1. Issues for staff and students in mainstreaming inquiry based learning
Associate Professor Angela Brew
The University of Sydney
Australia
Thanks
Situate myself – Researching and Directing project.
I want to begin by looking at why it’s important for us to connect research and teaching and the role of research-based education in this.
Then I want to look at how we might do this. I’ll suggest that there are some aspects of the ways universities operate that get in the way of change. So I want to mention some of those.

2. Overview Why is it important to integrate research and teaching?
What does inquiry-based education look like in practice?
What gets in the way?
Higher education in the future
Then I want to set out a possible vision of higher education in the future where inquiry is centre stage; a higher education where research and teaching are closely connected; where students and academics work in inclusive research, teaching and learning partnerships.
So first of all, why is inquiry-based higher education important?

3. Let me begin by inviting you to think for a moment about today’s students and the kind of world they live in.
We can’t escape the fact that it is a world characterized by what Bauman, (2006, p. 1) calls ‘liquid modernity’; “a society in which the conditions under which its members act change faster than it takes the ways of acting to consolidate into habits and routines.’
So it’s a fast-paced world for students.
It’s increasingly a world of video on demand, podcasts, DVDs; not scheduled TV and radio, but TV and radio on demand wherever and whenever it is wanted.

4. Knowledge now comes in sound bites
Knowledge now comes in sound bites. If students want to know something they have instant access to answers through the internet.
After fast food comes “Le fast-science” as this French article suggests. Knowledge comes chaotic and unplanned. Students are free to decide what knowledge they want and they are free to contribute to it.
This challenges who are the students and who the teachers.
Add to this the uncertainty and ambiguity of living in a fearful, perplexing and pluralistic world; a world that Barnett (2000) describes as supercomplex and Giddens (1999) calls a ‘runaway world’.
Huge global problems requiring solutions are evident to anyone who picks up a newspaper or accesses the media; and students are no exception to this.

5. Many of our traditional courses pose challenges for those who are living in the kinds of conditions sketched here. They question the instant gratification of knowledge through the internet. They demand that students engage in sustained study, acquire a defined set of learning outcomes, and learn a relatively orderly and organised body of knowledge. They require students to acknowledge the authority of academics.
Instant access to visual knowledge of the world through a variety of media make sustained study appear a chore. Instant access to friends and family through mobile phones and may make students impatient for feedback. It may lead them to expect instantaneous responses to requests.
In such a context sitting students passively in a lecture theatre will not do. Living in the twenty-first century poses critical challenges for how we think of teaching and learning in higher education.

6. What is higher education doing to prepare students for the complex and challenging decisions that they are likely to encounter throughout their lives?
Higher education teachers and managers have already taken on numerous new agendas in recent years. We have engaged in curriculum reforms; offered courses more flexibly; integrated graduate attributes; combined or rationalized degrees. This is on top of: coping with more students and accommodating more students from other countries and cultures.
But have we yet gone far enough? What are we doing to prepare students for the complex and challenging world that they will face as professionals?

7. “What is required is not that students become masters of bodies of thought, but that they are enabled to begin to experience the space and challenge of open, critical inquiry (in all its personal and interpersonal aspects)”
Vital elements of a university education need to become more focused on preparing students to solve a range of unforeseen problems; problems that we cannot yet imagine. The demands of today’s society require higher education to open up to creative solutions, to the generation and acquisition of new kinds of knowledge; to new kinds of thinking.
‘What is required’ says Ron Barnett, ‘is not that students become masters of bodies of thought, but that they are enabled to begin to experience the space and challenge of open, critical inquiry (in all its personal and interpersonal aspects)’
(Barnett 1997: 110)

8. The personal and professional demands students are going to face will require them to have developed the skills of critical analysis. Students need to be able to critically evaluate the knowledge; to make rational judgments in the light of good evidence; evidence that they perhaps gather, & to reflect on what they are doing & why.
These are the skills of inquiry. Inquiry is central to a super-complex society. SLIDE NOW
Today’s society demands creativity. It demands the ability to deal with complexity, with uncertainty. We need new kinds of teaching; new spaces, new ideas about knowledge, new ways to engage students.
I believe that the integration of research and teaching provides exciting ways to meet this agenda. This is why I am passionate about it.

9. Overview Why is it important to integrate research and teaching?
What does inquiry-based education look like in practice?
What gets in the way?
Higher education in the future
So, this is by way of suggesting why it matters that we develop an inquiry-based higher education.
I want to go on now to explore what this looks like in practice.

