Higher Education Research

The Developing Field

Malcolm Tight

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781474283762
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Research into higher education has blossomed internationally during the last few decades, as participation in higher education has expanded and concern over delivering it effectively has increased. Higher Education Research offers an overview of what we have learnt through researching different aspects of higher education. Leading academic in the field Malcolm Tight codifies and classifies all research on higher education, offering an accessible but comprehensive guide to the field and its scope. Topics covered include:
Teaching and learning
Course and design
Student experience
Quality
System policy
Institutional management
Academic work
Knowledge and research Tight discusses the work of key researchers, and explores the varied use of methodologies, theoretical frameworks and research designs. He also identifies topics and areas where further research is needed.

Chapter 1

Introduction

As higher education has expanded – as measured by the number of students enrolled, the number of universities and colleges enrolling them, the number and size of research grants obtained, and numerous other indices – so the interest in researching higher education has grown (though with something of a time lag built in). In part, this growing interest in higher education research is simply a function of the size of the higher education enterprise, but it also relates to the increasing concern to ensure that value is obtained for the money and time invested in higher education (historically, much of the former has been public, but, with the arrival of mass higher education, it is becoming increasingly private).

In the UK, for example, at present over 4 per cent of the population are enrolled in higher education and nearly 1 per cent work in it in some capacity (www.hesa.ac.uk,) so one in twenty of the population are ‘directly involved’. Higher education is ‘big business’, and most universities – many now the size of small towns – are the major employer and traffic hub in their localities. All of this activity is hard to ignore, so it is a natural focus for research. This focus is only made stronger because most of the researchers involved themselves work within higher education.

The aim of this book is to provide an analytical and critical overview of how the field of higher education research has developed worldwide, its current state and future prospects. Or, to put it another way, what have we learnt about the theory and practice of higher education, and what requires further study? This book should, therefore, be of considerable interest to anyone working in or concerned by higher education at the present time, and should serve as a record of where we were at the time of publication.

What this book contains

As well as this introductory chapter and a concluding chapter (Chapter 11), the book has been organized in terms of nine main chapters. The first of these, the next chapter (Chapter 2), focuses on research designs and frameworks. It discusses, with examples, the range of research methodologies, methods, designs and theoretical frameworks that have been applied to the study of higher education. This provides a methodological and theoretical overview for what follows.

The next eight chapters make up the substantive part of the book. Between them, these set out to cover the entire field of higher education research organized in terms of eight themes or topic areas. These focus successively on:

• Teaching and learning (Chapter 3)

• Course design (Chapter 4)

• The student experience (Chapter 5)

• Quality (Chapter 6)

• System policy (Chapter 7)

• Institutional management (Chapter 8)

• Academic work (Chapter 9)

• Knowledge and research (Chapter 10)

Chapter 3 deals with research into how students learn and how they are taught; while Chapter 4 examines research on the higher education curriculum, its organization and assessment; and Chapter 5 discusses research on students’ access to and exit from higher education, and their broader life experience while they are studying.

Chapter 6 focuses on research that has evaluated the quality of teaching, research and other aspects of higher education; while Chapter 7 is concerned with research on all other aspects of higher education policy, at national and international levels. Chapter 8 examines research on how higher education institutions are organized, managed and governed; Chapter 9 considers research on the roles of those who work in academe; and Chapter 10 focuses on research on academic disciplines and the research process.

This organization was developed from research I have been conducting into the field over the last two decades; more details of this are provided in the next section of this chapter. While there are inevitably some overlaps between the eight themes (cross-­references are provided between chapters where appropriate), and there are, of course, other ways in which the discussion could have been organized, this structure has proved sufficiently robust and has been adopted and/or adapted by a number of other researchers.

Each of the eight core chapters is organized in the same way, and in two main sections. The first of these sections provides an overview of the development of research on the topic in question and its current status. The second section then examines three research designs or frameworks that have become influential and/or prominent for researching the topic. Of course, other research designs or frameworks might have been chosen for detailed discussion; but the ones I have selected should give a good idea of the state of higher education research, theme by theme.

The final, concluding chapter draws together what we have learnt from several decades of higher education research, and sets out to identify where further research is particularly needed.

How the book was compiled

This book is research based; it is a guide to the research that has been done rather than a manual on how to do research (though it should be useful in suggesting what needs to be researched now, and how this might be done). Indeed, it is based on a great deal of research, both my own in putting it together and the far greater volume of other people’s research that I have drawn upon in doing so.

In essence, the strategy adopted in compiling the book has been to identify, read, categorize and analyse as much as possible of the higher education research that has been published. This is a technique that goes beyond the standard literature review, taking the form of what has been termed a meta-analysis or a systematic review (see, for example, Cooper 2010; Hunter and Schmidt 2004; Lipsey and Wilson 2001; ­Littell, Corcoran and Pillai 2008). The former term is generally used when the analysis is quantitative, the latter when it is primarily qualitative; both, but particularly the latter, are employed in this book.

The research for this book was, therefore, no small task, so I have had to place some limitations on it. The most important of these has been to focus on research outputs produced in the English language (which, as well as being my own, is also the dominant academic language globally). While this has inevi tably led to a greater focus on higher education research in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and other major English-speaking nations, a substantial amount of higher education research by researchers based in non-English-speaking countries, notably in continental Europe and East Asia, has also been published in the English language, particularly in the most recent decades.

