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The Importance of Research to Students

Tags: cleveland university-kansas city , Communications Staff , health sciences , research

When exploring the impact of research, consider what it would be like if the automotive industry ceased all investigative efforts. The cars we drive would likely never improve in safety, comfort, or efficiency, and we would never know the benefits of the advancements we often take for granted. The same is true for the health sciences. Without research, advancements that have improved some lives and saved others may not have come to pass.

For universities, the research component allows for a broader educational experience whereby students are able to explore the effects of applying new thought processes through study and testing. Students are able to use that experience to see the practical application of their classroom experience represented in research projects. Cleveland University-Kansas City (CUKC), for example, offers a challenging curriculum, but also the opportunity to participate in various research studies on campus. ( Learn more about chiropractic here .)

Dr. Mark Pfefer, director of research at CUKC, collaborates with students on various projects. He said students have the opportunity to take an active role in research projects while at the same time learning about proper investigative techniques.

“We’ve had numerous students participate as co-authors on recent publications and presentations,” Pfefer said. “Students are taught strategies to search for information and assess the quality of the information found. Students learn good critical appraisal skills; all information is not the same, some information is good, and some is not.”

Research by Students in College

Pfefer said that students interested in research are mentored by faculty and assist in various ways, including literature searching, data collection, data entry, and manuscript development. The collective work between students and administrators has proven to be a successful combination, and he looks forward to the continuation of these efforts in future studies.

While time in the classroom is invaluable, having access to an on-site research department means that students are able to grow and challenge the boundaries that were established by their predecessors in the field. They are encouraged to open their minds and be open to the possibilities that research can reveal. Ultimately, they can become better health care professionals by engaging in work outside the classroom that challenges them in a similar fashion.

This will also have an impact on their future in their chosen profession by putting them in the position to attach their name to efforts that may have reshaped the parameters that were once the norm. Research can light the fire of curiosity that will continue throughout a professional career, and there is no end to what can be learned.

At Cleveland University-Kansas City (CUKC) , those are the exhilarating breakthroughs that research can deliver. It educates our students personally by opening their eyes to new possibilities. It rewards them professionally by getting their name out into the research community before they’ve even graduated.

Get to Know Cleveland University-Kansas City (CUKC )

CUKC is a private, nonprofit chiropractic and health sciences university in Overland Park, Kansas, a major suburb of the Kansas City metropolitan area. In addition to our 100-year legacy of offering the Doctor of Chiropractic (D.C.) degree, CUKC offers two-year degrees Radiologic Technology, and Biological Sciences. CUKC also offers the B.S. in Human Biology, B.S. in Exercise Science, the M.S. in Exercise Physiology and Sports Performance, and a 12-credit-hour Certificate in Sports Performance (CSP).

Explore our academic degrees/certifications here .

Research is a powerful part of the educational experience at CUKC and one we are proud to share with our students. As an example of the topics and issues explored, check out this research blog and our website for evidence-based research on chiropractic issues and topics .

CUKC is a student-focused, high academic quality University. Sound interesting to you? Get more information about CUKC here, and download a free guide to help you plot your college plan: Your Guide to Navigating College Financial Aid .

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How Undergraduates Benefit From Doing Research

Undergraduate research isn't just for STEM subjects.

Benefits of Undergraduate Research

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Studies show students who participate in research earn better grades, are more likely to graduate and are better equipped for graduate school or careers.

Jessica Stewart understands from personal experience the value of doing research as a college undergraduate. In her junior year at the University of California, Berkeley , Stewart worked with art historian Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby on her book, "Colossal," researching the Suez Canal, Eiffel Tower and other massive art and engineering monuments.

She loved the research so much that she went on to get her Ph.D. in art history. Almost 20 years after working on "Colossal," Stewart now directs the program that gave her the opportunity: UC Berkeley’s Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program.

But the initial benefit of doing undergraduate research was even more practical. When she was deciding which projects to apply for as an undergraduate, she got to explore many academic disciplines. This process opened her eyes.

“From the moment I set foot on campus, URAP allowed me to see what kinds of ideas I could study,” Stewart says. “The research and credit are great, but there’s this wayfinding side, too, where students can learn who researchers are, what research looks like and fields they may not have had any exposure to.”

A long tradition at some universities, mentored research projects are now offered at undergraduate institutions around the U.S. While many programs started out focused on science, today most universities offer opportunities across disciplines, including all aspects of STEM as well as architecture, business and theater arts.

No matter the subject area, research participation is an asset for undergrads. Studies show students who participate earn better grades , are more likely to graduate and are better equipped for graduate school or careers.

“It’s often most transformative for nontraditional learners and underrepresented students,” Stewart says. “They learn to triangulate life experience and studies in ways that may not have been intuitive for them. It greatly improves academic performance, retention and persistence.”

Research Roots in STEM

Every year, 6,000 undergraduates participate in research experiences through the National Science Foundation, mostly during the summer. Projects span nearly 20 subject areas , such as astronomy and ocean sciences. Most take place in the U.S., but some research is done abroad, including a marine sciences project at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences.

Experiences like these increase students’ confidence in their research skills and boost awareness of what graduate school will be like, according to a 2018 study . They also help students identify whether they want to pursue a science career.

“It’s one of the best ways to recruit students into STEM careers and retain them,” says Corby Hovis, a program director at the NSF's Division of Undergraduate Education. “That’s why we do it. It’s an effective way to get students from classrooms into doing STEM.”

The NSF is especially interested in applications from students who might not have had past opportunities to do research, including those who are the first in their families to attend college, and Black and Latino students.

Research institutions apply for NSF grants to mentor undergraduate students and guide them through participation in an ongoing project. For students, the experience includes orientation and training, as well as a stipend and allowances for housing and travel. In most cases, students write a paper about their contribution to research and may even present at a conference or seminar.

Some opportunities require that students have specific math courses under their belts, but all focus on helping students build other skills, aside from lab or research techniques, that they’ll need for future academic work or careers.

“Communicating clearly the results of research is a skill that could carry over into any field,” Hovis says. “The teamwork and cohort experience not only encourages them to continue in science, but (is) translatable to any number of other activities they will do later on.”

Connecting With Faculty

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , research has been part of the undergraduate experience for more than 50 years. Some students choose the school specifically for this reason, and more than 90% of students participate. As at other schools, research is part of a bigger initiative around experiential learning, which also includes service learning and study abroad .

The biggest challenge for students is usually figuring out what kind of research they’re interested in.

“We depend on students to do some of that footwork,” says Michael Bergren, director of MIT's Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. “There are a lot of supports, but at the end of the day a student needs to understand what they’re interested in, who's doing the work they’re interested in and what the steps are to participating in that research.”

But there is hand-holding, if needed. Before applying to work on a project, students have to approach the lead faculty member and introduce themselves.

“This is really intimidating. We don’t take that for granted,” Bergren says. “Part of life skills development is approaching a lab or faculty member and advocating for themselves.”

Peers offer tips about how to navigate that face-to-face encounter, such as find out a faculty member's office hours, send an email with a resume attached and attend a departmental event.

The networking doesn’t stop there. Get to know which graduate students work on the project, talk to other students who might be exploring the same opportunities and make sure you know what the work involves.

“As the research progresses, deliverables amp up,” Bergren says. “You may find you need to put more time into this right when finals are happening.”

The Future of Undergraduate Research

Some undergraduate researchers might share their work at academic conferences or seminars, or even be published in journals. Some might participate in the Council on Undergraduate Research annual conference , the largest symposium of its kind. Every year, more than 4,000 students attend a graduate school and career fair and present work that spans the disciplines.

Students have come to expect that they’ll get a chance to do research as undergrads, says Lindsay Currie, the council's director.

“More recent generations grew up in a different climate. They learned by doing in classrooms,” Currie says. “That, combined with a workforce that expects people to have lived experience, means students want to be able to say that they’ve already done research as part of their coursework.”

What’s next, Currie says, is universities that integrate research into coursework so that students start a project their first year and continue through their time in college. Working with a network of universities, the Council on Undergraduate Research has completed a study of how schools can modify their curricula to incorporate research from the very beginning.

