Transforming Research into Teaching: Universities as Machineries of Relevance

• In Event: STS and Universities - I

Abstract

The modern research universities herald the slogan of research based teaching. However, the implications of this slogan is usually rendered unclear. This is reinforced by current European university discourses that tend to separate research and teaching. University research is usually framed in terms of publications, innovation and other forms of outreach, where the main concern is that results are not made available as a public good fast enough. The worries regarding university teaching are mainly articulated either as didactic challenges or as a mismatch between students’ choices of area of study and the needs of industry and government. STS has made few efforts to bridge this gap; the main focus has been on research. This paper is an effort to amend this situation. It presents a study of how university professors think about the relationship between research and teaching and how they account for their practices in this respect, like how they select research results as the basis of their teaching and for what purposes. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with around 40 professors employed at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, working at departments across the spectrum of disciplines and profession. We use the result to extend the argument of Latour regarding the transformation of research into facts by including teaching as a major part of this, while showing that there is a diversity of practices.

Authors

• Knut H Sørensen, NTNU, Dept. of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture

• Lina Ingeborgrud