Reva Berman Brown

The Link Between Research And Teaching: Its Purpose And Implications

The assumption that the good researcher is a good teacher is causing a great deal of stress and distress in the colleges of higher education still seeking university status, and in the new universities, and has resulted in an increase in the number of publications during the 1990s on the topic of the link between research and teaching. This paper explores this supposition, following the debate about the link through its various convolutions in the literature, discussing the story so far. Then it draws attention to the contribution made by the concept of a deep approach to learning as a bridge between research and teaching, and the final section discusses the implications of the discussion for the education and training of academics.

What about the workers? Academic staff opinions about working with non-UK postgraduate students in higher education

Abstract Substantial research already exists on the nature of the international student experience in UK higher education, but little work has been carried out into how this increase in their numbers is affecting academic faculty in terms of the problems and benefits created by their presence. This article seeks to address this issue by exploring the experience of academic staff in new universities (NUs) and colleges of higher education (CofHEs) when dealing with non‐UK postgraduate students. The internationalisation of UK higher education is discussed, and the findings of a small exploratory survey into staff attitudes at NUs and CofHEs are evaluated. The results point to a more positive staff reaction to non‐UK postgraduates on the part of CofHEs and a number of possible explanations for this finding are put forward.

The circles of time

The temporal aspects of strategy and decision making have not, until recently, been accorded the importance they deserve. This paper describes a study undertaken to measure the temporal perception of people in an organization. An instrument was devised which the authors have called “the circle test” which measures subjects’ temporal relatedness and temporal dominance ‐ how people perceive the relationship between their past, present and future. Since the size of the organization studied is small, the research took the form of an exploratory study only, but the results of the research indicate that the use of the circle test can demonstrate differences in temporal perception between the sexes and between different age groups. Differences in temporal perception between people at different responsibility levels in the organisation is also suggested.

Patient‐centred audit: a users’ quality model

In the UK healthcare field, audit is currently employed not only in medical and clinical areas, but has also been introduced into the managerial and professional areas. A new approach to audit has been developed as a result of research and is based on a newly‐developed audit instrument which is able to elicit users’ perceptions subsequent to an encounter with a community health service. The paper describes the research process and the development of the instrument now employed in auditing patients’ perceptions of quality. The authors describe the adaptation processes used in order to place the Parasuraman Servqual instrument into the health setting in the UK. The new instrument is currently being operationalised, and the findings of both audits that have been completed thus far are described. The instrument has measured health outcomes from the users’ perspective, and has also highlighted gaps between what the service offers in terms of quality and users’ perceptions of what is actually being delivered.

Emotion in Organizations: The Case of English University Business School Academics

It is an open secret that ones place of work can be, and indeed often is, a hotbed of intrigue, loyalty, betrayal, back-scratching, back-stabbing, pain, and laughter. In short, work is a home away from home. The article uses aspects of the scientific method to reveal the submerged variable of emotion in an organization. It does not put forward suggestions of how emotion should or could be investigated more fruitfully, nor does it pretend to have produced knowledge of theoretical significance. It does not even tell academics anything that they might not otherwise have noticed about the emotional aspects of their academic lives. Nevertheless, the results of this semiscientific (or pseudoscientific) investigation may strike a cord in its academic readers, who will smile or even chuckle as they recognize themselves in what they read. The finest comedy works because it is serious at its core. This article may amuse, but the kernel of what it has to say is in no way amusing.

Does Britain need public law status Chambers of Commerce

There have recently been considerable changes in the UK Chamber of Commerce system, leading to the creation of a network of Approved Chambers and of Chambers of Commerce, Training and Enterprise (CCTEs). However, debate continues in academic and practitioner circles concerning whether UK Chambers of Commerce should move further towards the dominant Chamber model of mainland Europe, based on public law status. This paper assesses the case for and against such a move, in order to contribute to the understanding of the likely impact of recent changes and possible future reforms to the UK Chamber system. Various aspects of UK, French and German Chambers are discussed, compared and contrasted in order to consider whether a move to public law status on the part of UK Chambers would be in the UK’s best interests.

Ask and Ye shall be Answered: expectations and perceptions of an MBA programme

Abstract Asking students at the beginning of a course about their expectations of what that course should be like if it were to be a quality course is fraught with difficulty. As yet, the students have not undertaken the course and tend to express expectations which are derived from previous experience of other courses, over which the people responsible for the course concerned have no control. Issues relating to student expectations of quality are therefore problematic. Asking a question concerning the rating of excellence which the students would give an item creates, in the very asking of the question, an expectation that such an item will not only exist on the course, but that it will be of a demonstrable quality and is necessary for the course to be a quality one. The questionnaire then becomes a self‐fulfilling prophecy of the quality requirements of the course. The paper discusses the problems that arise in using questionnaires to explore student expectations.

The Capacity Spiral: Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Over the last decade, we have witnessed an academic battle between two competing concepts: ‘competence’ and ‘capability’. Put simply, competence claims ‘I will continue to do things to a satisfactory standard in the future because I have done them to a satisfactory standard in the past’. Capability claims, ‘I could do things ably in the future because I have certain qualities that will enable me to do so’. This article argues that in the current educational turmoil, the competence-versus-capability debate is one battlefield too many, and that a strategic alliance between the two warring factions is necessary if either is to have any continuing practical effect in education and commerce. We provide a middle concept, ‘capacity’ in the role of matchmaker. We describe capacity as contextual intelligence and suggest that there is a spiral of capacity linking competence and capability in a practical symbiosis that grounds both in real world contexts.

Knowledge and the English Academic Marketeer

abstract As a further contribution to a description of the nature of marketing academics, this article concentrates on the knowledge dimension and discusses ‘how’ they know what they know. The empirically‐confirmed concept of knowledge strategies is used to demonstrate, by means of three research hypotheses, the ‘ways of knowing’ employed by marketing academics. In summary, the findings of the study reported in this article lend support to the view that university marketing education in England is less associated with the imaginative acquisition of knowledge than is the case in the other business school disciplines.