In higher education institutions, especially in research-intensive universities, the dominance of research output is increasing, though teaching is the essential mission of most universities. How does this discrepancy affect undergraduate teaching? Theoretically, research can be a source of teaching, and teaching can illustrate research ideas. However, a key criticism of the teaching and research nexus is a lack of empirical evidence about the characteristics of the nexus in practice. In addition to the continuous discussion of the teaching and research nexus, the teaching-only academic position is a comparatively newly emerging phenomenon in the higher education field. However, although this type of academic career path is now increasingly used in higher education institutions, the job description, reasons for its use, as well as the career design and development of such a position, differ depending on the national context and the institutional culture.
This research aimed to interpret the teaching and research nexus from an innovative perspective, namely, the interactions between teaching academics and teaching-and-research academics in research-intensive universities. Drawing from the empirical evidence from research-intensive universities in China, the United Kingdom and Canada, one possibility is that there is very limited influence on the teaching and research nexus when the two streams are not closely related. Another possibility is that the increased utilisation of teaching fellows can lead to the separation of teaching and research.
Chair: Dr Lili Yang, The University of Hong Kong
Speaker: Dr Kaiyun Feng, The University of Cambridge
Dr Kaiyun Feng is a researcher at the University of Cambridge. She is an Associate Member of the Centre for Higher Education Studies (CHES) at University College London, where she received her PhD in Education. Her research focuses on the interactions between managerial logic and academic logic in higher education institutions, particularly in China, the United Kingdom and Canada.
Date: May 29, 2023 (Monday)
Time: 16:00-17:15
Hong Kong Time by Zoom