Kim, Yangson

Postiglione, Gerard A.

English

Hiroshima University Institutional Repository

Editorial:  The Research and Teaching Nexus of Academics in the New Era:  Findings from the Academic Profession in a Knowledge-Based Society (APIKS)    Gerard A. Postiglione* and Yangson Kim**    The teaching role was at the core of universities in Medieval Europe and in the academies of China’s Global Age. The Humboldtian model of higher education cemented teaching and research at Berlin University (Robertson, 2007).  Contemporary universities have multiple roles and functions but research and teaching remain their central activity.  Their symbiotic relationship is studied but remains an area of debate (Robertson, 2007, Hattie & Marsh 1996).  There is a popular belief that research enhances teaching but the evidence is inconclusive.  The teaching-research nexus is negligible or at best loosely coupled (Coate, Barnett, & Williams, 2001; Marsh & Hattie, 2002).  It has been weakened by globalization, technological acceleration, and the massification of higher education (Kogan, 2004).  For good reason, it has become a focus of scholarship in comparative higher education.  Shin (2011) and others have called for a renewed focus with more diverse perspectives to address the precarious situation in which the teaching-research nexus finds itself. Data from the 2017/2018 international survey known as the Academic Profession in Knowledge-Based Society (APIKS) provides a database to reexamine the teaching-research nexus.  APIKS is the third major international initiative to study the academic profession after the Changing Academic Profession for 2007/08 and the Carnegie Survey of the International Academic Profession in 1992.  APIKS provides a platform for 30 country teams who administered a common questionnaire consisting of eight sections: career and professional situation, general work situation and activities, teaching, research, external activities, governance and management, academics informative career stages, and personal backgrounds.  The preliminary APIKS findings were presented at the Conference on the Teaching-Research Nexus which was hosted by Hiroshima University in March of 2019.  Fifty participants from around the world discussed the changes, challenges, and opportunities that concern the academic profession in its approach to teaching and research.  This issue of Higher Education Forum (HEF) distills the key findings in a series of invited papers that underwent a double-blind review.  Under the title The Research and Teaching Nexus of Academics in the New Era: The Main  * Chair Professor, Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, email: gerry@hku.hk **Lecturer, Research Institute for Higher Education, Hiroshima University, email: yskim@hiroshima-u.ac.jp 21Findings from the Academic Profession in a Knowledge-Based Society, this special issue of HEF includes articles that cover higher education systems across Asia, North and South America, and Eastern and Western Europe.  The empirical analyses of the APIKS survey data employ diverse approaches that explore the topic within each domestic context.  Together, they hint at the direction in which the field is moving amid a world of neo-globalization, geopolitical uncertainties, and rapid technological acceleration.  The first article “Teaching, research, and the Canadian professoriate: Findings from the 2018 APIKS survey” (Stephenson, Jones, Bégin-Caouette, & Metcalfe) suggested that a large majority of full-time professors in Canada perceive a strong connection between teaching and research, and accept both as critically central to their professional work.  The existence of strong faculty associations, unions and an institutional mandate for teaching and research contribute to sustaining a strong balance between teaching and research in Canada.   In the second article, “The emergence of the organizational academic profession: Vertical differentiation of German universities and the research–teaching nexus,” Müller and Schneijderberg analyze the differences between the research and teaching nexus based on the organizational characteristics of a university.  Their results confirmed a vertical differentiation between German universities and a loosening of the research–teaching nexus differentiated by organizational characteristics. Zhang, Horta, Jung, and Postiglione analyze the research–teaching nexus by conceptualizing research agendas as representing a key element of research and teaching styles by using academic self-efficacy as a mediator between research and teaching.  In “The research–teaching nexus: Not merely an enduring myth,” their results show that academics’ research agendas statistically predicted their teaching styles after age, gender, academic rank, and institutional ranking are considered.  Furthermore, they found that academic self-efficacy, especially research efficacy, provides a pathway from research agendas to one of the two teaching styles examined. In “Teaching and research of academics in Mexico: Preferences and dedication according to the international survey APIKS” Estévez-Nenninger et al. analyze the preferences of and the time dedicated to both the teaching and the research activities by different types of Mexican academics.  Public and institutional policies are intended to intensify research more than teaching.  They document the changes in the preferences of the academic profession and their level of dedication to the teaching and research activities. Calikoglu, Seggie, and Uslu analyze the teaching and research nexus in Turkish academia by focusing on academics’ main activities and orientations.  