“Starting as freshmen, students would work on research that would build,” Currie says. “This would be significantly more advanced projects that would be consistent across the particular department. This is how they’re going to teach, because they know students benefit from doing.”

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What Is Research, and Why Do People Do It?

• Open Access
• First Online: 03 December 2022

Cite this chapter

You have full access to this open access chapter

• James Hiebert 6 ,
• Jinfa Cai 7 ,
• Stephen Hwang 7 ,
• Anne K Morris 6 &
• Charles Hohensee 6  

Part of the book series: Research in Mathematics Education ((RME))

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Abstractspiepr Abs1

Every day people do research as they gather information to learn about something of interest. In the scientific world, however, research means something different than simply gathering information. Scientific research is characterized by its careful planning and observing, by its relentless efforts to understand and explain, and by its commitment to learn from everyone else seriously engaged in research. We call this kind of research scientific inquiry and define it as “formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses.” By “hypotheses” we do not mean the hypotheses you encounter in statistics courses. We mean predictions about what you expect to find and rationales for why you made these predictions. Throughout this and the remaining chapters we make clear that the process of scientific inquiry applies to all kinds of research studies and data, both qualitative and quantitative.

You have full access to this open access chapter,  Download chapter PDF

Part I. What Is Research?

Have you ever studied something carefully because you wanted to know more about it? Maybe you wanted to know more about your grandmother’s life when she was younger so you asked her to tell you stories from her childhood, or maybe you wanted to know more about a fertilizer you were about to use in your garden so you read the ingredients on the package and looked them up online. According to the dictionary definition, you were doing research.

Recall your high school assignments asking you to “research” a topic. The assignment likely included consulting a variety of sources that discussed the topic, perhaps including some “original” sources. Often, the teacher referred to your product as a “research paper.”

Were you conducting research when you interviewed your grandmother or wrote high school papers reviewing a particular topic? Our view is that you were engaged in part of the research process, but only a small part. In this book, we reserve the word “research” for what it means in the scientific world, that is, for scientific research or, more pointedly, for scientific inquiry .

Exercise 1.1

Before you read any further, write a definition of what you think scientific inquiry is. Keep it short—Two to three sentences. You will periodically update this definition as you read this chapter and the remainder of the book.

This book is about scientific inquiry—what it is and how to do it. For starters, scientific inquiry is a process, a particular way of finding out about something that involves a number of phases. Each phase of the process constitutes one aspect of scientific inquiry. You are doing scientific inquiry as you engage in each phase, but you have not done scientific inquiry until you complete the full process. Each phase is necessary but not sufficient.

In this chapter, we set the stage by defining scientific inquiry—describing what it is and what it is not—and by discussing what it is good for and why people do it. The remaining chapters build directly on the ideas presented in this chapter.

A first thing to know is that scientific inquiry is not all or nothing. “Scientificness” is a continuum. Inquiries can be more scientific or less scientific. What makes an inquiry more scientific? You might be surprised there is no universally agreed upon answer to this question. None of the descriptors we know of are sufficient by themselves to define scientific inquiry. But all of them give you a way of thinking about some aspects of the process of scientific inquiry. Each one gives you different insights.

Exercise 1.2

As you read about each descriptor below, think about what would make an inquiry more or less scientific. If you think a descriptor is important, use it to revise your definition of scientific inquiry.

Creating an Image of Scientific Inquiry

We will present three descriptors of scientific inquiry. Each provides a different perspective and emphasizes a different aspect of scientific inquiry. We will draw on all three descriptors to compose our definition of scientific inquiry.

Descriptor 1. Experience Carefully Planned in Advance

Sir Ronald Fisher, often called the father of modern statistical design, once referred to research as “experience carefully planned in advance” (1935, p. 8). He said that humans are always learning from experience, from interacting with the world around them. Usually, this learning is haphazard rather than the result of a deliberate process carried out over an extended period of time. Research, Fisher said, was learning from experience, but experience carefully planned in advance.

This phrase can be fully appreciated by looking at each word. The fact that scientific inquiry is based on experience means that it is based on interacting with the world. These interactions could be thought of as the stuff of scientific inquiry. In addition, it is not just any experience that counts. The experience must be carefully planned . The interactions with the world must be conducted with an explicit, describable purpose, and steps must be taken to make the intended learning as likely as possible. This planning is an integral part of scientific inquiry; it is not just a preparation phase. It is one of the things that distinguishes scientific inquiry from many everyday learning experiences. Finally, these steps must be taken beforehand and the purpose of the inquiry must be articulated in advance of the experience. Clearly, scientific inquiry does not happen by accident, by just stumbling into something. Stumbling into something unexpected and interesting can happen while engaged in scientific inquiry, but learning does not depend on it and serendipity does not make the inquiry scientific.

Descriptor 2. Observing Something and Trying to Explain Why It Is the Way It Is

When we were writing this chapter and googled “scientific inquiry,” the first entry was: “Scientific inquiry refers to the diverse ways in which scientists study the natural world and propose explanations based on the evidence derived from their work.” The emphasis is on studying, or observing, and then explaining . This descriptor takes the image of scientific inquiry beyond carefully planned experience and includes explaining what was experienced.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “explain” means “(a) to make known, (b) to make plain or understandable, (c) to give the reason or cause of, and (d) to show the logical development or relations of” (Merriam-Webster, n.d. ). We will use all these definitions. Taken together, they suggest that to explain an observation means to understand it by finding reasons (or causes) for why it is as it is. In this sense of scientific inquiry, the following are synonyms: explaining why, understanding why, and reasoning about causes and effects. Our image of scientific inquiry now includes planning, observing, and explaining why.

We need to add a final note about this descriptor. We have phrased it in a way that suggests “observing something” means you are observing something in real time—observing the way things are or the way things are changing. This is often true. But, observing could mean observing data that already have been collected, maybe by someone else making the original observations (e.g., secondary analysis of NAEP data or analysis of existing video recordings of classroom instruction). We will address secondary analyses more fully in Chap. 4 . For now, what is important is that the process requires explaining why the data look like they do.

We must note that for us, the term “data” is not limited to numerical or quantitative data such as test scores. Data can also take many nonquantitative forms, including written survey responses, interview transcripts, journal entries, video recordings of students, teachers, and classrooms, text messages, and so forth.

Exercise 1.3

What are the implications of the statement that just “observing” is not enough to count as scientific inquiry? Does this mean that a detailed description of a phenomenon is not scientific inquiry?

Find sources that define research in education that differ with our position, that say description alone, without explanation, counts as scientific research. Identify the precise points where the opinions differ. What are the best arguments for each of the positions? Which do you prefer? Why?

Descriptor 3. Updating Everyone’s Thinking in Response to More and Better Information

This descriptor focuses on a third aspect of scientific inquiry: updating and advancing the field’s understanding of phenomena that are investigated. This descriptor foregrounds a powerful characteristic of scientific inquiry: the reliability (or trustworthiness) of what is learned and the ultimate inevitability of this learning to advance human understanding of phenomena. Humans might choose not to learn from scientific inquiry, but history suggests that scientific inquiry always has the potential to advance understanding and that, eventually, humans take advantage of these new understandings.

Before exploring these bold claims a bit further, note that this descriptor uses “information” in the same way the previous two descriptors used “experience” and “observations.” These are the stuff of scientific inquiry and we will use them often, sometimes interchangeably. Frequently, we will use the term “data” to stand for all these terms.

An overriding goal of scientific inquiry is for everyone to learn from what one scientist does. Much of this book is about the methods you need to use so others have faith in what you report and can learn the same things you learned. This aspect of scientific inquiry has many implications.

One implication is that scientific inquiry is not a private practice. It is a public practice available for others to see and learn from. Notice how different this is from everyday learning. When you happen to learn something from your everyday experience, often only you gain from the experience. The fact that research is a public practice means it is also a social one. It is best conducted by interacting with others along the way: soliciting feedback at each phase, taking opportunities to present work-in-progress, and benefitting from the advice of others.