10. Research-based learning: students
Opportunities are provided for students at all levels to:
experience and conduct research
learn about research throughout their courses
develop the skills of research and inquiry
contribute to the University’s research effort.
Here’s my definition of research-based learning.
Students might engage in research-like activities.

11. At arm’s length What is knowledge and how is it generated?
Generic Graduate Attributes
EG What is knowledge and how is it generated? – interviewing researchers to find out about their research (UCL)
Linda Dwyer reports an example at Oxford Brookes University where geography student teams interview academics about their research. This enables groups of students to explore how research is generated and communicated.
Students do aspects of research to learn about research - could be one off assignments or more sustained study.
Many examples focus on students replicating research community practices– peer review, publication on web or paper so that they learn research skills; the skills they will need no matter what profession they go into.
– Homeric Hymn

12. At arm’s length What is knowledge and how is it generated?
Generic Graduate Attributes
Learning disciplinary knowledge
Doing research to learn about research
So for example, Let’s look at how students might learn disciplinary content.
“I have been able to introduce “sleep” as a topic in the Exercise and Sports Science course because of my involvement in sleep research. I try to make the material relevant to the Exercise and Sports Science field.” This is a teacher focused example, where students learn the content of the teacher’s research.
ASK THEM TO GIVE EXAMPLES OF THE OTHERS
Teacher-focused approach to teaching and students as the audience for research
An example of a student focused approach to teaching and students engaged in research activity and where students are learning about the process of research Damien Field – paper with title and abstract removed. Students crate a title and abstract.
A student focused example where the content of the research has to be learnt is eg Greenhouse gas (Usyd)

13. Harvesting icebergs Collaboration in inquiry – for an assignment –
Or the whole curriculum might take an inquiry based approach: PBL GMP
Inquiry/research distinction
Mostly in research-based learning, when students are engaging in inquiry, they are doing so independently of the scholarly activity of their teachers. They are not engaged in collaborative research with teachers; only with their peers. Students occupy a separate domain.

14. A community of scholars?
Collaboration in inquiry
Problem based learning
Interdisciplinary inquiry
Understanding how disciplinary knowledge is defined
Research as social practice
Involving students in the community of researchers

15. So what about teachers and learners doing research together
So what about teachers and learners doing research together? Many undergraduate students in the States work as research assistants co-operatively planning and implementing research projects
Summer Research Scholarships offer a unique opportunity for students to obtain experience in research. They provide students with a fantastic insight into the research process and give them the opportunity to test whether research is for them. At the University of Sydney, the scholarships offer students the experience of working with well-established researchers in high quality medical research facilities.
What do they offer?
the opportunity to undertake a research project over a period of eight weeks
supervision by well-established researchers
excellent research facilities
$200 per week tax free stipend

16. Total counts – raw data
The Sydney Basin Aerobiology Survey:
Involving students in a current research program, as part of the first year Biology curriculum
Charlotte Taylor (School of Biological Sciences, The University of Sydney ) and Brett Green (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA)
Well you may say that that is all very well for small groups of privileged students, what about the general mass of students. In first year Biology at the University of Sydney, Each student is given a Petri dish and they put this in their back yards over a 24 hour period and collect all the fungal spores in the atmosphere. There are 1000 students in the class. They live all over the Sydney metropolitan area – this shows the number of samples they collected. They bring them back to the lab and grow them. The results are mapped onto a geophysical map. This generates new knowledge which is now being published in a scientific journal – and a pedagogical journal. Charlotte Taylor describes a 1000 students as an “ideal” size of research team for carrying out research of this nature!

17. Research-based learning: staff
Staff and students engage in scholarship and/or research in relation to understanding learning and teaching. Evidence-based approaches are used to establish the effects and effectiveness of student learning, teaching effectiveness and academic practice.
So these are som examples of research-based learning for students.
We know that research is learning. So what about research-based learning for staff. This is where Staff and students engage in scholarship and/or research in relation to understanding learning and teaching. This is often called the scholarship of learning and teaching or perhaps pedagogical research.

18. There are aspects of our university lives that are so enshrined that we accept them without question including those tacit and implicit assumptions that determine the distinctions we make about what is appropriate and what is inappropriate behaviour for example, what is useful or useless, and what is good or bad. The values enshrined in university policy and practice, the ways in which we speak and act even without thinking; what we think is appropriate academic work or what students are and are not capable of; many of these aspects of our university lives are taken for granted. They go unquestioned.

