Wanna collaborate, mate? Some reflections on research and collaboration

I have been thinking about writing on the topic and have indeed made the odd tweet about it, but since it has been heavily promoted in academia, I thought I would put my thoughts in a more coherent way (I hope). And no, I won't be citing other works in this blog. These are some reflections on how I view and feel about research.

No strain, no gain or why I do research*?

As a teacher and an inquisitive person, I do feel the need to probe into things that happen around me in my classroom. I am also of a very sensitive and perceptive nature and capture things others might not be aware of. So you could say it is a very much personal interest and predisposition. I also view this as a way to express myself, to create and develop myself. It is also a challenge for me and I feel that straining myself is the only way to grow. 

Further, I consider researching (or scholarship) to be a natural stage of a teacher's development journey and this is how it was pretty much for me. In the beginning of my teaching career I was learning the craft so to speak. After a while I started to observe not only my learners but also myself and reflect on my own behaviour and actions in the classroom. Most often than not it is in terms of a lesson gone awry. Later self-reflecting on my teaching was necessitated by more formal instances like observations or fellowship application/ association membership status.

Scholarship for me is a personal journey of exploration with the end purpose of improving my own practice and benefiting those who I am there for - my students. It stems from my own desire to do better and make a difference. Sharing my findings with colleagues is again subjected to the above goals but let us look at some other situations where scholarship happens in academia.

The Job of Research

In UK HE (I suspect in academic contexts elswhere) research is very often part of the job characteristic along with teaching for most staff. This places research as a tedious and necessary task, a box to be ticked if you like. It is also something people measure each other's worth by. Recently I was looking at a journal article and the names and pictures of the authors were on the cover page. Under the names were just numbers, metrics of how many publications and citations the person had. Sad picture really...So in this context an activity that should stem from a desire to grow is turned into a condition for one's comfortable existence in the competitive world of academia. Much as I abhor the word - this is not sustainable. It is bound to produce all sorts of far-fetched and superficial abstractions which only serve the author but not the students or other educators. That said, I would not like to make sloppy generalisations as that is not always the case. Perhaps a distiction should be made between researchers (or academics?) and teachers. Research for non-teaching academic staff might take a greater part of their remit as compared to teaching staff. I have seen academics with title Professor of Research so I assume this must be their full time job. That is very different from the type of research I am interested in and would like to do as explained above.

It seems to me doing research is a matter of one's position in an institution, how they view themselves and what their final goal is. I view myself as a regular teacher and my scholarship endeavours are in no way part of my job remit or a requirement of my position in my current context. Quite on the contrary, I feel my ideas and urge to research are placing an additional burden on collegaues who have to deal with my research proposals on top of their other duties. Nevertheless, I do it because I have an inner drive and desire to do it (that could be considered quite selfish) but also I see value in this for my own and others' teaching practice, as well as the recipients of said practice - the students.

Why (not) collaborate?

Collaboration is a topic I very often come upon on social media or in conversations about research in academia. But what could be the gains from that? One thing I can think of is this could be a kind of apprenticeship activity where an early researcher can collaborate with an experienced one to gain skills and confidence in this activity. The added benefit of being recognised in a community of practice is also there. Reasons for collaboration could be either because you lack resources (time, access to scholarly literature or participants for primary research) or a good idea (in that case you might be used as a resource in another person's research). Ideally, the researchers might indeed pursue a common goal and share a common academic interest, which is an essential prerequisite of doing a collaborative piece of research. The latter seems to me the only feasible option to collaborate with someone.

A more recent trend I noted is interdisciplinary collaboration in an attempt to prepare students for the more "global" context of their future career. Collaboration between subject specialists and EAP/ third space practitioners is an established practice aiming to provide all-round support for students during their HE journey.

Now, as I explained in the first section, doing scholarship is a somewhat personal journey for me where I would like to explore an issue of a particular interest arising from my immedaite classroom practice. I cannot expect another researcher to view and perceive this problem the same way as I do. They might not see it as a problem in the first place. So how can I collaborate with others on things that only interest me without going into weird power dynamics between me and the other researcher? Would they be my subordinate going along with my idea and helping with the drudgery of scouring literature or writing up bits and pieces? I would not be happy with that. And this is the very simple reason why I do not collaborate for research with others. Perhaps added to that is the fact I am a tad individualistic and self-willed and prefer to do things my own way - this gives me freedom but also the burden of sole accountability for my actions.

This brings me to the footnote I made earlier and the distinction between scholarship and research. In the process of writing I did come to the realisation that I view research as a job (or could also mean the process of exploring) and scholarship as a natural stage of a teacher's development journey. A teacher who is passionate about their work and interested in exploring things not just for the sake of producing what is expected of them due to institutional or job requirements, but for making their classroom a more comfortable place for their learners, would engage in scholarship activity.

*I do use "research" and "scholarship" interchangeably here to avoid repetition and redeem my poor English language skills to an extent but am aware the two terms do not overlap. Maybe I will dediacte a small section on that at the end.