A second implication is that you, as the researcher, must be committed to sharing what you are doing and what you are learning in an open and transparent way. This allows all phases of your work to be scrutinized and critiqued. This is what gives your work credibility. The reliability or trustworthiness of your findings depends on your colleagues recognizing that you have used all appropriate methods to maximize the chances that your claims are justified by the data.

A third implication of viewing scientific inquiry as a collective enterprise is the reverse of the second—you must be committed to receiving comments from others. You must treat your colleagues as fair and honest critics even though it might sometimes feel otherwise. You must appreciate their job, which is to remain skeptical while scrutinizing what you have done in considerable detail. To provide the best help to you, they must remain skeptical about your conclusions (when, for example, the data are difficult for them to interpret) until you offer a convincing logical argument based on the information you share. A rather harsh but good-to-remember statement of the role of your friendly critics was voiced by Karl Popper, a well-known twentieth century philosopher of science: “. . . if you are interested in the problem which I tried to solve by my tentative assertion, you may help me by criticizing it as severely as you can” (Popper, 1968, p. 27).

A final implication of this third descriptor is that, as someone engaged in scientific inquiry, you have no choice but to update your thinking when the data support a different conclusion. This applies to your own data as well as to those of others. When data clearly point to a specific claim, even one that is quite different than you expected, you must reconsider your position. If the outcome is replicated multiple times, you need to adjust your thinking accordingly. Scientific inquiry does not let you pick and choose which data to believe; it mandates that everyone update their thinking when the data warrant an update.

Doing Scientific Inquiry

We define scientific inquiry in an operational sense—what does it mean to do scientific inquiry? What kind of process would satisfy all three descriptors: carefully planning an experience in advance; observing and trying to explain what you see; and, contributing to updating everyone’s thinking about an important phenomenon?

We define scientific inquiry as formulating , testing , and revising hypotheses about phenomena of interest.

Of course, we are not the only ones who define it in this way. The definition for the scientific method posted by the editors of Britannica is: “a researcher develops a hypothesis, tests it through various means, and then modifies the hypothesis on the basis of the outcome of the tests and experiments” (Britannica, n.d. ).

Notice how defining scientific inquiry this way satisfies each of the descriptors. “Carefully planning an experience in advance” is exactly what happens when formulating a hypothesis about a phenomenon of interest and thinking about how to test it. “ Observing a phenomenon” occurs when testing a hypothesis, and “ explaining ” what is found is required when revising a hypothesis based on the data. Finally, “updating everyone’s thinking” comes from comparing publicly the original with the revised hypothesis.

Doing scientific inquiry, as we have defined it, underscores the value of accumulating knowledge rather than generating random bits of knowledge. Formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses is an ongoing process, with each revised hypothesis begging for another test, whether by the same researcher or by new researchers. The editors of Britannica signaled this cyclic process by adding the following phrase to their definition of the scientific method: “The modified hypothesis is then retested, further modified, and tested again.” Scientific inquiry creates a process that encourages each study to build on the studies that have gone before. Through collective engagement in this process of building study on top of study, the scientific community works together to update its thinking.

Before exploring more fully the meaning of “formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses,” we need to acknowledge that this is not the only way researchers define research. Some researchers prefer a less formal definition, one that includes more serendipity, less planning, less explanation. You might have come across more open definitions such as “research is finding out about something.” We prefer the tighter hypothesis formulation, testing, and revision definition because we believe it provides a single, coherent map for conducting research that addresses many of the thorny problems educational researchers encounter. We believe it is the most useful orientation toward research and the most helpful to learn as a beginning researcher.

A final clarification of our definition is that it applies equally to qualitative and quantitative research. This is a familiar distinction in education that has generated much discussion. You might think our definition favors quantitative methods over qualitative methods because the language of hypothesis formulation and testing is often associated with quantitative methods. In fact, we do not favor one method over another. In Chap. 4 , we will illustrate how our definition fits research using a range of quantitative and qualitative methods.

Exercise 1.4

Look for ways to extend what the field knows in an area that has already received attention by other researchers. Specifically, you can search for a program of research carried out by more experienced researchers that has some revised hypotheses that remain untested. Identify a revised hypothesis that you might like to test.

Unpacking the Terms Formulating, Testing, and Revising Hypotheses

To get a full sense of the definition of scientific inquiry we will use throughout this book, it is helpful to spend a little time with each of the key terms.

We first want to make clear that we use the term “hypothesis” as it is defined in most dictionaries and as it used in many scientific fields rather than as it is usually defined in educational statistics courses. By “hypothesis,” we do not mean a null hypothesis that is accepted or rejected by statistical analysis. Rather, we use “hypothesis” in the sense conveyed by the following definitions: “An idea or explanation for something that is based on known facts but has not yet been proved” (Cambridge University Press, n.d. ), and “An unproved theory, proposition, or supposition, tentatively accepted to explain certain facts and to provide a basis for further investigation or argument” (Agnes & Guralnik, 2008 ).

We distinguish two parts to “hypotheses.” Hypotheses consist of predictions and rationales . Predictions are statements about what you expect to find when you inquire about something. Rationales are explanations for why you made the predictions you did, why you believe your predictions are correct. So, for us “formulating hypotheses” means making explicit predictions and developing rationales for the predictions.

“Testing hypotheses” means making observations that allow you to assess in what ways your predictions were correct and in what ways they were incorrect. In education research, it is rarely useful to think of your predictions as either right or wrong. Because of the complexity of most issues you will investigate, most predictions will be right in some ways and wrong in others.

By studying the observations you make (data you collect) to test your hypotheses, you can revise your hypotheses to better align with the observations. This means revising your predictions plus revising your rationales to justify your adjusted predictions. Even though you might not run another test, formulating revised hypotheses is an essential part of conducting a research study. Comparing your original and revised hypotheses informs everyone of what you learned by conducting your study. In addition, a revised hypothesis sets the stage for you or someone else to extend your study and accumulate more knowledge of the phenomenon.

We should note that not everyone makes a clear distinction between predictions and rationales as two aspects of hypotheses. In fact, common, non-scientific uses of the word “hypothesis” may limit it to only a prediction or only an explanation (or rationale). We choose to explicitly include both prediction and rationale in our definition of hypothesis, not because we assert this should be the universal definition, but because we want to foreground the importance of both parts acting in concert. Using “hypothesis” to represent both prediction and rationale could hide the two aspects, but we make them explicit because they provide different kinds of information. It is usually easier to make predictions than develop rationales because predictions can be guesses, hunches, or gut feelings about which you have little confidence. Developing a compelling rationale requires careful thought plus reading what other researchers have found plus talking with your colleagues. Often, while you are developing your rationale you will find good reasons to change your predictions. Developing good rationales is the engine that drives scientific inquiry. Rationales are essentially descriptions of how much you know about the phenomenon you are studying. Throughout this guide, we will elaborate on how developing good rationales drives scientific inquiry. For now, we simply note that it can sharpen your predictions and help you to interpret your data as you test your hypotheses.

Hypotheses in education research take a variety of forms or types. This is because there are a variety of phenomena that can be investigated. Investigating educational phenomena is sometimes best done using qualitative methods, sometimes using quantitative methods, and most often using mixed methods (e.g., Hay, 2016 ; Weis et al. 2019a ; Weisner, 2005 ). This means that, given our definition, hypotheses are equally applicable to qualitative and quantitative investigations.

Hypotheses take different forms when they are used to investigate different kinds of phenomena. Two very different activities in education could be labeled conducting experiments and descriptions. In an experiment, a hypothesis makes a prediction about anticipated changes, say the changes that occur when a treatment or intervention is applied. You might investigate how students’ thinking changes during a particular kind of instruction.

A second type of hypothesis, relevant for descriptive research, makes a prediction about what you will find when you investigate and describe the nature of a situation. The goal is to understand a situation as it exists rather than to understand a change from one situation to another. In this case, your prediction is what you expect to observe. Your rationale is the set of reasons for making this prediction; it is your current explanation for why the situation will look like it does.

