Teaching Research Processes

The Faculty Role in the Development of Skilled Student Researchers

William Badke

• Publisher: Chandos Publishing
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781780633053
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Library & Information Science
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Information literacy may be defined as the ability to identify a research problem, decide the kinds of information needed to tackle it, find the information efficiently, evaluate the information, and apply it to the problem at hand. Teaching Research Processes suggests a novel way in which information literacy can come within the remit of teaching faculty, supported by librarians, and reconceived as 'research processes'. The aim is to transform education from what some see as a primarily one-way knowledge communication practice, to an interactive practice involving the core research tasks of subject disciplines.This title is structured into nine chapters, covering: Defining research processes; Research ability inadequacies in higher education; Research processes and faculty understanding; Current initiatives in research processes; The role of disciplinary thinking in research processes; Research processes in the classroom; Tentative case studies in disciplinary research process instruction; Research processes transforming education; and Resourcing the enterprise. The book concludes by encouraging the reader to implement the teaching of research processes.

• Engages the domain of teaching faculty rather than librarians only
• Analyzes the reasons why the research processes concept represents a gap in academia
• Focuses on research ability as a process that can be taught within disciplines

1

Defining research processes

Abstract:

While professors hope for critically argued and well-referenced research projects from their students, the results are generally disappointing, leading to a lowering of requirements. Disciplines do add nuances to the various research processes, but there is a common core involving use of a question or hypothesis, acquisition and use of information, and a ‘quest.’ In working with information (that which informs) and doing research, students need the following capabilities: An understanding of today’s world of information, the ability to identify problems and acquire the information to solve them, significant technological knowledge, and critical thinking and evaluation abilities. These capabilities are congruent with the dominant mission of higher education. ‘Research processes’ represent the procedural side of the academic disciplines. Students require a rigorous complex of understandings and skills in order to find success in their research.

Key words

acquire information

critical thinking

disciplines

hypotheses

identify problems

quest

research questions

technological knowledge

today’s world of information

Student research, whether it is embodied in a classic research paper in the humanities or a literature review in the social sciences or sciences, has always been an awkward and troubling phenomenon. From the standpoint of the average student, a research project is a monumental task to be avoided until the deadline looms and only then to be addressed as if taking a bitter pill for an unknown illness. Professors, likewise, have grown to believe that it is virtually impossible to get good research by students, so that expectations have been lowered to meet the maximum that can be expected (“three books and two journal articles, no websites”). So difficult has it become to get good research by students, that many professors are now opting for other types of assignments. Why bother with student research papers when the product is so unlike published writing in the discipline that calling it “research” becomes a ridiculous misnomer?

There are excellent reasons, however, not to give up on student research. Done well, if that is possible, it engages students in a deeper level of inquiry than does rote learning of facts. It is also a doorway, as we will see, to inviting students into the discipline being taught rather than just familiarizing them with the discipline’s content.

Average faculty expectations

What, then, are faculty members actually saying about student research? What do they expect, and what do they receive?

Many faculty members view “writing” as a significant issue for undergraduates and graduate students. Singleton-Jackson, Lumsden and Newsom (2009), for example, reviewed a fairly extensive literature devoted to measuring undergraduate and graduate student writing. Their study concluded that academic writing, especially at graduate level, is complex and hard to measure. They argued that, not only are there necessary analytical and critical thinking skills, but there is also a required understanding of the nature of such writing, including its mechanics .

These researchers administered the SAT II: Writing Test, Part B, to Master’s and doctoral students studying in higher education programs. The SAT II, which measures discernment of academic writing conventions and use of language to derive meaning, scored these graduate students at not significantly higher levels than pre-college students. Such a study, while instructive in itself, is a strong example of the significant emphasis that academics place on the conventions and language of writing itself. The authors showed little concern for other research attainments such as strength of research questions or theses, ability to develop strong bibliographies, and actual use of research resources in projects developed by students.

What, then, are the common expectations for student research papers among faculty? Greasley and Cassidy (2010) polled a number of professors at Bradford University in the UK and found a common core: Faculty members expected critical analysis and argumentation with supporting evidence, signs that assignment guidelines had been followed, good representation of the conventions required in research papers (structure, grammar and style, referencing), and so on. Interestingly, structural, grammatical and referencing issues received 56 percent of the comments, ranking them ahead of critical thinking. This gives the impression that faculty are more frustrated with poor presentation than poor thinking. The researchers suggested, however, that faculty members may be considering presentation to be a marker for underlying thought processes. Sloppy papers speak of sloppy minds and shallow thinking.

Maclellan (2004) identified the following faculty expectations: an argued position, use of sources to address that position, analysis of principles and purposes, and some sort of professional/practical outcome. She found that less than 10 percent of a collection of 40 student essays that professors had assigned high grades showed the highest levels of critical thinking.

