engleski

Changes in research vs. teaching nexus in Croatian HE Context

Recent policy documents in the context of the European Higher Education Area predominantly advocate the idea of the importance of the reciprocal link between the teaching and research activities of academics, i.e. they emphasize the need for teaching content to find its basis in the results of scientific research. Research-led teaching is becoming an increasingly important issue in discussions on the direction of the future development of higher education. Given the fact that research teaching nexus has always been a focus in analysing changes in academic profession the main objective of this paper is to determine whether the perception of academics on the relationship between teaching and research has changed in Croatia in the two periods observed, 2009 (results of the study CAP) and 2018 (results of the study APIKS). Specifically, the aim is to determine whether there are differences in the academic’s perceptions of the relationship between teaching and research with regard to the following variables: year of conducting research (CAP -2009/APISK-2018), gender (M/F) ; rank (early career researchers (ECR)/experienced academics/seniors) and discipline (STEM / BHASE), as these are the fundamental predictor variables in studies on the academic profession. We operationalize the relationship between teaching and research for the purposes of this paper through the following variables (among others): Teaching and research are compatible with each other (B4_4) and Your research activities reinforce your teaching (C4_10). Several factorial (2x2) ANOVA were conducted to test the effect of the year of research (APIKS, CAP) on the change in attitude towards the variables in relation to gender, rank and discipline. Preliminary results indicate that the year of study, gender and rank are more often predictor variables while discipline had no effect. For example, man and women in APIKS tend to less agree with item Teaching and research are hardly compatible with each other in comparation to respondents in CAP research, same as men in comparation to women. We also found that there was no main effect of rank on this item, but there was statistically significant interaction where that experienced academics in CAP tend to agree more that Teaching and research are hardly compatible with each other, than experienced academics in APIKS, so we can support hypothesis that year of research is a moderator variable between B4_4 and rank. Also, experienced academics tend to agree more on item Your research activities reinforce your teaching compared to ECR. Here nor year, discipline or gender had an effect to this. Preliminary results challenge the importance of the academics’ role in opposing for example, the "post-truth", populism, and a growing distrust in experts, which is why study programs should increasingly emphasize research and preparing today's students to tackle societal problems (Clark and Hordosy, 2019).

research teaching nexus ; higher education ; academic profession

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