You will probably read, if you have not already, that some researchers say you do not need a prediction to conduct a descriptive study. We will discuss this point of view in Chap. 2 . For now, we simply claim that scientific inquiry, as we have defined it, applies to all kinds of research studies. Descriptive studies, like others, not only benefit from formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses, but also need hypothesis formulating, testing, and revising.

One reason we define research as formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses is that if you think of research in this way you are less likely to go wrong. It is a useful guide for the entire process, as we will describe in detail in the chapters ahead. For example, as you build the rationale for your predictions, you are constructing the theoretical framework for your study (Chap. 3 ). As you work out the methods you will use to test your hypothesis, every decision you make will be based on asking, “Will this help me formulate or test or revise my hypothesis?” (Chap. 4 ). As you interpret the results of testing your predictions, you will compare them to what you predicted and examine the differences, focusing on how you must revise your hypotheses (Chap. 5 ). By anchoring the process to formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses, you will make smart decisions that yield a coherent and well-designed study.

Exercise 1.5

Compare the concept of formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses with the descriptions of scientific inquiry contained in Scientific Research in Education (NRC, 2002 ). How are they similar or different?

Exercise 1.6

Provide an example to illustrate and emphasize the differences between everyday learning/thinking and scientific inquiry.

Learning from Doing Scientific Inquiry

We noted earlier that a measure of what you have learned by conducting a research study is found in the differences between your original hypothesis and your revised hypothesis based on the data you collected to test your hypothesis. We will elaborate this statement in later chapters, but we preview our argument here.

Even before collecting data, scientific inquiry requires cycles of making a prediction, developing a rationale, refining your predictions, reading and studying more to strengthen your rationale, refining your predictions again, and so forth. And, even if you have run through several such cycles, you still will likely find that when you test your prediction you will be partly right and partly wrong. The results will support some parts of your predictions but not others, or the results will “kind of” support your predictions. A critical part of scientific inquiry is making sense of your results by interpreting them against your predictions. Carefully describing what aspects of your data supported your predictions, what aspects did not, and what data fell outside of any predictions is not an easy task, but you cannot learn from your study without doing this analysis.

Analyzing the matches and mismatches between your predictions and your data allows you to formulate different rationales that would have accounted for more of the data. The best revised rationale is the one that accounts for the most data. Once you have revised your rationales, you can think about the predictions they best justify or explain. It is by comparing your original rationales to your new rationales that you can sort out what you learned from your study.

Suppose your study was an experiment. Maybe you were investigating the effects of a new instructional intervention on students’ learning. Your original rationale was your explanation for why the intervention would change the learning outcomes in a particular way. Your revised rationale explained why the changes that you observed occurred like they did and why your revised predictions are better. Maybe your original rationale focused on the potential of the activities if they were implemented in ideal ways and your revised rationale included the factors that are likely to affect how teachers implement them. By comparing the before and after rationales, you are describing what you learned—what you can explain now that you could not before. Another way of saying this is that you are describing how much more you understand now than before you conducted your study.

Revised predictions based on carefully planned and collected data usually exhibit some of the following features compared with the originals: more precision, more completeness, and broader scope. Revised rationales have more explanatory power and become more complete, more aligned with the new predictions, sharper, and overall more convincing.

Part II. Why Do Educators Do Research?

Doing scientific inquiry is a lot of work. Each phase of the process takes time, and you will often cycle back to improve earlier phases as you engage in later phases. Because of the significant effort required, you should make sure your study is worth it. So, from the beginning, you should think about the purpose of your study. Why do you want to do it? And, because research is a social practice, you should also think about whether the results of your study are likely to be important and significant to the education community.

If you are doing research in the way we have described—as scientific inquiry—then one purpose of your study is to understand , not just to describe or evaluate or report. As we noted earlier, when you formulate hypotheses, you are developing rationales that explain why things might be like they are. In our view, trying to understand and explain is what separates research from other kinds of activities, like evaluating or describing.

One reason understanding is so important is that it allows researchers to see how or why something works like it does. When you see how something works, you are better able to predict how it might work in other contexts, under other conditions. And, because conditions, or contextual factors, matter a lot in education, gaining insights into applying your findings to other contexts increases the contributions of your work and its importance to the broader education community.

Consequently, the purposes of research studies in education often include the more specific aim of identifying and understanding the conditions under which the phenomena being studied work like the observations suggest. A classic example of this kind of study in mathematics education was reported by William Brownell and Harold Moser in 1949 . They were trying to establish which method of subtracting whole numbers could be taught most effectively—the regrouping method or the equal additions method. However, they realized that effectiveness might depend on the conditions under which the methods were taught—“meaningfully” versus “mechanically.” So, they designed a study that crossed the two instructional approaches with the two different methods (regrouping and equal additions). Among other results, they found that these conditions did matter. The regrouping method was more effective under the meaningful condition than the mechanical condition, but the same was not true for the equal additions algorithm.

What do education researchers want to understand? In our view, the ultimate goal of education is to offer all students the best possible learning opportunities. So, we believe the ultimate purpose of scientific inquiry in education is to develop understanding that supports the improvement of learning opportunities for all students. We say “ultimate” because there are lots of issues that must be understood to improve learning opportunities for all students. Hypotheses about many aspects of education are connected, ultimately, to students’ learning. For example, formulating and testing a hypothesis that preservice teachers need to engage in particular kinds of activities in their coursework in order to teach particular topics well is, ultimately, connected to improving students’ learning opportunities. So is hypothesizing that school districts often devote relatively few resources to instructional leadership training or hypothesizing that positioning mathematics as a tool students can use to combat social injustice can help students see the relevance of mathematics to their lives.

We do not exclude the importance of research on educational issues more removed from improving students’ learning opportunities, but we do think the argument for their importance will be more difficult to make. If there is no way to imagine a connection between your hypothesis and improving learning opportunities for students, even a distant connection, we recommend you reconsider whether it is an important hypothesis within the education community.

Notice that we said the ultimate goal of education is to offer all students the best possible learning opportunities. For too long, educators have been satisfied with a goal of offering rich learning opportunities for lots of students, sometimes even for just the majority of students, but not necessarily for all students. Evaluations of success often are based on outcomes that show high averages. In other words, if many students have learned something, or even a smaller number have learned a lot, educators may have been satisfied. The problem is that there is usually a pattern in the groups of students who receive lower quality opportunities—students of color and students who live in poor areas, urban and rural. This is not acceptable. Consequently, we emphasize the premise that the purpose of education research is to offer rich learning opportunities to all students.

One way to make sure you will be able to convince others of the importance of your study is to consider investigating some aspect of teachers’ shared instructional problems. Historically, researchers in education have set their own research agendas, regardless of the problems teachers are facing in schools. It is increasingly recognized that teachers have had trouble applying to their own classrooms what researchers find. To address this problem, a researcher could partner with a teacher—better yet, a small group of teachers—and talk with them about instructional problems they all share. These discussions can create a rich pool of problems researchers can consider. If researchers pursued one of these problems (preferably alongside teachers), the connection to improving learning opportunities for all students could be direct and immediate. “Grounding a research question in instructional problems that are experienced across multiple teachers’ classrooms helps to ensure that the answer to the question will be of sufficient scope to be relevant and significant beyond the local context” (Cai et al., 2019b , p. 115).

As a beginning researcher, determining the relevance and importance of a research problem is especially challenging. We recommend talking with advisors, other experienced researchers, and peers to test the educational importance of possible research problems and topics of study. You will also learn much more about the issue of research importance when you read Chap. 5 .

Exercise 1.7

Identify a problem in education that is closely connected to improving learning opportunities and a problem that has a less close connection. For each problem, write a brief argument (like a logical sequence of if-then statements) that connects the problem to all students’ learning opportunities.

Part III. Conducting Research as a Practice of Failing Productively

Scientific inquiry involves formulating hypotheses about phenomena that are not fully understood—by you or anyone else. Even if you are able to inform your hypotheses with lots of knowledge that has already been accumulated, you are likely to find that your prediction is not entirely accurate. This is normal. Remember, scientific inquiry is a process of constantly updating your thinking. More and better information means revising your thinking, again, and again, and again. Because you never fully understand a complicated phenomenon and your hypotheses never produce completely accurate predictions, it is easy to believe you are somehow failing.

