Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 9 | Page 46

EDITOR'S EPILOGUE | 47
46 | JADE
EDITOR’S EPILOGUE
A Higher Education Research Troika!
I
would like to use my epilogue in this ninth edition to tell JADE
readers about The Higher Education Network Keele (THiNK), both
as a support network you might wish to join but also as a mechanism
which has helped Keele explore the factors and issues that face all
colleagues conducing higher education research. THiNK was originally
established in order to encourage and support all colleagues interested in
or already conducting higher education research to publish their work, to
share funding opportunities and to provide assistance with reading and
commenting on funding bids. The network also encourages and facilitates
conversation between its members with a view to fostering collaboration
in higher education research.
One recent task the network faced was to gain an appreciation of
the various issues around the place of, and support for, pedagogic
research in the context of the REF and TEF frameworks. Key
discussions determined the best way to approach this was to
conduct a very preliminary institute-wide survey to gain a greater
understanding of how pedagogic support could move forward,
which would hopefully help us to determining strategic priorities
for pedagogic research support moving forward. To that end, we
conducted the survey and whilst participation rates were good, it
should be noted up front that we were unable to collect information
from everyone eligible or indeed, appropriate to include. Therefore
the findings I'll discuss below should be read more as a “snap-shot”
of the range of opinions associated with conducting pedagogic
research.
As part of the survey, participants were asked for information
about their publication outputs, conference attendances, invitations
to speak and a range of other outputs so that we could gain an
appreciation of the diverse range of ways higher education
researchers were measuring “success”. The survey also included
free-text comments relating to perceived higher education research
support needs which were included to allow for the formulation
of targeted proposals to address issues identified by the network.
After the data was collected, the network met again to discuss the
findings (this report will be available at a later date to JADE readers)
and a range of very informative and illustrative discussion points
emerged from that meeting.
The reason I wanted to use my epilogue to look at selected highlights
of the emergent points was to hopefully encourage discussion and
JADE reader engagement with the THiNK group but also to help
you self-identify if they share and/all of these issues in their own
practice.
The free-text comments essentially boiled down to
three things colleagues perceived they needed support
with: Money, Time, and Identity.
It ' s (not) all about the….
What surprised me most from the survey was that very few
participants actually identified “cost” as a significant barrier to
their research. Indeed, seeking research collaboration outside of
disciplines was one of the few instances where researchers felt
they would benefit from additional funds. What was also interesting
about this for me was that it showed, in some instances, that
finance is actually a small aspect of getting most types of higher
education research done. One of the other ways that money came
up in discussion was to do with publishing costs, but that seems to
vary widely based on the discipline and journals targeted, making
it a tricky prospect to address at the whole institute level. The only
other significant cost implication that emerged was funding to
attend conferences, which is both logical and strategically beneficial
to both the researcher and their host institute.
“Change…and it seems not a moment too soon!”
Unsurprisingly, the major factor identified universally was time
(plus, if you get the reference above we should have a coffee!).
Not only writing time (which can be significant) but also time to
conduct, plan and then disseminate their pedagogic research. In
essence, time for sustained scholarship was a critical factor in even
engaging in research in the first place. There are clearly no easy
answers when we look to create time for research but equally, one
way this might be looked at is in a consumerist way: With the HE
sector recognising sustained scholarship as an essential promotion
criteria, can we really afford not to engage, no matter what else in
our diaries might need rationalised? My feeling is no, we cannot. The
reality is that this requires constant self-negotiation of time invested
weighed against professional development throughout the year. I
once heard someone at a conference describe this as “spinning
plates”…I like that analogy because it implies that it is possible to
keep it all moving rather than bleakly thinking it's an “either/or”
scenario with pedagogic research.
Who am I?
The surprise for me in collecting this data was that identity emerged
as a real factor is engagement with and success in pedagogic
research. Many of the survey participants reported feeling isolated
from each other when engaging in their HE research. This was
sharply brought into focus for me when they requested to have more