Alternative perspectives
Analysts who perceive that teaching and research enhance each other argue that active researchers are informed
and engaging teachers and that teaching stimulates faculty creativity and enthusiasm for research. Economic
theory suggests that teaching and research are complementary. Because they use many of the same resources,
facilities, and personnel, producing teaching and research together is more efficient than producing each
separately. Similarly, individual faculty may improve their efficiency and productivity if they sometimes
engage in activities that accomplish both teaching and research goals at the same time. Arguments for
integrating teaching and research are consistent with a view that colleges and universities should respond to
increasing environmental and technical complexity by considering faculty as professionals–highly qualified,
flexible, and complex workers who are able to relate associated tasks in creative ways and to handle
unpredictable problems independently.
Analysts, such as ronald barnett, who perceive that teaching and research are separate and incompatible argue
that faculty members' preoccupation with research interferes with teaching, or that teaching limits precious time
available for research. System and organization level arguments suggest that different people in different
locations should conduct teaching and research. To some extent, such organizational fragmentation already
exists in the united states. For example, most faculty at community colleges focus exclusively on teaching,
while many faculty at four-year institutions engage in some combination of teaching and research. Similarly,
some university faculty working within institutes or centers focus primarily on research, while many tenure-
track faculty in departments engage in both teaching and research. Some analysts suggest that even in
institutions that produce both teaching and research, responsibilities for the two roles should be assigned to
different faculty according to their varying interests and strengths. Many departments already partially
subdivide labor in this way. Adjunct or part-time faculty focus primarily on either teaching or research, while
tenure-track faculty are usually expected to do both. At the individual level, teaching and research may be
separated by time. In the short-term, some faculty teach during the academic year and save summers for doing
research. In the long-term, some faculty may be more effective if they focus primarily on research at one stage
in their careers and on teaching at another career stage. Arguments for formalizing de facto fragmentation of
faculty work roles are consistent with a view that colleges and universities should respond to increasing
environmental and technical complexity by subdividing work, thereby increasing organizational complexity and
administrative control.
Perceptions of a positive or negative relationship between teaching and research depend on how observers
define the content of the two roles. Teaching is often defined as activities involved in delivering formal
classroom instruction to registered students. Some analysts, however, suggest that teaching also includes
advising, informal instruction, and training students to conduct research. Similarly, research is often defined as
publications. In 1990, however, ernest boyer of the carnegie foundation asserted that research should be more
broadly defined as the scholarships of discovery, integration, application, and teaching. Those who define
teaching and research in terms of classroom instruction and publications are less likely to perceive a positive
relationship between the two faculty roles than those who define the roles more broadly.
Research findings
Studies that investigate the relationship between teaching and research also vary in the ways they define the
nature of the two roles. One line of inquiry defines teaching and research in terms of measurable outputs. Other
lines of inquiry define teaching and research as activities that use time.
Measurable outputs. Many investigators have attempted to determine whether there is some measurable
correlation between teaching and research quality. They typically measure teaching effectiveness by student
ratings of formal classroom instruction and research productivity by numbers of publications. Most of these
studies were conducted at one or only a few institutions and included relatively small (less than 300) samples of
faculty. To attain more comprehensive results applicable to more faculty, two meta-analytic studies synthesized
the results of multiple studies. In 1987, kenneth feldman analyzed the combined results of twenty-nine studies
of the relationship between teaching effectiveness and research productivity, and found a very small (0.12)
positive correlation. A meta-analysis conducted by john hattie and herbert w. March in 1996 analyzed the
combined results of fifty-eight studies, and found an even smaller (.06) positive correlation between teaching
effectiveness and research productivity. There are several possible reasons for their findings of a relationship so
close to zero that it may be considered a null relationship.
A null relationship suggests that teaching and research outputs are completely independent, neither enhancing
nor detracting from each other. The substantive reasons frequently given for no relationship discuss inputs and
processes for producing effective teaching or large numbers of publications rather than outputs themselves. For
example, the organizational resources, production processes, and faculty abilities and personality traits needed
for teaching and research may be different while not competing with each other. A methodological reason for
finding a statistically null relationship may be that mediating factors that contribute to a negative relationship
between research and teaching are effectively canceled out by other mediating factors that contribute to a
positive relationship.
There are both individual and organizational explanations for a possible partially negative teaching-research
relationship. Some personality characteristics and abilities needed to teach effectively and produce many
publications may compete with each other. Students may see extroverts as better teachers, for example, while
introverts may be well suited to writing alone about ideas and abstractions. Organizational context may
contribute to competition between teaching and research when evaluation and reward policies systematically
fragment the two roles. According to james fairweather, "faculty rewards emphasize the discreteness, not the
mutuality, of teaching and research" (p. 110), and faculty are rewarded more for research productivity than for
effective teaching. Therefore, faculty may neglect teaching to attain rewards for research.
A partially positive relationship between teaching and research may also be explained by individual and
organizational reasons. Individual characteristics that may contribute to success in both teaching and research
include general ability, organization, and intellectual curiosity. Organizational evaluation of faculty work as an
integrated whole might increase evaluators' and faculty members' own perceptions of a positive association
between teaching and research.
Variations in discipline and type of institution may also affect whether the relationship between teaching and
research outputs is null, negative, or positive. Although scholars have described comprehensive models that
could account for relative impact of many organizational and individual factors on the relationship, no such
model has yet been tested.
Time on tasks. Studies that analyze the time faculty take to engage in tasks that meet institutional teaching and
research goals define the content of the two roles more broadly than studies that analyze measurable outputs.
Time on teaching involves preparing and delivering classroom instruction, grading students' work, meeting
students in office hours, advising, and training students to conduct research. Time on research includes reading
foundational literature, gathering and analyzing data, supervising assistants, securing funding, writing reports,
and presenting findings.
Findings of either a negative or a positive relationship between teaching and research time are primarily a
consequence of research methods used. Most workload surveys that ask faculty to estimate the time they devote
to their primary work roles define teaching, research, and service as mutually exclusive. A negative relationship
between teaching and research emerges by design, because time spent teaching is inevitably not time engaged in
research. These studies have been conducted with department, institution, state, and representative national
faculty samples.
In contrast, a few workload surveys asked faculty to cross reference time on tasks with institutional teaching,
research, and service goals. One such workload survey conducted at the university of arizona in 1998 found, on
average, that faculty engaged in tasks that met all three goals, and teaching and research goals 14 and 18 percent
of their time, respectively. A 1998 study by carol l. Colbeck that observed english and physics faculty on the job
found they engaged in integrated teaching and research activities nearly 19 percent of the time. In both studies,
the degree of positive relationship–the amount of time spent in activities that accomplished both teaching and
research goals–varied by discipline. Studies that account for time spent meeting both teaching and research
goals have been conducted at either a single or a few universities and with very small faculty samples.
Conclusion
Evidence indicates that the outputs from teaching and research neither enhance nor interfere with each other,
and that faculty engage in activities that meet both teaching and research goals some of the time. Perhaps
because of the limitations of small sample size and simple models, however, faculty, administrators, and policy
analysts still debate whether the relationship is positive or negative. Evidence that may resolve the debate will
require research designs and methods that consider teaching and research both as uses of time and as outputs,
take into account mediating factors, and include large samples of faculty across many disciplines and types of
institutions.
