaching nexus has been described as symbiotic and synergistic [ 13 14 ], while teaching is often presented as a barrier to research excellence [ 15 ].…”

The Idea and Becoming of a University Across Time and Space: Ivory Tower, Factory and Network

“…Specifically, in higher education, Olssen and Peters ( 2005 ) describe the changing role of the university and the academic in the neoliberal era which result in hierarchical chains of command which reduce professional autonomy or what thinkers of the university of the past have defined as academic freedom (Mode 1 University). Marketized neoliberal pressures are measured on factory like input and output, in the contemporary UK university, we can see this as the primary activities of the university, research and teaching are measured for ‘excellence’ in REF and TEF in the UK 1 (Matthews and Kotzee 2019 , 2022 ) with Weberian bureaucracy (Sager and Rosser 2021 ). Such audit culture (Power 2013 ) and use of metrics and rankings have been described as ‘an attack’ (Bacevic 2018 ; Loveday 2021 ) and contrasts highly with freedom to pursue knowledge described in Mode 1.…”

“…Perhaps the biggest structural unbundling that has developed has been the unbundling of teaching and research in direct opposition to the Humboldtian ideal of teaching and research as directly linked and symbiotic in Mode 1 (Matthews and Kotzee 2022 ). Or those small number of global institutions with the affordance of a Mode 1 position may be the only research-teaching institutions.…”