Beyond the ‘research/teaching nexus’: exploring the complexity of academic experience

The relationship between research and teaching has been the focus of much scholarly debate. Recently, the very existence of such a relationship has been questioned. In addition, government policies are undermining this defining feature of the modern university, creating an ontological crisis for those working in the academy. In order to understand better how academics conceptualise the research/teaching relation and how this in turn shapes their pedagogies, we need a research approach that addresses individual academic experience as a coherent whole, as well as taking account of variation in experience across a cohort. This article outlines an empirical study in which the ‘experiential field’ of the research/teaching relation is extended to encompass the phenomena of research, teaching, learning, knowledge and their inter‐relation. The variation in experience evident in the findings suggests that academics' epistemologies are strongly influenced by the way knowledge is conceived of and structured within their discipline, and that these epistemologies play a fundamental role in shaping experiences of research, teaching and learning, and hence of the research/teaching relation. Implications for institutional development are discussed.

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