Research-teaching linkages: Enhancing graduate attributes

Mary Malcolm

Drivers of the research-teaching link in BMAF

• Currency and employability– Developing individual professionals

• Departmental and staff profile– Institutional priorities

‘learning a toolbox of methods that are reproduced without deep understanding’ (Edmunds and Richardson 2005, 20)

Business School research too abstract to be relevant

too relevant to be valuable

Research is defined broadly….

Investigating issues related directly to enhancing business, management and professional practice

Investigating issues raised by the contemporary knowledge base

Investigating issues related directly to enhancing business, management and professional practice

Graduate attributes in BMAF

Research as the basis of practice

The ability to evaluate and synthesise arguments and evidenceAn awareness of the limits to arguments and conclusionsPractical understanding of formal research methodsThe ability to analyse and manipulate data of many types and sourcesInterpretation of quantitative and qualitative data to construct models and hyptheses

Knowledge of professional practice that is current and underpinned by evidence

The ability to generate, progress and deliver a research projectProject management skills & self managementThe capacity to address and respond to a briefApplication of creativity and knowledge to structured and unstructured problemsUnderstanding of ethical research practices

Research as knowledge development

Research as enquiry

Attributes as additional elements

Attributes as transformative elements

Supplementary process

Complementary process

Relatively unimportant and separately addressed in the curriculum

Relatively unimportant and integrated into the

curriculum

Important and developed in parallel

Integral to and integrated in the

curriculum

Graduate attributes in the curriculum

From Barrie 2007

Enhancing teaching practice

• Decision-making in the ‘real world’ of business • Working on business-based projects• Engaging learners in the work of active researchers

• Provisionality & complexity from the start• Pervasive enquiry-based approach• Encountering a range of research projects & challenges

• Learners recognising their own developing skills

The drivers of course design

• Disciplinary approaches - building• Skills and techniques - accrediting• Outcome-based design - delivering• The role of staff specialism - compiling

Challenges of curriculum design and management

• Coverage– Matching staff expertise and syllabus – curriculum cold

spots– Making the link explicit in practice - module

descriptions

• Coherence– Learning by enquiry – learning mode, not learning

event– Research training – impact and currency– Research practice – process and outcome

A learner perspectiveExtract two

Actually some of them were quite surprising. And it was very interesting to look and to try and find the reasons why I would expect this question to be totally different. And I expected itto be totally negativeand it was totally positive.And I was really surprised.And then I had toread the literature again and look at why and how'. Doing the research was really challengingbecause there are a lot of research materials out there and finding the ones to use was really difficult…

Extract one

It was good for the personal experience for the feeling of achievement.And I think the dissertation helped me as well. It's a very up to date topic very recent, interesting hopefully. So I think it also helped meto get an MBA place. For later, yes it's also helped me to organize my own work, my own research to structure it and starting from scratch and achieve something.