19. What we have found is that by engaging academics in the scholarship of teaching and learning beginning with our graduate certificate, they begin to systematically investigate and to question some of these aspects.
We encourage them to explore the underlying values and motivations that drive them to teach the way they do; to explore the contradictions in their values and the values embedded in how they teach. For example, one committed and experienced teacher said he had come to realize that the way he was teaching and assessing his students indicated a lack of trust of them. He confronted the conflict between his beliefs about the importance of students taking responsibility for their learning and his practice which inadvertently prevented them from doing this. Another participant realized through engaging in an inquiry project on her teaching that there was a lot of ego associated with the way she taught. This self realization and the desire to become more student focused led to a desire to practice more humility in teaching.

20. Brew, A., & Sachs, J. (Eds.). (2007). Transforming a University: The scholarship of teaching and learning in practice. Sydney: Sydney University Press.
So the scholarship of teaching and learning can lead people to experience in profound ways the values and virtues that underpin their teaching. An open and honest examination of the values underlying higher education inevitably raises the question of how academics and students relate to each other and this leads to the recognition of the need to involve students in the process of examining teaching and learning. Once you do this you are led to critique the relationship between students and their teachers.
So if the scholarship of teaching and learning leads to such critical and important insights, why confine such inquiries to the teaching and learning domain? Academics have research and inquiry skills that could, and I suggest should, be applied in a wider range of situations.

21. Why confine critically
reflexive inquiries to the teaching and learning
domain?
Mass higher education, accountability requirements, new professional demands, the challenges of learning technology, internationalisation, globalisation, fierce competition for resources, together with epistemological uncertainty all create a problematic environment for people working in higher education. Change is endemic. Conflicts in values and practices are an everyday occurrence.
The ways we would like to teach and to research are compromised through lack of time or resources or through competing demands.
Yet we need to develop strategies for educating our students for an unpredictable and chaotic world; a world of ambivalence.
In such a context, it is imperative that we create the conditions where people are enabled to come together to solve problems that they face as higher education professionals. The challenges of academic practice need to become questions for investigation.

22. Why confine critically
reflexive inquiries to the teaching and learning
domain?
We need to turn that complaint about workload into, for example, an investigation of how we can fulfill research & teaching goals simultaneously.
We need to see that new assessment policy imposition as an opportunity to investigate new forms of assessment that will, for example, improve marking loads.
We need to turn that concern about international student dropout into a scholarly investigation that will provide new insights.
We need to develop within inquiry groups new knowledge that will help us to confront and solve the problems of the academic workplace. In this way the scholarship of teaching and learning becomes the scholarship of academic practice.
In this way, the skills of research and scholarship thus become applied to the higher education context in which we work.

23. Overview Why is it important to integrate research and teaching?
What does inquiry-based education look like in practice?
What gets in the way?
So what gets in the way?

24. What gets in the way? Tendency to redefine existing practice
Ethics in teaching
Campus planning
Involving the research community
Firstly a tendency to redefine existing practice. There is nothing wrong in that – but it’s important to go further.
Another issue that has been raised is related to ethical issues in teaching. For example, if students are engaged in research, what are the ethical issues involved. Need a policy on the ethics of teaching.
We established a benchmarking relationship with Monash University - issue raised - campus planning and the extent to which this was done with the issues of the integration of research and teaching in mind.
Involving researchers – some evidence that research policy is affected now but this has taken a long time.

25. What gets in the way? Economies of funding regimes
Separate evaluation of teaching and research
Hierarchical levels
Academic mindsets
Student mindsets
Modular course structures
Clearly prescribed course outcomes
It’s not helped by some more widespread, systemic issues:
Funding teaching and research separately tends to separate them.
What is noticeable is that students are by and large not being engaged in the world of research; the researcher's communities of practice.
So why not?
Why, for example, even in universities/departments committed to research-based education, students are almost always not engaged in the communities of practice of academics? In their courses students are not carrying out research with academics.
Exceptions: USA Warwick, Imperial, ANU (USYD Medical program.
Hung up on levels –(results in only top levels engaging in research) need to be open to vertical integration students at different levels working together.
Need to shift thinking – 5 years of research-led teaching and people still didn’t understand the term - need incentives for academics to change (e.g. extra time)

26. Overview Why is it important to integrate research and teaching?
What does inquiry-based education look like in practice?
What gets in the way?
Higher education in the future
Inquiry is central to a university, but is all too often confined to the disciplinary domain. When inquiries into aspects of academic practice become part of the everyday life of the professional we will have gone beyond gaps, merging teaching scholarship and research to transform academic practice.
Because if we are really serious about research based learning for both students and staff, we need to consider scholarly communities as mutual engagement in a joint enterprise, that’s to say, with all who participate including students.
Inquiry and learning should be central to higher education no matter what role we perform.
So finally I want briefly to consider the consequences of integration.

