Teaching (or the lack thereof!) and Research in Australian Universities

In the Education supplement to Monday's The Australian Financial Review (17th November 2008), Don Aitken in his weekly column, wrote about the tension between teaching and research within all universities. He specifically discuss the tension in the context of selection committees and appointment of new academic staff. He came down in favour of looking beyond just the glittering research qualifications (including the ubiquitous and now almost mandatory long, long list of publications (usually repetitious, mundane and inane)) to questions of teaching capability and mentoring ability. However, the example of the former was not encouraging, Aitken giving the excuse that he was new in his job and therefore rolled over in his preference for an applicant "who stressed his fascination, experience and productivity in teaching and learning in his subject, attributes applauded by his referees."

It seems then that politics and political economy intrudes into this tension between teaching and research. It is trite to state that the manner of Australian Commonwealth government's funding of tertiary education effect a very political response by university administration and deans of faculties. Research stars are hired to embellish the research record of the faculty. (Hmmm, perhaps there is a research grant here on the issue of the market for academic research expertise. Any collaborators out there who wants to enhance their C. V.?) Where does that leave teaching?

I would venture that teaching in universities has become hostage to research. No, not just in the manner described above but in a slightly more insidious manner (or two). What I mean is this: As we know, research is dependent on the new, novus, innovative. So, teaching has become a fertile ground for academics to innovate, to try new ideas. Look, I am not against innovation but just am not impressed with innovation for the sake of innovation. There is an old-fashion word denoting a field of academic expertise that has almost become either supercilious (superfluous?) or just plain pejorative, namely, pedagogy. In case you have worked it out, these "innovative teaching methods et al" are then written up as research papers and voila! OR they become the basis of applications for research grants and again, voila! C'est magnifigue!

The second disturbing trend is the jumping onto the electronic, digital bandwagon. Let's make everything electronic, digital is the catch cry. Hence presently in Australia the trend to podcasting of lectures etc for downloading by students (presumably). The issue of pedagogy, redundancy, uniqueness of lecture (or content) is simply ignored/bypassed in favour convenience for students, and more importantly, bragging rights to being innovative.

Coming back to Don Aitken, he mentioned that his column was in part motivated by reading a letter from "a final-year law student in Quadrant" (a right-wing conservative opinion magazine), who lamented the fact that "certain interviewees, clearly intelligent and talented in their field, spoke with passion of their special areas of teaching interest and skills, yet had no established history of bringing in grants, and as such were dismissed [from consideration for the position]." That pretty much sums it all, doesn't it ?