The trick is to fail upward, to fail to predict accurately in ways that inform your next hypothesis so you can make a better prediction. Some of the best-known researchers in education have been open and honest about the many times their predictions were wrong and, based on the results of their studies and those of others, they continuously updated their thinking and changed their hypotheses.

A striking example of publicly revising (actually reversing) hypotheses due to incorrect predictions is found in the work of Lee J. Cronbach, one of the most distinguished educational psychologists of the twentieth century. In 1955, Cronbach delivered his presidential address to the American Psychological Association. Titling it “Two Disciplines of Scientific Psychology,” Cronbach proposed a rapprochement between two research approaches—correlational studies that focused on individual differences and experimental studies that focused on instructional treatments controlling for individual differences. (We will examine different research approaches in Chap. 4 ). If these approaches could be brought together, reasoned Cronbach ( 1957 ), researchers could find interactions between individual characteristics and treatments (aptitude-treatment interactions or ATIs), fitting the best treatments to different individuals.

In 1975, after years of research by many researchers looking for ATIs, Cronbach acknowledged the evidence for simple, useful ATIs had not been found. Even when trying to find interactions between a few variables that could provide instructional guidance, the analysis, said Cronbach, creates “a hall of mirrors that extends to infinity, tormenting even the boldest investigators and defeating even ambitious designs” (Cronbach, 1975 , p. 119).

As he was reflecting back on his work, Cronbach ( 1986 ) recommended moving away from documenting instructional effects through statistical inference (an approach he had championed for much of his career) and toward approaches that probe the reasons for these effects, approaches that provide a “full account of events in a time, place, and context” (Cronbach, 1986 , p. 104). This is a remarkable change in hypotheses, a change based on data and made fully transparent. Cronbach understood the value of failing productively.

Closer to home, in a less dramatic example, one of us began a line of scientific inquiry into how to prepare elementary preservice teachers to teach early algebra. Teaching early algebra meant engaging elementary students in early forms of algebraic reasoning. Such reasoning should help them transition from arithmetic to algebra. To begin this line of inquiry, a set of activities for preservice teachers were developed. Even though the activities were based on well-supported hypotheses, they largely failed to engage preservice teachers as predicted because of unanticipated challenges the preservice teachers faced. To capitalize on this failure, follow-up studies were conducted, first to better understand elementary preservice teachers’ challenges with preparing to teach early algebra, and then to better support preservice teachers in navigating these challenges. In this example, the initial failure was a necessary step in the researchers’ scientific inquiry and furthered the researchers’ understanding of this issue.

We present another example of failing productively in Chap. 2 . That example emerges from recounting the history of a well-known research program in mathematics education.

Making mistakes is an inherent part of doing scientific research. Conducting a study is rarely a smooth path from beginning to end. We recommend that you keep the following things in mind as you begin a career of conducting research in education.

First, do not get discouraged when you make mistakes; do not fall into the trap of feeling like you are not capable of doing research because you make too many errors.

Second, learn from your mistakes. Do not ignore your mistakes or treat them as errors that you simply need to forget and move past. Mistakes are rich sites for learning—in research just as in other fields of study.

Third, by reflecting on your mistakes, you can learn to make better mistakes, mistakes that inform you about a productive next step. You will not be able to eliminate your mistakes, but you can set a goal of making better and better mistakes.

Exercise 1.8

How does scientific inquiry differ from everyday learning in giving you the tools to fail upward? You may find helpful perspectives on this question in other resources on science and scientific inquiry (e.g., Failure: Why Science is So Successful by Firestein, 2015).

Exercise 1.9

Use what you have learned in this chapter to write a new definition of scientific inquiry. Compare this definition with the one you wrote before reading this chapter. If you are reading this book as part of a course, compare your definition with your colleagues’ definitions. Develop a consensus definition with everyone in the course.

Part IV. Preview of Chap. 2

Now that you have a good idea of what research is, at least of what we believe research is, the next step is to think about how to actually begin doing research. This means how to begin formulating, testing, and revising hypotheses. As for all phases of scientific inquiry, there are lots of things to think about. Because it is critical to start well, we devote Chap. 2 to getting started with formulating hypotheses.

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Hiebert, J., Cai, J., Hwang, S., Morris, A.K., Hohensee, C. (2023). What Is Research, and Why Do People Do It?. In: Doing Research: A New Researcher’s Guide. Research in Mathematics Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19078-0_1

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Office of Undergraduate Research

Why undergraduate research.

Developing mentoring relationships

Mentors play a critically important role in students’ research and creative experiences, challenging students to try new things and offering a window onto the thinking of an experienced researcher or practitioner. A mentor who knows you well can advise you about your undergraduate career and your next steps after graduation; s/he will also be able to write a more detailed letter of recommendation than a professor who knows you only in a classroom context.

> What do students say?

Making a big campus feel smaller.

Participation in research, scholarship, or creative activity can help you find your niche on campus. The close relationships that are developed through sustained work together give a sense of community to research groups, labs, and teams.

Changing your perspective on ignorance and failure

Scholarly inquiry has a way of putting all that you do not know into stark relief, while rarely working quite as expected. As you learn to think like a researcher, you begin to see ignorance and failure not as personal shortcomings but as opportunities to ask questions, reframe problems, and try new approaches.

Cultivating an understanding of research design and methodology

Hands-on experience conducting original research supports students’ understanding of how to design investigations, how to make appropriate methodological choices, and how to implement different techniques and methods.

Developing a range of transferable skills

While some of your learning will be research-specific, undergraduate research also develops transferable skills with broad application, including critical thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration, and independence.

Exploring career and graduate education options

Undergraduate research and creative activity offer students opportunities to gain hands-on experience in fields of interest to them. This experience often prompts realizations about what kinds of work students enjoy most and what career paths they wish to pursue.

Empowering students to develop research skills

February 8, 2021

This post is republished from   Into Practice ,  a biweekly communication of Harvard’s  Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning

Terence D. Capellini, Richard B Wolf Associate Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology, empowers students to grow as researchers in his Building the Human Body course through a comprehensive, course-long collaborative project that works to understand the changes in the genome that make the human skeleton unique. For instance, of the many types of projects, some focus on the genetic basis of why human beings walk on two legs. This integrative “Evo-Devo” project demands high levels of understanding of biology and genetics that students gain in the first half of class, which is then applied hands-on in the second half of class. Students work in teams of 2-3 to collect their own morphology data by measuring skeletons at the Harvard Museum of Natural History and leverage statistics to understand patterns in their data. They then collect and analyze DNA sequences from humans and other animals to identify the DNA changes that may encode morphology. Throughout this course, students go from sometimes having “limited experience in genetics and/or morphology” to conducting their own independent research. This project culminates in a team presentation and a final research paper.

The benefits: Students develop the methodological skills required to collect and analyze morphological data. Using the UCSC Genome browser  and other tools, students sharpen their analytical skills to visualize genomics data and pinpoint meaningful genetic changes. Conducting this work in teams means students develop collaborative skills that model academic biology labs outside class, and some student projects have contributed to published papers in the field. “Every year, I have one student, if not two, join my lab to work on projects developed from class to try to get them published.”

“The beauty of this class is that the students are asking a question that’s never been asked before and they’re actually collecting data to get at an answer.”

The challenges:  Capellini observes that the most common challenge faced by students in the course is when “they have a really terrific question they want to explore, but the necessary background information is simply lacking. It is simply amazing how little we do know about human development, despite its hundreds of years of study.” Sometimes, for instance, students want to learn about the evolution, development, and genetics of a certain body part, but it is still somewhat a mystery to the field. In these cases, the teaching team (including co-instructor Dr. Neil Roach) tries to find datasets that are maximally relevant to the questions the students want to explore. Capellini also notes that the work in his class is demanding and hard, just by the nature of the work, but students “always step up and perform” and the teaching team does their best to “make it fun” and ensure they nurture students’ curiosities and questions.