27. Inclusive scholarly knowledge-building communities?
Teaching and Learning
What kind of teaching?
What kind of learning?
Relationships
How do people relate
to each other?
Research
What is research?
Who does it?
Inclusive scholarly knowledge-building communities?
Community
What kind of community is a university?
Knowledge- Building
What kind of knowledge?
Who builds it and how?
I want to suggest that the logical extension of implementing research-based learning for both staff and students is to move towards more inclusive scholarly knowledge-building communities.
I think there are six interlinked facets to this vision.
Scholarship
What is scholarship?
Who are the scholars?
From: Brew, A. (2006). Research and Teaching: Beyond the Divide. London PalgraveMacmillan.

28. Inclusive scholarly knowledge-building communities?
Teaching and Learning
What kind of teaching?
What kind of learning?
Relationships
How do people relate
to each other?
Research
What is research?
Who does it?
Inclusive scholarly knowledge-building communities?
Community
What kind of community is a university?
Knowledge- Building
What kind of knowledge?
Who builds it and how?
First, we need to think about what we mean by teaching and about how learning occurs for both us as academics and for our students.
To reconsider what we think research is and ideas about who generates it
We need to think about the kind of knowledge that is being generated and by whom.
Definitions & conceptions of teaching, of research and of knowledge need to be expanded. So too do conceptions of scholarship. We need to seriously question who the scholars are in higher education.
Many people are familiar with Boyer’s four scholarships. These define different activities associated with academic work: scholarship of discovery, integration, application and the scholarship of teaching. However, there is another aspect to scholarship that I want to highlight.
Scholarship
What is scholarship?
Who are the scholars?
From: Brew, A. (2006). Research and Teaching: Beyond the Divide. London PalgraveMacmillan.

29. Inclusive scholarly knowledge-building communities?
Teaching and Learning
What kind of teaching?
What kind of learning?
Relationships
How do people relate
to each other?
Research
What is research?
Who does it?
Inclusive scholarly knowledge-building communities?
Community
What kind of community is a university?
Knowledge- Building
What kind of knowledge?
Who builds it and how?
That is, scholarship not just as a set of activities but as a quality of academic professionalism; as a description of how academic work is done; the habits of rigour and meticulousness and having the necessary skills and knowledge to work in a particular domain.
Scholarship – in this quality sense is central to academics and students. In this quality sense we are all scholars. Much of what we do in teaching is engaging students in this idea of scholarship, for example when we teach them how to write an essay making the proper attributions (and not plagiarizing), teach them skills and techniques of working in a particular kind of laboratory, or encourage the taking of accurate patient histories.
Scholarship
What is scholarship?
Who are the scholars?
From: Brew, A. (2006). Research and Teaching: Beyond the Divide. London PalgraveMacmillan.

30. Inclusive scholarly knowledge-building communities?
Teaching and Learning
What kind of teaching?
What kind of learning?
Relationships
How do people relate
to each other?
Research
What is research?
Who does it?
Inclusive scholarly knowledge-building communities?
Community
What kind of community is a university?
Knowledge- Building
What kind of knowledge?
Who builds it and how?
Our higher education institutions need to become much more inclusive. We – academics and students are engaged in a shared enterprise.
The integration of teaching and research challenges us to think about what kinds of communities universities are. Importantly, I think we need to consider the kinds of relationships between people in universities – specifically I the kinds of relationships between academics and students . How does it match the conditions of 21st Century living mentioned earlier
The linking of teaching and research cannot fully happen unless the university becomes a partnership where all take part in its growth and development through inquiries at different levels.
This is not to say that everyone has equal strengths or equal knowledge. It doesn’t mean that everyone is equally powerful. But it does mean that there is more of an awareness of issues of power and how power is exercised
Scholarship
What is scholarship?
Who are the scholars?
From: Brew, A. (2006). Research and Teaching: Beyond the Divide. London PalgraveMacmillan.

31. What must we do?
Reflexivity brought about by engaging in the scholarship of academic practice
View teaching as a form of research
Expanded ideas about who is capable of doing research.
Expanded ideas of the nature of research
Change the discourse of higher education
So what must we do?
We need. to develop a critical awareness of the needs and demands of our students.
We need to view teaching as a form of research.
We need to be able to critique underlying ways of thinking and acting in higher education through a reflexive approach to our work.
We need expanded ideas about who is capable of doing research.
And expanded ideas of the nature of research (to include personal inquiry)
If students are to be involved in the scholarly community, we need to change the discourse of higher education to be more inclusive.

