Education as Research.

My question is about how education and research inter-relate, and where the border is between them. Research is about questioning, theorising, seeking to explain, deconstructing other explanations and generally getting under the skin of a problem. My experience of undergraduate education (29 years now as a lecturer) is that this generally does not happen, and that the curriculum and assessment impede rather than promote research activity. Even in a BA level 3 course for mature students which centres on work-place research, at best students achieve a sound methodology and descriptive write-up.

However, it is my belief that even in schools, primary and secondary, children should problematise explanation, deconstruct arguments and learn to be creatively critical. Sometimes schools achieve a measure of this, but the curriculum and assessment patterns tend to focus on knowledge rather than thinking. That is why artificial ‘thinking skills’ programmes were designed, too little, too marginal and too late.

Education should be about questioning, problematising, arguing based on evidence, explaining, and testing explanations. So from the infants onwards, education and research should happen together. That is a better model of education than knowledge, so-called ‘facts’ and regurgitation of other people’s ideas, but formal assessment requires regurgitation and punishes creativity. The questions now taking place in Universities about integrating education and research are welcome, but should be applied to all education. If young people are to be prepared to manage their (and our) futures, education and research need to be one and the same, encouraging the new generation to ask awkward questions and tackle difficult problems. This is I am afraid the opposite of the model of education that we have.

Of course, new knowledge is rooted in the old, so deconstructing current knowledge claims are as important as rigorous attempts at reconstruction. Both require disciplined learning which has both a depth and a breadth. And it requires teachers who are tuned into this. The aim of teaching is to produce challenging learners – learners who are never content with easy answers, ask challenging questions, are skilled crap-detectors, and who look for better answers to better questions. Learners such as these also been to work cooperatively to recognize that knowledge creation is a team effort, in which positive discussion and creative disagreement have parts to play.