娇色导航

As master’s students in the field of educational leadership we were ready to navigate the field in pursuit of our development as researchers and future educational leaders. Our previous experience was varied as graduates, teachers and educational administrators and managers. However, like others, we attached value to studying in research environments where the nexus between teaching and research offered possibilities to engage critically with the field’s knowledge and develop as researchers. As seven master’s students from England, India, Pakistan, Japan and Vietnam, we come together, in this blog post, thinking with Griffiths’ (2004) conceptual frame (see figure 1), to examine our experience of the nexus between research and teaching as we navigated our engagement in the research field of educational leadership.

Griffiths (2004) differentiates between research-led, research-orientated and research-based teaching. Thinking with Griffiths (2004) we employed an autoethnographic approach to explore our own experiences of our master’s programme in a research‐active university context where both teaching and research are concerned with learning and knowledge production for those involved.

Figure 1: The difference between research-led, research-orientated and research-based teaching (adapted from Griffiths (2004))

Navigating research-led teaching: Following the compass
Embarking on a taught research programme felt much like setting sail on what for us felt unchartered waters. At the start, research-led teaching felt like following the compass in the hands of academics as we were guided in our early engagement with the research field. Their active research interests charted our course, steering us through contemporary debates within the field of educational leadership. What we thought of as distant scholarly islands were brought closer to our learning shores. However, often the focus was on the research conclusions and contribution without always revealing the possibilities in the routes to those destinations.

Research-oriented teaching: Reading the stars
We were urged to look up and learn to read the stars through research-oriented teaching to recognise how knowledge itself was constructed (Griffiths, 2004). Rather than accepting leadership models as fixed landmarks, we began to question who had drawn these maps and whose perspectives had been omitted (Smith et al., 2022). Seminars became navigational training grounds, preparing us for our own research projects and role in knowledge production (Griffiths, 2004). Guided through literature reviews and data analysis, we learned to plot courses through complex and messy currents. Practical contexts anchored us, as we crafted evidence-informed policy briefs linking theory to practice. Supported by those academics who openly shared their research identities and epistemological positions, we began to grow comfortable with the messy, political nature of research, embracing reflexivity as a critical navigational skill (Lather, 2006).

‘Rather than accepting leadership models as fixed landmarks, we began to question who had drawn these maps and whose perspectives had been omitted’

Research-based teaching: Charting our own course
With the stars as guides, our journey was transforming. We were no longer mere travellers following set paths as passengers. With research-based teaching centred on inquiry and engagement as researchers (Griffiths, 2004) we became captains charting our own course through our dissertation studies. This was our open sea, an invitation to explore, create and contribute original knowledge. Through critical inquiry, we interrogated underlying assumptions and paradigms in educational leadership, as some academics made transparent their own scholarly voyages. As researchers we not only navigated existing waters but aimed to disrupt existing currents in the field of educational leadership. For it was within our research projects that we navigated tensions, confronted biases, and developed critical reflexivity in both research and leadership (Brown et al., 2022).

Beyond knowledge recipients as knowledge producers

It is the conscious design and operationalisation of the research–teaching nexus that establishes an environment where as students we are not simply recipients of research knowledge but knowledge producers, critical in our engagement and production of knowledge in the field of study. For here there is recognition that the nexus between research and teaching is not a fixed map but is dynamic, created to be altered by each of us, as we interact relationally with knowledge and methodological approaches within our field.

References

Griffiths, R. (2004). Knowledge production and the research–teaching nexus: The case of the built environment disciplines. Studies in Higher Education, 29(6), 709–726.

Lather, P. (2006). Paradigm proliferation as a good thing to think with: Teaching research in education as a wild profusion. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 19(1), 35–57.

Smith, D., Shearn, K., Lidster, J., Ramchandani, G., Wheat, J., Lacey, M., Allcock, L., Partington, L., Brierley, H., Robinson, B., & Sebok, T. (2022). Research-informed teaching toolkit. Sheffield Hallam University.