Takeaways and best practices

• Incorporate previous students’ work into the course. Capellini intentionally discusses findings from previous student groups in lectures. “They’re developing real findings and we share that when we explain the project for the next groups.” Capellini also invites students to share their own progress and findings as part of class discussion, which helps them participate as independent researchers and receive feedback from their peers.
• Assign groups intentionally.  Maintaining flexibility allows the teaching team to be more responsive to students’ various needs and interests. Capellini will often place graduate students by themselves to enhance their workload and give them training directly relevant to their future thesis work. Undergraduates are able to self-select into groups or can be assigned based on shared interests. “If two people are enthusiastic about examining the knee, for instance, we’ll match them together.”
• Consider using multiple types of assessments.  Capellini notes that exams and quizzes are administered in the first half of the course and scaffolded so that students can practice the skills they need to successfully apply course material in the final project. “Lots of the initial examples are hypothetical,” he explains, even grounded in fiction and pop culture references, “but [students] have to eventually apply the skills they learned in addressing the hypothetical example to their own real example and the data they generate” for the Evo-Devo project. This is coupled with a paper and a presentation treated like a conference talk.

Bottom line:  Capellini’s top advice for professors looking to help their own students grow as researchers is to ensure research projects are designed with intentionality and fully integrated into the syllabus. “You can’t simply tack it on at the end,” he underscores. “If you want this research project to be a substantive learning opportunity, it has to happen from Day 1.” That includes carving out time in class for students to work on it and make the connections they need to conduct research. “Listen to your students and learn about them personally” so you can tap into what they’re excited about. Have some fun in the course, and they’ll be motivated to do the work.

2.1 Why Is Research Important?

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Explain how scientific research addresses questions about behavior
• Discuss how scientific research guides public policy
• Appreciate how scientific research can be important in making personal decisions

Scientific research is a critical tool for successfully navigating our complex world. Without it, we would be forced to rely solely on intuition, other people’s authority, and blind luck. While many of us feel confident in our abilities to decipher and interact with the world around us, history is filled with examples of how very wrong we can be when we fail to recognize the need for evidence in supporting claims. At various times in history, we would have been certain that the sun revolved around a flat earth, that the earth’s continents did not move, and that mental illness was caused by possession ( Figure 2.2 ). It is through systematic scientific research that we divest ourselves of our preconceived notions and superstitions and gain an objective understanding of ourselves and our world.

The goal of all scientists is to better understand the world around them. Psychologists focus their attention on understanding behavior, as well as the cognitive (mental) and physiological (body) processes that underlie behavior. In contrast to other methods that people use to understand the behavior of others, such as intuition and personal experience, the hallmark of scientific research is that there is evidence to support a claim. Scientific knowledge is empirical : It is grounded in objective, tangible evidence that can be observed time and time again, regardless of who is observing.

While behavior is observable, the mind is not. If someone is crying, we can see behavior. However, the reason for the behavior is more difficult to determine. Is the person crying due to being sad, in pain, or happy? Sometimes we can learn the reason for someone’s behavior by simply asking a question, like “Why are you crying?” However, there are situations in which an individual is either uncomfortable or unwilling to answer the question honestly, or is incapable of answering. For example, infants would not be able to explain why they are crying. In such circumstances, the psychologist must be creative in finding ways to better understand behavior. This chapter explores how scientific knowledge is generated, and how important that knowledge is in forming decisions in our personal lives and in the public domain.

Use of Research Information

Trying to determine which theories are and are not accepted by the scientific community can be difficult, especially in an area of research as broad as psychology. More than ever before, we have an incredible amount of information at our fingertips, and a simple internet search on any given research topic might result in a number of contradictory studies. In these cases, we are witnessing the scientific community going through the process of reaching a consensus, and it could be quite some time before a consensus emerges. For example, the explosion in our use of technology has led researchers to question whether this ultimately helps or hinders us. The use and implementation of technology in educational settings has become widespread over the last few decades. Researchers are coming to different conclusions regarding the use of technology. To illustrate this point, a study investigating a smartphone app targeting surgery residents (graduate students in surgery training) found that the use of this app can increase student engagement and raise test scores (Shaw & Tan, 2015). Conversely, another study found that the use of technology in undergraduate student populations had negative impacts on sleep, communication, and time management skills (Massimini & Peterson, 2009). Until sufficient amounts of research have been conducted, there will be no clear consensus on the effects that technology has on a student's acquisition of knowledge, study skills, and mental health.

In the meantime, we should strive to think critically about the information we encounter by exercising a degree of healthy skepticism. When someone makes a claim, we should examine the claim from a number of different perspectives: what is the expertise of the person making the claim, what might they gain if the claim is valid, does the claim seem justified given the evidence, and what do other researchers think of the claim? This is especially important when we consider how much information in advertising campaigns and on the internet claims to be based on “scientific evidence” when in actuality it is a belief or perspective of just a few individuals trying to sell a product or draw attention to their perspectives.

We should be informed consumers of the information made available to us because decisions based on this information have significant consequences. One such consequence can be seen in politics and public policy. Imagine that you have been elected as the governor of your state. One of your responsibilities is to manage the state budget and determine how to best spend your constituents’ tax dollars. As the new governor, you need to decide whether to continue funding early intervention programs. These programs are designed to help children who come from low-income backgrounds, have special needs, or face other disadvantages. These programs may involve providing a wide variety of services to maximize the children's development and position them for optimal levels of success in school and later in life (Blann, 2005). While such programs sound appealing, you would want to be sure that they also proved effective before investing additional money in these programs. Fortunately, psychologists and other scientists have conducted vast amounts of research on such programs and, in general, the programs are found to be effective (Neil & Christensen, 2009; Peters-Scheffer, Didden, Korzilius, & Sturmey, 2011). While not all programs are equally effective, and the short-term effects of many such programs are more pronounced, there is reason to believe that many of these programs produce long-term benefits for participants (Barnett, 2011). If you are committed to being a good steward of taxpayer money, you would want to look at research. Which programs are most effective? What characteristics of these programs make them effective? Which programs promote the best outcomes? After examining the research, you would be best equipped to make decisions about which programs to fund.

Link to Learning

Watch this video about early childhood program effectiveness to learn how scientists evaluate effectiveness and how best to invest money into programs that are most effective.

Ultimately, it is not just politicians who can benefit from using research in guiding their decisions. We all might look to research from time to time when making decisions in our lives. Imagine that your sister, Maria, expresses concern about her two-year-old child, Umberto. Umberto does not speak as much or as clearly as the other children in his daycare or others in the family. Umberto's pediatrician undertakes some screening and recommends an evaluation by a speech pathologist, but does not refer Maria to any other specialists. Maria is concerned that Umberto's speech delays are signs of a developmental disorder, but Umberto's pediatrician does not; she sees indications of differences in Umberto's jaw and facial muscles. Hearing this, you do some internet searches, but you are overwhelmed by the breadth of information and the wide array of sources. You see blog posts, top-ten lists, advertisements from healthcare providers, and recommendations from several advocacy organizations. Why are there so many sites? Which are based in research, and which are not?

In the end, research is what makes the difference between facts and opinions. Facts are observable realities, and opinions are personal judgments, conclusions, or attitudes that may or may not be accurate. In the scientific community, facts can be established only using evidence collected through empirical research.

NOTABLE RESEARCHERS

Psychological research has a long history involving important figures from diverse backgrounds. While the introductory chapter discussed several researchers who made significant contributions to the discipline, there are many more individuals who deserve attention in considering how psychology has advanced as a science through their work ( Figure 2.3 ). For instance, Margaret Floy Washburn (1871–1939) was the first woman to earn a PhD in psychology. Her research focused on animal behavior and cognition (Margaret Floy Washburn, PhD, n.d.). Mary Whiton Calkins (1863–1930) was a preeminent first-generation American psychologist who opposed the behaviorist movement, conducted significant research into memory, and established one of the earliest experimental psychology labs in the United States (Mary Whiton Calkins, n.d.).

