HigherEducation_Mise en page 1 23/04/15 18:21 Page53
EDUCATION
INTERNATIONAL
Just over half of participants (51%) indicated that their institution was not supportive of research activities that informed teaching. Chart 23 illustrates the data. Chart 23 Institution supportive of research activities that inform teaching (%) detailed data available in annex 100
■ Disagree
90
■ Agree
80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
DK
DE
IRL
IT
LV
PT
RO
RS
UK
AVG.
An overwhelming majority of Italian academics (95%) were of this view. Research led teaching was viewed as challenging. One Irish academic attributed this to a lack of readiness on the part of students to engage with such an approach:
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We recently had a school review and we were encouraged to be research led, to engage in research led teaching and ideally that would be what you would do but the number of students taking my subject has increased over the years and at the same time it is a subject within an arts degree and the points of the arts degree have fallen so we have more less well equipped students taking our subjects and we feel obliged to provide sort of general introductory modules which often have little or nothing to do with our teaching or our research. It is only really final year, master level that you are able to really do anything that is research led, which means that a lot of the time teaching is a distraction from research and research is a distraction from teaching and that’s not the way it should be [Lecturer, Ireland].