Thursday, February 6, 2014

Teaching and Research

As we always suspected:
In a comprehensive analysis of data on more than half a million professors, the education experts John Hattie and Herbert Marsh found that “the relationship between teaching and research is zero.” In all fields and all kinds of colleges, there was little connection between research productivity and teaching ratings by students and peers.

2 comments:

Toes said...

"the relationship between teaching and research is zero, and it would be more useful to investigate ways to increase the relationship” (Hattie & Marsh, 1996)

Hattie & Marsh show that the professor-researcher and the professor-educator teach equally well. That is what a zero relationship means.

Virtually all college professors have done research and read research. Research informs their knowledge. Overwhelmingly, both researcher and educator professors present the same curriculum. If the curriculum focused on examining and participating in research then research would have a greater impact on their learning. The difference between research and educators might remain zero. After almost all professors research, even if the scale differs.

Please include a link to a free, publicly accessible copy of the Hattie & Marsh paper.

Toes

John said...


Alas, I have never seen the original paper, which is behind paywalls. I'm just quoting the guy I linked to.

Incidentally, as far as historians go, the famous researchers seem to be pretty good teachers, or at least that has been my experience. Quite different from what I found in math.