How do students’ experience academic research and learning through

A central justification for integrating research with undergraduate teaching is to develop graduates with capabilities for higher order thinking and lifelong learning. However, until recently, students’ experiences of the research-teaching relationship have been neglected in the literature (Jenkins, 2004). The experiences of students now form the focus of a growing body of research, with two key foci that are described below. 1) Studies examining students’ experiences of learning in a research-intensive

environment, including students’ understandings of research, of university learning, and their experiences and perceptions of their lecturers’ research.

Breen and Lindsay (2002) found that students had mixed reactions to the research orientation of their lecturers. Student views of staff research depended on their

perceptions of its relevance to students’ own goals for curriculum. Studies of students suggest that staff research is often invisible to them or that they feel excluded

(Robertson & Blackler, 2006; Zamorski, 2002). Zamorski (2002, p. 426) undertook a study of students experiences of learning in a research university and concluded that ‘while students clearly value being close to research and the idea of the University as a research community in which they were included, there were many ways in which, in practice, they felt excluded. Much of their frustration lay in their sense of lack of understanding of what was happening by way of research in the University and their lack of access to it.’

2) Investigations of the learning and other outcomes that students gain from research- based learning and from doing research.

expressed a range of motivations and claims for undergraduate research experiences, Seymour et al. (2004) found that they were poorly evaluated and fell short of

demonstrating improvements in students’ higher order thinking and research skills. There was a tendency for authors to write descriptive, highly positive accounts, and to omit details of their evaluation methods and approaches to data gathering, often combined with small sample sizes. However, Seymour et al. (2004) then undertook a study of undergraduate science research experiences at four US liberal arts colleges, and found that students identified a number of personal and professional gains. These gains included ‘thinking and working like a scientist’, development of critical thinking and problem solving skills, and enhanced career and graduate school preparation (p. 493). A significant finding of the Seymour et al. (2004) study was that ‘students valued the opportunity to work one-on-one with faculty’ and to develop collegial working relationships (p. 509). The literature on student persistence and retention indicates the importance of informal faculty contact on student retention, particularly for first year students (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1980; Tinto, 1997).

2.3.7 Summary of literature on relationships between teaching and research The literature investigating the relationships between teaching and research highlights the complexity of understandings and practices for integrating teaching and research, and the related diversity of student learning experiences and outcomes. Academics’ perceptions of the opportunities for developing research-teaching relationships are influenced by their disciplinary knowledge practices and cultures, and their motivations are influenced by their perceptions of rewards and priorities in their institutional context (Colbeck, 1998; Healey, 2005a; Robertson & Bond, 2005). Frameworks for

categorising and understanding teaching-research relationships highlight differences between conceptions of research as content that can be presented to students, or as a process for learning how to do research and for learning to learn (Healey, 2005a). Brew (2006) and Robertson and Bond (2001; 2005) identify the interrelatedness of

academics’ conceptions of knowledge, research, and teaching and learning that inform their conceptions and approaches to research-led teaching. Robertson and Bond (2005) introduce the notion of an ‘experiential field’ to express the inter-relatedness between academics’ experiences of research, teaching, learning and knowledge and their

research-led teaching practices. They describe the ‘experiential field’ as having a logical coherence that suggests it is difficult to influence one component of the experience in

and teaching tend to mirror their existing pedagogical understandings and practices, including the potential for entrenching teacher-centred and content transmission teaching approaches (Robertson & Bond, 2005). Many of the claims made for

enhancing student learning through research-led teaching and undergraduate research experiences are not well evaluated and do not demonstrate that students develop the intended higher order thinking skills (Seymour et al., 2004). Therefore there is a need to better understand the factors which shape how research is in curriculum in ways that enhance the quality of teaching and student learning.

Both the teaching and learning literature and the curriculum literature propose that curriculum and teaching decisions and practices are influenced by teachers’ beliefs about educational and contextual factors. However, research is not included as an influence in most models and explanatory frameworks for making sense of curriculum design. The research-teaching nexus literature proposes, but does not systematically investigate the field of inter-related beliefs that influence different approaches to

research-led teaching and curricula. Bringing together these two literatures allows me to build a more complete model of the field of influences that shape curriculum decision making. It also provides a framework to explore how research interacts with other influences within the field, and the conditions under which research enhances the quality of curriculum, teaching and learning. My aim is to explore all of the possible influences on curriculum design, in order to provide a rich description of the context in which academics make curriculum decisions, and to better understand the inter-

relationship between influences as academics interpret and respond to them. I conclude this literature review below, with a summary and justification of each of the key

influences on curriculum decision making that will be investigated in this study. 2.4 Conceptualising Curriculum Decision Making as a Field of Teachers’ Beliefs about Influences

My literature review shows that teachers’ decisions about curriculum and teaching are often conceptualised as being shaped by their beliefs about educational and contextual influences. This literature is representative of a substantial body of educational research that explores how teachers’ beliefs influence their behaviours, based on the assumption that beliefs are the best indicators of the decisions that individuals make throughout their lives (Pajares, 1992). However Pajares notes that beliefs are a ‘messy construct’

attitudes, values, judgments, axioms, opinions, ideology, perceptions, conceptions, and implicit and explicit theories. Pajares (1992) defines beliefs as the ways in which

individuals make sense of the world, and draws a critical distinction between beliefs and knowledge. Beliefs are characterised as being based on experiences, and are often episodic involving guiding images from past events; whereas knowledge is characterised as based on ‘facts’ (sic). Beliefs are regarded as not being open to evaluation and critical examination in the way that knowledge is. However, beliefs are considered to be far more influential than knowledge in determining how individuals organize and define tasks and problems, and as stronger predictors of behavior (Nespor, 1987).

The next sections explore how each of the influences identified above are

conceptualised and investigated in the literature to develop a conceptual framework for undertaking this study.