Francis Sumner (1895–1954) was the first African American to receive a PhD in psychology in 1920. His dissertation focused on issues related to psychoanalysis. Sumner also had research interests in racial bias and educational justice. Sumner was one of the founders of Howard University’s department of psychology, and because of his accomplishments, he is sometimes referred to as the “Father of Black Psychology.” Thirteen years later, Inez Beverly Prosser (1895–1934) became the first African American woman to receive a PhD in psychology. Prosser’s research highlighted issues related to education in segregated versus integrated schools, and ultimately, her work was very influential in the hallmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional (Ethnicity and Health in America Series: Featured Psychologists, n.d.).

Although the establishment of psychology’s scientific roots occurred first in Europe and the United States, it did not take much time until researchers from around the world began to establish their own laboratories and research programs. For example, some of the first experimental psychology laboratories in South America were founded by Horatio Piñero (1869–1919) at two institutions in Buenos Aires, Argentina (Godoy & Brussino, 2010). In India, Gunamudian David Boaz (1908–1965) and Narendra Nath Sen Gupta (1889–1944) established the first independent departments of psychology at the University of Madras and the University of Calcutta, respectively. These developments provided an opportunity for Indian researchers to make important contributions to the field (Gunamudian David Boaz, n.d.; Narendra Nath Sen Gupta, n.d.).

When the American Psychological Association (APA) was first founded in 1892, all of the members were White males (Women and Minorities in Psychology, n.d.). However, by 1905, Mary Whiton Calkins was elected as the first female president of the APA, and by 1946, nearly one-quarter of American psychologists were female. Psychology became a popular degree option for students enrolled in the nation’s historically Black higher education institutions, increasing the number of Black Americans who went on to become psychologists. Given demographic shifts occurring in the United States and increased access to higher educational opportunities among historically underrepresented populations, there is reason to hope that the diversity of the field will increasingly match the larger population, and that the research contributions made by the psychologists of the future will better serve people of all backgrounds (Women and Minorities in Psychology, n.d.).

The Process of Scientific Research

Scientific knowledge is advanced through a process known as the scientific method . Basically, ideas (in the form of theories and hypotheses) are tested against the real world (in the form of empirical observations), and those empirical observations lead to more ideas that are tested against the real world, and so on. In this sense, the scientific process is circular. The types of reasoning within the circle are called deductive and inductive. In deductive reasoning , ideas are tested in the real world; in inductive reasoning , real-world observations lead to new ideas ( Figure 2.4 ). These processes are inseparable, like inhaling and exhaling, but different research approaches place different emphasis on the deductive and inductive aspects.

In the scientific context, deductive reasoning begins with a generalization—one hypothesis—that is then used to reach logical conclusions about the real world. If the hypothesis is correct, then the logical conclusions reached through deductive reasoning should also be correct. A deductive reasoning argument might go something like this: All living things require energy to survive (this would be your hypothesis). Ducks are living things. Therefore, ducks require energy to survive (logical conclusion). In this example, the hypothesis is correct; therefore, the conclusion is correct as well. Sometimes, however, an incorrect hypothesis may lead to a logical but incorrect conclusion. Consider this argument: all ducks are born with the ability to see. Quackers is a duck. Therefore, Quackers was born with the ability to see. Scientists use deductive reasoning to empirically test their hypotheses. Returning to the example of the ducks, researchers might design a study to test the hypothesis that if all living things require energy to survive, then ducks will be found to require energy to survive.

Deductive reasoning starts with a generalization that is tested against real-world observations; however, inductive reasoning moves in the opposite direction. Inductive reasoning uses empirical observations to construct broad generalizations. Unlike deductive reasoning, conclusions drawn from inductive reasoning may or may not be correct, regardless of the observations on which they are based. For instance, you may notice that your favorite fruits—apples, bananas, and oranges—all grow on trees; therefore, you assume that all fruit must grow on trees. This would be an example of inductive reasoning, and, clearly, the existence of strawberries, blueberries, and kiwi demonstrate that this generalization is not correct despite it being based on a number of direct observations. Scientists use inductive reasoning to formulate theories, which in turn generate hypotheses that are tested with deductive reasoning. In the end, science involves both deductive and inductive processes.

For example, case studies, which you will read about in the next section, are heavily weighted on the side of empirical observations. Thus, case studies are closely associated with inductive processes as researchers gather massive amounts of observations and seek interesting patterns (new ideas) in the data. Experimental research, on the other hand, puts great emphasis on deductive reasoning.

We’ve stated that theories and hypotheses are ideas, but what sort of ideas are they, exactly? A theory is a well-developed set of ideas that propose an explanation for observed phenomena. Theories are repeatedly checked against the world, but they tend to be too complex to be tested all at once; instead, researchers create hypotheses to test specific aspects of a theory.

A hypothesis is a testable prediction about how the world will behave if our idea is correct, and it is often worded as an if-then statement (e.g., if I study all night, I will get a passing grade on the test). The hypothesis is extremely important because it bridges the gap between the realm of ideas and the real world. As specific hypotheses are tested, theories are modified and refined to reflect and incorporate the result of these tests Figure 2.5 .

To see how this process works, let’s consider a specific theory and a hypothesis that might be generated from that theory. As you’ll learn in a later chapter, the James-Lange theory of emotion asserts that emotional experience relies on the physiological arousal associated with the emotional state. If you walked out of your home and discovered a very aggressive snake waiting on your doorstep, your heart would begin to race and your stomach churn. According to the James-Lange theory, these physiological changes would result in your feeling of fear. A hypothesis that could be derived from this theory might be that a person who is unaware of the physiological arousal that the sight of the snake elicits will not feel fear.

A scientific hypothesis is also falsifiable , or capable of being shown to be incorrect. Recall from the introductory chapter that Sigmund Freud had lots of interesting ideas to explain various human behaviors ( Figure 2.6 ). However, a major criticism of Freud’s theories is that many of his ideas are not falsifiable; for example, it is impossible to imagine empirical observations that would disprove the existence of the id, the ego, and the superego—the three elements of personality described in Freud’s theories. Despite this, Freud’s theories are widely taught in introductory psychology texts because of their historical significance for personality psychology and psychotherapy, and these remain the root of all modern forms of therapy.

In contrast, the James-Lange theory does generate falsifiable hypotheses, such as the one described above. Some individuals who suffer significant injuries to their spinal columns are unable to feel the bodily changes that often accompany emotional experiences. Therefore, we could test the hypothesis by determining how emotional experiences differ between individuals who have the ability to detect these changes in their physiological arousal and those who do not. In fact, this research has been conducted and while the emotional experiences of people deprived of an awareness of their physiological arousal may be less intense, they still experience emotion (Chwalisz, Diener, & Gallagher, 1988).

Scientific research’s dependence on falsifiability allows for great confidence in the information that it produces. Typically, by the time information is accepted by the scientific community, it has been tested repeatedly.

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The role of research at universities: why it matters.

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Teaching and learning, research and discovery, synthesis and creativity, understanding and engagement, service and outreach. There are many “core elements” to the mission of a great university. Teaching would seem the most obvious, but for those outside of the university, “research” (taken to include scientific research, scholarship more broadly, as well as creative activity) may be the least well understood. This creates misunderstanding of how universities invest resources, especially those deriving from undergraduate tuition and state (or other public) support, and the misperception that those resources are being diverted away from what is believed should be the core (and sole) focus, teaching. This has led to a loss of trust, confidence, and willingness to continue to invest or otherwise support (especially our public) universities.

Why are universities engaged in the conduct of research? Who pays? Who benefits? And why does it all matter? Good questions. Let’s get to some straightforward answers. Because the academic research enterprise really is not that difficult to explain, and its impacts are profound.

So let’s demystify university-based research. And in doing so, hopefully we can begin building both better understanding and a better relationship between the public and higher education, both of which are essential to the future of US higher education.   

Why are universities engaged in the conduct of research?