One way of analyzing the disparity between what faculty members hope for and what they receive is to study the fit between faculty expectations and college students’ mastery of the roles they need to take in order to meet those expectations. Collier and Morgan (2008) found that faculty expected students to follow the directions in research assignments, use acceptable grammar and style, and cite their sources correctly. Yet, even in such basic matters, the consensus of faculty members studied was that students often failed to grasp what was required of them. One professor commented, “They just don’t get it.” Students, in turn, said that they had received no actual training in producing research papers and faculty instructions were not detailed enough to make clear what was expected.

Faculty members’ expectations tend to decrease as a result of their past experiences of student production. Avdic and Eklund (2010) demonstrated that professors generally expected a poorer result than did their students. Professors were in the main highly negative on most measures of student performance. Their students believed that professors overemphasized the role of scientific papers (as opposed to easier-to-understand studies) and that academic research skills are really only for the benefit of meeting professorial expectations. Students tended to see their actual search abilities as good but thwarted by databases that were intentionally not user-friendly.

What we appear to have here is a disconnection between how professors view student research production and what students believe they are accomplishing. While professors find their expectations generally are not being met, students think they are more skilled than their production demonstrates, while attempting to play by the rules, though not really understanding them, and not performing up to acceptable levels.

Bury (2011) found consistent faculty disappointment with student research ability, particularly in evaluating resources, avoiding plagiarism and citing sources, though less emphasis was placed on student inability to identify information needs and find that information effectively. The latter skills, from an abundance of other research studies, are points of challenge for most students, though the faculty members in Bury’s study did not recognize the problem.

A certain amount of damaging circularity results. Students believe they are doing good work while faculty become accustomed to work that is inadequate. This, in turn, leads to lowered faculty expectations, which, in the eyes of students, is discerned as a lowering of demands upon them. Thus, these students do less rigorous work, and professors accept increasingly minimal quality research projects under the assumption that the average student’s work is not capable of meeting higher expectations. We commonly see a pattern in newer professors in which they demand much of their students at first, then experience student rebellion or “underwhelming” performance, and lower their demands in succeeding years.

Valentine (2001), in a series of studies, found that the paramount concern of many students doing research papers was discerning “what the professor wants.” That is, students were writing for the grades they received and believed that meeting professorial expectations was the key to receiving those grades. While they were quite willing to acknowledge their own failings, they blamed the professor if their low grades were seen as resulting from poor instructions or unreasonable restrictions placed upon their projects.

Professors, in turn, often had rather vague goals related to student projects, viewing them as learning experiences or attempts to learn how to participate in the discourse of the discipline. Grading criteria, based on faculty perceptions of student ability and commitment, were often changeable and subjective to the professor’s experience with each student. Overall, professors were looking for “legitimate effort” in student research projects. When objective requirements for such an effort were made plain to students, they were satisfied. When there were no such stated requirements or the requirements were vague, students were unhappy.

A salient “from the trenches” perspective comes from the following anonymous (verbatim) response to a blog posting by a graduate nursing student:

As a full time college student i am constantly asked to do research papers; sometimes on things i know very little about and could really care less. When i go into wright a paper for a class it is approached a lot different than my personal writing. There is a constant worry of being punished for plagiarizing because most subjects have been researched by many different people and they’re only so many ways that you can word the same thing. The traditional research paper guide line should be abandoned. Why can’t i make a point without having someone i have to cite? What makes that person creditable, the person he cited? It’s just a big domino effect of who’s creditable. When given a paper i believe the student should have total free rein on what he is to say. Yes, sources are needed but the citing and following MLA guidelines are not. Another of the problems that was mentioned in the blog post was that students find a book or topic they are enthusiastic about but they have to change the topic because they cannot find enough sources to cite what they may already know or have in their heads what they want to say. i have personally had to change topics for the exact reason. i have also wrote argumentative papers arguing the side i disagree with just because it was a lot easier to argue that side. That’s crap that students are writing on what they don’t believe just so they can make their papers long enough and have proper MLA citations. (Response to Barbara Fister [Anonymous], 2011)

This belligerent and somewhat plaintive rant reveals some very pertinent issues surrounding the emphasis on student writing. We see in this student someone trying to succeed at a task for which he/she has been given all the rules without the explanations. Why do I have to cite people? What gives them such special status? I can’t f...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Preface: my journey into research processes
• Acknowledgements
• About the author
• Chapter 1: Defining research processes
• Chapter 2: Research ability inadequacies in higher education
• Chapter 3: Research processes and faculty understanding
• Chapter 4: Current initiatives in research processes
• Chapter 5: The role of disciplinary thinking in research processes
• Chapter 6: Research processes in the classroom
• Chapter 7: Tentative case studies in disciplinary research process instruction
• Chapter 8: Research processes transforming education
• Chapter 9: Resourcing the enterprise
• Chapter 10: Conclusion
• References
• Index