The other major limitations have had to do with ease of access and recency. In terms of access I have focused principally on those research outputs that were most readily available: that is, those published as articles in what are, arguably, the leading higher education journals internationally, and are available online. Books, reports and other forms of publication have also been considered. In terms of recency, while I have sought to track research trends back to their origins, there is inevitably an over-emphasis on more recent publications. This is partly a function of there being many more research papers published today than there were seventy years ago – on higher education as on almost any other subject – and partly to do with the greater difficulty of identifying and accessing older publications.

The research which led to this book began with the comprehensive examination of the articles published in fifteen journals focusing on higher education research in the years 2000 and 2010. The fifteen journals were: Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, Higher Education, Higher Education Management and Policy, Higher Education Policy, Higher Education Quarterly, Higher Education Research and Development, Innovative Higher Education, Journal of College Student Development, Journal of Higher Education, Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, Research in Higher Education, Review of Higher Education, Studies in Higher Education, Teaching in Higher Education, Tertiary Education and Management. These journals were chosen as representing the best-quality specialist journals in the field internationally, based in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australasia and continental Europe.

Following this initial analysis of 388 articles published in 2000, and 567 published in 2010, the work spread outwards to other dates, other journals and other forms of publication, and backwards to track the historical development of the research literature. Each publication analysed has been considered in terms of the themes and issues covered, the methods and/or methodologies employed to examine these issues, the broader research designs adopted, the theoretical frameworks employed (if any), the level at which the analysis was pitched (anything from an individual student or academic to the whole world), and the characteristics of the researchers/authors involved.

Considerable use has been made of databases and search engines, most notably Scopus and Google Scholar, both to chart the trends in publication on particular themes (all searches referred to in the book were checked on 1 October 2017, before the book was handed over to the publisher) and to identify further publications of potential interest. Interestingly, while the trends in publication are typically of increasing numbers year by year, in some cases publication rates have dropped as fashions in research and nomenclature have changed (i.e. sometimes much the same topic continues to be researched, but it is given a different label).

The 2000 and 2010 analyses were published in two books (Tight 2003, 2012a). Other publications have examined, in a more focused way, the application of particular research designs (Tight 2016a), methods or methodologies (Tight 2013), and theoretical frameworks (Tight 2004, 2014a,c,d, 2015a,b,c, 2016b, forthcoming a, b), comparative trends (Tight 2007, 2014b), levels of analysis (Tight 2012c), journal publication patterns (Tight 2012b, 2018, forthcoming a), citation patterns (Tight 2006, 2008, 2009b), and the historical development of research (Tight 2009a, 2015d,e) in higher education.

How to use this book

While this book has been designed and written as (at least an attempt at) a comprehensive synopsis of the entire field of higher education research, there are a number of ways in which it might be read and used. As a whole, it should form a reliable guide for those engaged or interested in the field of higher education research, as students or researchers. Those interested in particular areas of the field, such as teaching and learning or academic work, might choose to devote their attention to specific chapters; while those interested in the use of specific theoretical frameworks or research designs, such as phenomenography or communities of practice, in higher education research may focus down on particular sections, using the contents pages or index to navigate their way through the book.

Whichever way you use the book, however, there should be plenty here to engage your interest. The extensive references provided should enable you to track down key researchers and publications, and follow up your interests as thoroughly as you wish.

Chapter 2

Research Designs and Frameworks

Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the range of research methods, methodologies, designs and theoretical frameworks that have been applied to higher education research. It is organized in four main sections:

• the terminology of methods, methodologies, designs, frameworks and so on is discussed, and the distinctions between them, and their usage in this book, are clarified;

• the range of methodologies and methods used within higher education research are identified, and their relative prevalence and application to ­different topics are discussed;

• the major theoretical frameworks employed within higher education research are examined, together with their origins and usage; and

• the overall research designs that have been adopted in higher education research are identified and explained.

This chapter, which ends with some conclusions, is intended to serve as a reference point for the discussion in the chapters that follow.

Terminology: Research methodologies, methods, frameworks and designs

The terminology used in discussing and categorizing research can be both ­complex and confusing. Hence, it makes sense at the beginning to try and make some useful distinctions, and set out how the terminology will be used in this book. We will ­discuss methodology and method first, then theoretical frameworks and finally research design.

Methodology and method

Definitions of the terms ‘method’ and ‘methodology’ may be found in most research textbooks. Thus, Punch (1998, p. 3) defines methods as ‘the techniques or procedures used to gather and analyse data related to some research question or hypothesis’, and methodology as ‘the strategy, plan of action, process or design lying behind the choice and use of particular methods and linking the choice and use of methods to the desired outcomes’. Cohen, Manion and Morrison (2007, p. 47), to take a second example, put it slightly differently:

By methods, we mean that range of approaches used in educational research to gather data which are to be used as a basis for inference and interpretation, for explanation and prediction. … If methods refer to techniques and procedures used in the process of data-gathering, the aim of methodology then is to describe approaches to, kinds and paradigms of research.

While these distinctions are helpful, they are perhaps not as clear cut as they might be, as is suggested, for example, by Cohen, Manion and Morrison’s use of the t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Research Designs and Frameworks
• 3 Research on Teaching and Learning
• 4 Research on Course Design
• 5 Research on the Student Experience
• 6 Research on Quality
• 7 Research on System Policy
• 8 Research on Institutional Management
• 9 Research on Academic Work
• 10 Research on Knowledge and Research
• 11 Conclusions
• References
• Index
• Copyright