In “The teaching and research nexus in Turkish academia: Lessons from an international survey,” we can see that Turkish academics have positive perceptions of the research and teaching nexus.  But the rapid expansion of higher education and competitive global trends are having a major effect on Turkey’s academic profession, creating contradictions regarding the interplay between research and teaching activities. Higher Education Forum22 Vol. 17The sixth article “Preferences of U.S. faculty members regarding the teaching-research nexus” (Jacob et al.) analyzes trends in research and teaching over 30 years.  The authors provide an in-depth analysis by faculty rank and highlight differences in the research and teaching preferences of junior and senior faculty members.  They provide a model to explain faculty productivity among sampled participants, where research preference, collaboration, and institutional research expectations serve as key predictors. Arimoto suggests a research-teaching-study (R-T-S) nexus that goes beyond research and teaching.  His paper, “An international and comparative perspective of the academic profession’s development: With a focus on the R-T-S nexus in the world and Japan” analyzes the transformation from incompatible to compatible research and teaching, and the possibility of the academic profession’s R-T-S nexus based on the results gained from past international surveys of the academic profession.  The eighth article explores the teaching-research nexus and its effect on the satisfaction of academics in Croatia and Slovenia.  In “How teaching and research nexus in academic attitudes, behaviours, and system of promotion influences academic satisfaction? Case study of Croatia and Slovenia?,” Flander, Rončević, and Kočar show that satisfaction regarding academic behaviors, academic attitudes, and academic promotion is quite dependent on both national and internal and external institutional factors in the academic environment, while the current policy on promotion affects the overall future of the academic profession. “Changes in academics’ identity, job satisfaction, and job stress between 1992 and 2018 in South Korea” (Lee, Jung, & Shin) analyzes the association between academic identity, job satisfaction and stress over the last three decades.  This study found that most Korean academics have a dual identity as researchers and teachers, but they tend to prefer research to teach because performance-based management practices at universities have strengthened the researcher’s identity. This study also found that, while academic identity is not associated with academics’ job satisfaction, those who identify as researchers are likely to experience higher levels of stress. The nine papers in this issue of HEF shown that the academic profession is facing similar challenges despite diverse national contexts.  Strong faculty associations support a stable balance between teaching and research, as in the case of Canada while policy interventions strengthen the synergistic relationship in Germany, Japan, and Mexico.  In all countries, as illustrated in the data from Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, Turkey, and the USA, there are variations by academic rank, gender, and discipline, as well as at different organizational levels and university types.  The association with job satisfaction was especially evident in Korea and Croatia/Slovenia, while there were also idiosyncrasies in Korea pertaining to stress, in Hong Kong pertaining to teaching styles, and in Japan pertaining to study habits.  Taken together, these papers point to the potential for theory building about the transformation of the central functions of teaching and research among the academic profession in the contemporary university of the 21st Century.  Gerard A. Postiglione and Yangson KimMarch 2020 23 Acknowledgment: We appreciate the kind support of the HEF’s Editor-in-chief Shinichi Kobayashi and Editor Futao Huang in publishing this special issue.  We would also like to thank the HEF’s Managing Staff Chie Suzumitsu for her endless support during the entire process.  Finally, we must express our sincere appreciation to the reviewers, who provided insightful ideas and sharp criticisms, which helped the articles improve and progress.     References  Coate, K., Barnett, R., & Williams, G. (2001). Relationships between teaching and research in higher education in England. Higher Education Quarterly, 55(2), 158-174. Hattie, J., & Marsh, H.W. (1996). The relationship between research and teaching: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research 66(4), 507–42. Kogan, M. (2004) Teaching and research: some framework issues, Higher Education Management and Policy, 16(2), 9–18. Marsh, H.W., & Hattie, J. (2002). The relation between research productivity and teaching effectiveness: Complementary, antagonistic, or independent constructs? Journal of Higher Education, 73(5), 603–41. Robertson, J. (2007). Beyond the ‘research/teaching nexus’: exploring the complexity of academic experience. Studies in Higher Education, 32(5), 541-556. Shin, J.C. (2011). Teaching and research nexuses across faculty career stage, ability and affiliated discipline in a South Korean research university. Studies in Higher Education, 36(4), 485-503.   Higher Education Forum24 Vol. 17

The Research and Teaching Nexus of Academics in the New Era: Findings from the Academic Profession in a Knowledge-Based Society (APIKS) <Editorial>

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The Research and Teaching Nexus of Academics in the New Era: Findings from the Academic Profession in a Knowledge-Based Society (APIKS) <Editorial>

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