Many institutions draw upon a favoured typology developed by Professor Mick Healey who differentiated between research-tutored, research-based, research-led and research-oriented approaches in his article entitled Linking research and teaching exploring disciplinary spaces and the role of inquiry-based learning which appeared in Reshaping the university: new relationships between research, scholarship and teaching in 2005. The strength of this typology is that it highlights how an emphasis may be placed upon either research content or research processes/problems and how this emphasis may be either student focused or teacher focused.
Research-tutored approach
This approach emphasises research content with students as participants. Student engagement is through evaluating and critiquing the research of others. Our researchers use this approach which is fairly generic within Brighton Business School and within the University of Brighton.
Research-based approach
This approach emphasises research processes and problems with students as participants. Our researchers favour and encourage this inquiry-based approach to learning with its emphasis upon student research project groups and case study groups in which students learn through researching. Our PhD students exemplify a research-based approach with current doctoral projects including the relationship between earnings management and analyst forecast errors, a comparison of the employment of elder workers in the UK and Germany and the role of the projectors in project management history. PhD students learn through their research inquiries into these highly focused projects and invariably their supervisors, who are drawn from one of our four research areas, learn as part of these research journeys.
Research-led approach
This approach emphasises research content with the focus upon the lecturer. This is the classic form of research-informed teaching with our researchers sharing the latest research findings from the four research areas with their students. As well as their own research, our researchers regularly attend national and international conferences and in this way it is possible to share the latest research often even before it is published. In this approach, research is presented as information content and the textbooks of our researchers offer a tangible example of this approach.
Research-oriented approach
This approach emphasises research processes and problems with the focus upon the lecturer. Our researchers often contribute to modules and courses through research methods inputs; this may be through research methods modules or sharing their tacit research knowledge when supervising student research dissertations.
The four approaches featured here highlight the very diverse ways in which we believe our research-informed teaching is occurring. We all believe in the contribution research (both content and processes) makes towards the student experience, although it is difficult to generalise what happens. Accepting that for each of us research-informed teaching will be very different we conclude with three personal reflections from our researchers.