32. So to conclude. I have suggested that if we are serious about the linkage of research and teaching, we need to see inquiry as central to higher education.
The capacity of individuals to inquire not only into their learning and teaching, but also into other aspects of academic practice, is critical to the change process and to the integration of research and teaching. The challenges of academic practice need to become questions for investigation.
When inquiries into aspects of academic practice become part of the everyday life of the professional and central to students’ learning we will have gone beyond the research and teaching divide, connecting teaching scholarship and research to transform higher education and importantly, the experiences and the lives of our students.

33. We have to educate ourselves and our students for the kind of world we actually live in not the one we would like to live in.
We have to educate ourselves and our students for the professional demands we actually face; not the ones we perhaps faced when we graduated.
There is a need for discussions at all levels about what the integration of research and teaching means for particular disciplines.
I’d like to think that when these studious little people become university students, they will learn not in nineteenth century classrooms such as this..

35. But in spaces more like this
But in spaces more like this. Where there is space for creativity; for new thinking.
Is this the classroom of tomorrow?
I don’t know. But I do know this space with its movable furniture, a floor for writing on, and a readiness for students and academics to bend the space, lends itself to different kinds of knowledge building; different communities of scholars; different kinds of relationships between teachers and students; different ways of thinking about higher education.

36. What strategies are you employing to develop and enhance research-based learning and teaching in your department?
Are you working in partnership with students to inquire into the best ways to do this?
So I leave you with these questions:
What strategies are you employing to integrate research and teaching in your discipline?
Are you working in partnership with students to inquire into the best ways to do this?

37. Brew, A., & Sachs, J. (Eds.). (2007). Transforming a University: The scholarship of teaching and learning in practice. Sydney: Sydney University Press.
Brew, A. (2006). Research and Teaching: Beyond the Divide. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Jenkins, A, Breen, R., & Lindsay, R. & Brew, A. (2003). Reshaping Teaching in Higher Education : Linking Teaching and Research. London: Kogan Page.
Brew, A. (2001). The nature of research: inquiry in academic contexts. London,
RoutledgeFalmer.

38. Question
Does engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning enhance students’ learning experiences?
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005 SI
SCEQ
So does engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning as demonstrated on the Scholarship Index enhance students’ learning experiences as demonstrated on the SCEQ?
SCEQ data has been collected from undergraduates since 1999, while Faculties have lodged Scholarship Index claims each year since 2002 (data for 2005 will be lodged in the middle of 2006). So we investigated the possible association between a faculty’s three year performance ( ) on the Scholarship Index, and the change in the faculty’s SCEQ score between 2001 and 2005.

39. Question
Does engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning enhance students’ learning experiences?
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005 SI
SCEQ
[Paul to redo for the new calculations]
We calculated 2 results for each faculty. The first was the sum across 2002 to 2004 of the Scholarship Index performances for each faculty, weighted according to the number of full-time equivalent teaching staff in that faculty. The second was the change in SCEQ scores between the 2001 survey of undergraduates, and the 2005 survey.
We investigated the association between these 2 variables using regression analysis, specifying the Scholarship Index sum variable as the independent variable, and the change in SCEQ scores as the dependent variable.

40. Relations between the SI and Change in Student Experiences
Scale Correlation
Good Teaching r = .55, p = .018*
Clear Goals & Standards r = .49, p = .039*
Appropriate Workload r = .15, p = .298
Appropriate Assessment r = .52, p = .020*
Generic Skills r = .63, p = .020*
Overall Satisfaction r = .49, p = .038*
with Degree Quality
Our initial investigations of analyses of Relations between the SI and Change in Student Experiences focused on faculties’ SI performances as a whole. We found large and statistically reliable relations between overall faculty SI performance and the degree of change between 2001 and 2005 in 5 out of 6 SCEQ scales.

41. Scholarship of Teaching Index
Qualification in university teaching (10)
National teaching award (winner) (10)
National teaching award (finalist only) (5)
University teaching award (including awards for Excellence in Research Higher Degree Supervision) (5)
Faculty teaching award (2)
Publication on university teaching – book (10)
Publication on university teaching – refereed chapter (2)
Publication on university teaching – refereed article (2)
Presented conference paper or poster on university teaching (1)
And then there is the Scholarship Index. This provides financial rewards to departments whose staff members contribute to leadership in teaching and learning through the scholarship of university teaching as measured on a defined and weighted set of criteria
Claims are made annually and evidence for each claim is required.
These are the criteria and their weightings