Issues for staff and students in mainstreaming inquiry based learning

1. Issues for staff and students in mainstreaming inquiry based learning Associate Professor Angela Brew The University of Sydney Australia

2. Overview • Why is it important to integrate research and teaching? • What does inquiry-based education look like in practice? • What gets in the way? • Higher education in the future

3. What is higher education doing to prepare students for the complex and challenging decisions that they are likely to encounter throughout their lives?

4. “What is required is not that students become masters of bodies of thought, but that they are enabled to begin to experience the space and challenge of open, critical inquiry (in all its personal and interpersonal aspects)” (Barnett 1997: 110)

5. Research-based learning: students Opportunities are provided for students at all levels to: • experience and conduct research • learn about research throughout their courses • develop the skills of research and inquiry • contribute to the University’s research effort.

6. At arm’s length • What is knowledge and how is it generated? • Generic Graduate Attributes • Learning disciplinary knowledge • Doing research to learn about research

7. A community of scholars? • Collaboration in inquiry • Problem based learning • Interdisciplinary inquiry • Understanding how disciplinary knowledge is defined • Research as social practice • Involving students in the community of researchers

8. Research-based learning: staff Staff and students engage in scholarship and/or research in relation to understanding learning and teaching. Evidence-based approaches are used to establish the effects and effectiveness of student learning, teaching effectiveness and academic practice.

9. Brew, A., & Sachs, J. (Eds.). (2007). Transforming a University: The scholarship of teaching and learning in practice. Sydney: Sydney University Press.

10. Why confine critically reflexive inquiries to the teaching and learning domain?

11. What gets in the way? • Tendency to redefine existing practice • Ethics in teaching • Campus planning • Involving the research community

12. What gets in the way? • Economies of funding regimes • Separate evaluation of teaching and research • Hierarchical levels • Academic mindsets • Student mindsets • Modular course structures • Clearly prescribed course outcomes

13. Teaching and Learning What kind of teaching? What kind of learning? • Relationships • How do people relate • to each other? Research What is research? Who does it? Inclusive scholarly knowledge-building communities? • Community • What kind of community is a university? Knowledge- Building What kind of knowledge? Who builds it and how? Scholarship What is scholarship? Who are the scholars? From: Brew, A. (2006). Research and Teaching: Beyond the Divide. London PalgraveMacmillan.

14. What must we do? • Reflexivity brought about by engaging in the scholarship of academic practice • View teaching as a form of research • Expanded ideas about who is capable of doing research. • Expanded ideas of the nature of research • Change the discourse of higher education

15. What strategies are you employing to develop and enhance research-based learning and teaching in your department? Are you working in partnership with students to inquire into the best ways to do this?

16. Brew, A., & Sachs, J. (Eds.). (2007). Transforming a University: The scholarship of teaching and learning in practice. Sydney: Sydney University Press. Brew, A. (2006).Research and Teaching: Beyond the Divide. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Jenkins, A, Breen, R., & Lindsay, R. & Brew, A. (2003). Reshaping Teaching in Higher Education : Linking Teaching and Research. London: Kogan Page. Brew, A. (2001). The nature of research: inquiry in academic contexts. London, RoutledgeFalmer.