Högskolepedagogisk utveckling och forskning. Gränsarbete kring ett kunskapsområde i universitetets hjärta. En kommentar till Wide samt Scheja och Bolander Laksov

Abstract

In spring 2021, Örebro University arranged the second Swedish conference for Research in Higher Education. One of the themes for the conference was the development of higher education studies as a specific branch of this research. Our journal, Högre utbildning, now publishes three contributions linked to this theme as in-depths essays. These may be read separately or together. The first consists of the introductory keynote from the conference, held by Sverre Wide. The team of editors then invited Max Scheja and Klara Bolander Laksov, as professors in this domain, to share their view of the nature of their branch of studies in higher education, in relation to the view put forward by Wide. Their contribution is the second one. Finally, the editors also invited Åsa Lindberg-Sand to share her reflections on the relationship between research in higher education and the development of studies in higher education.  Below, her contribution follows. 

This essay starts in the view that the knowledge base of the practices of teaching and research are deeply interconnected in the professional life of academics, though the actual practices are conducted separately. Thus, the practice of the university as a whole is required for both. The content of education should be based in scientific knowledge, and there is no overarching level, above the university, to underpin academic decisions on content. These choices have to rely on the scientific qualifications represented by the academic profession in the specific programme. Furthermore, no research discipline may continue to develop without also being integrated with the teaching practice exercised in doctoral programmes. For these reasons, academic scholarship should be regarded as a whole, and not treated as collection of separate qualifications only relevant when active in the specific practice of either teaching or research. In the boundary work characterising the university, the educational practices are keeping the university together, while the different scientific specialties mostly are striving to keep practices apart, to distinguish themselves. Hence, research outcomes are always specific in relation to the complex and nested social activities characterising everyday practices, also in the university. As such they can never be fully captured by one discipline.

With a starting point about forty years ago, a new branch of educational practice developed in universities: educational/academic development. It could be described as a growing community of practice in the centre of the university, with a shared project in supporting the development of teaching and learning. The new direction of research, described in the contributions from Wide and Scheja & Bolander Laksov, is rooted in this community and focussed on creating a specific discipline for the development of higher education. However, educational programmes are large complex practices, which harbour the tensions between teaching and research through joining several fields of knowledge. Thus, research in higher education, or higher education studies (högskolepedagogik), is not sufficient for creating a knowledge base for the development of higher education. Which path to choose is a question in which cultural, ethical, and other educational conditions must be regarded, and the knowledge base required should be multidisciplinary. Hence, the centres for academic/educational development should not be regarded as leading the development of higher education, due to their disciplinary speciality. My point is that their – important – task should express a university responsibility: to serve the academic profession by offering collegiate encounters, enriched by research in higher education from many different disciplines, with the aim to uphold an intellectual environment to support the development of academic scholarship.