Universities engage in research as part of their missions around learning and discovery. This, in turn, contributes directly and indirectly to their primary mission of teaching. Universities and many colleges (the exception being those dedicated exclusively to undergraduate teaching) have as part of their mission the pursuit of scholarship. This can come in the form of fundamental or applied research (both are most common in the STEM fields, broadly defined), research-based scholarship or what often is called “scholarly activity” (most common in the social sciences and humanities), or creative activity (most common in the arts). Increasingly, these simple categorizations are being blurred, for all good reasons and to the good of the discovery of new knowledge and greater understanding of complex (transdisciplinary) challenges and the creation of increasingly interrelated fields needed to address them.

It goes without saying that the advancement of knowledge (discovery, innovation, creation) is essential to any civilization. Our nation’s research universities represent some of the most concentrated communities of scholars, facilities, and collective expertise engaged in these activities. But more importantly, this is where higher education is delivered, where students develop breadth and depth of knowledge in foundational and advanced subjects, where the skills for knowledge acquisition and understanding (including contextualization, interpretation, and inference) are honed, and where students are educated, trained, and otherwise prepared for successful careers. Part of that training and preparation derives from exposure to faculty who are engaged at the leading-edge of their fields, through their research and scholarly work. The best faculty, the teacher-scholars, seamlessly weave their teaching and research efforts together, to their mutual benefit, and in a way that excites and engages their students. In this way, the next generation of scholars (academic or otherwise) is trained, research and discovery continue to advance inter-generationally, and the cycle is perpetuated.

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University research can be expensive, particularly in laboratory-intensive fields. But the responsibility for much (indeed most) of the cost of conducting research falls to the faculty member. Faculty who are engaged in research write grants for funding (e.g., from federal and state agencies, foundations, and private companies) to support their work and the work of their students and staff. In some cases, the universities do need to invest heavily in equipment, facilities, and personnel to support select research activities. But they do so judiciously, with an eye toward both their mission, their strategic priorities, and their available resources.

Medical research, and medical education more broadly, is expensive and often requires substantial institutional investment beyond what can be covered by clinical operations or externally funded research. But universities with medical schools/medical centers have determined that the value to their educational and training missions as well as to their communities justifies the investment. And most would agree that university-based medical centers are of significant value to their communities, often providing best-in-class treatment and care in midsize and smaller communities at a level more often seen in larger metropolitan areas.

Research in the STEM fields (broadly defined) can also be expensive. Scientific (including medical) and engineering research often involves specialized facilities or pieces of equipment, advanced computing capabilities, materials requiring controlled handling and storage, and so forth. But much of this work is funded, in large part, by federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, US Department of Energy, US Department of Agriculture, and many others.

Research in the social sciences is often (not always) less expensive, requiring smaller amount of grant funding. As mentioned previously, however, it is now becoming common to have physical, natural, and social scientist teams pursuing large grant funding. This is an exciting and very promising trend for many reasons, not the least of which is the nature of the complex problems being studied.

Research in the arts and humanities typically requires the least amount of funding as it rarely requires the expensive items listed previously. Funding from such organizations as the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and private foundations may be able to support significant scholarship and creation of new knowledge or works through much more modest grants than would be required in the natural or physical sciences, for example.

Philanthropy may also be directed toward the support of research and scholarly activity at universities. Support from individual donors, family foundations, private or corporate foundations may be directed to support students, faculty, labs or other facilities, research programs, galleries, centers, and institutes.

Who benefits?

Students, both undergraduate and graduate, benefit from studying in an environment rich with research and discovery. Besides what the faculty can bring back to the classroom, there are opportunities to engage with faculty as part of their research teams and even conduct independent research under their supervision, often for credit. There are opportunities to learn about and learn on state-of-the-art equipment, in state-of-the-art laboratories, and from those working on the leading edge in a discipline. There are opportunities to co-author, present at conferences, make important connections, and explore post-graduate pathways.

The broader university benefits from active research programs. Research on timely and important topics attracts attention, which in turn leads to greater institutional visibility and reputation. As a university becomes known for its research in certain fields, they become magnets for students, faculty, grants, media coverage, and even philanthropy. Strength in research helps to define a university’s “brand” in the national and international marketplace, impacting everything from student recruitment, to faculty retention, to attracting new investments.

The community, region, and state benefits from the research activity of the university. This is especially true for public research universities. Research also contributes directly to economic development, clinical, commercial, and business opportunities. Resources brought into the university through grants and contracts support faculty, staff, and student salaries, often adding additional jobs, contributing directly to the tax base. Research universities, through their expertise, reputation, and facilities, can attract new businesses into their communities or states. They can also launch and incubate startup companies, or license and sell their technologies to other companies. Research universities often host meeting and conferences which creates revenue for local hotels, restaurants, event centers, and more. And as mentioned previously, university medical centers provide high-quality medical care, often in midsize communities that wouldn’t otherwise have such outstanding services and state-of-the-art facilities.

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And finally, why does this all matter?

Research is essential to advancing society, strengthening the economy, driving innovation, and addressing the vexing and challenging problems we face as a people, place, and planet. It’s through research, scholarship, and discovery that we learn about our history and ourselves, understand the present context in which we live, and plan for and secure our future.

Research universities are vibrant, exciting, and inspiring places to learn and to work. They offer opportunities for students that few other institutions can match – whether small liberal arts colleges, mid-size teaching universities, or community colleges – and while not right for every learner or every educator, they are right for many, if not most. The advantages simply cannot be ignored. Neither can the importance or the need for these institutions. They need not be for everyone, and everyone need not find their way to study or work at our research universities, and we stipulate that there are many outstanding options to meet and support different learning styles and provide different environments for teaching and learning. But it’s critically important that we continue to support, protect, and respect research universities for all they do for their students, their communities and states, our standing in the global scientific community, our economy, and our nation.

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The importance of research and its impact on education

Tertiary education is indeed a big investment, so looking for the right university takes time, patience, and dedication. In case you hadn’t noticed, most universities tend to highlight research as one of their most distinguished and competitive strengths. But the question here is why ?

From an individual point of view, the advantages of research extend beyond having an impressive degree certificate. Through detailed research, students develop critical thinking expertise, as well as effective analytical, research, and communication skills that are globally sought-after and incredibly beneficial. Ultimately, research is essential to economic and social development of our globalised society, forming the foundations governmental policies around the world.

“Knowledge generated by research is the basis of sustainable development, which requires that knowledge be placed at the service of development, be converted into applications, and be shared to ensure widespread benefits,” says Mary-Louise Kearney, Director of the UNESCO Forum on Higher Education, Research and Knowledge.

One institution which understands this is the University of Skovde . Though the university is actually much younger than most, its education and internationally-competitive research are highly respected, particularly within the School of Bioscience . The university has a well-developed collaboration between education, research, the business community, and society on both a national and international level.

The school has three divisions : – The Division for Bioinformatics and Ecology, The Division for Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy, and The Division for Molecular Biology; offering a total of 13 academic programs at the undergraduate and advanced levels. Besides providing an impressive array of courses, the school has its own research centre known as the Systems Biology Research Center , where research is conducted in the following areas:- Infection Biology , Bioinformatics , Biotechnology , Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy and Ecological Modeling . Here are some examples of what Skovde’s experienced research teams have been working on:

Infection Biology

Research from the Infection Biology Group focuses on the development of mathematical and statistical models as well as experimental methodology used to help understand the complex systems that make up infection biology. The Group’s current funded projects focus on:

• Identifying new biomarkers to help diagnose sepsis patients at an early stage
• Identifying biomarker profiles for immunosuppressive drugs
• Developing new methods for the detection of plant pathogens

Bioinformatics

Formed by computer science researchers, this area of investigation focuses on the development and application of algorithms for the analysis of biological data. Skovde’s research has incorporated the development of algorithms, software and databases, as well as solving biological research problems with these tools. As part of the research team, students get to work with other researchers such as stem cell and tumour biologists from other groups within the university , industrial partners and other establishments.

Cognitive neuroscience and philosophy

Research in cognitive neuroscience seeks to increase knowledge and understanding of human abilities, reflected in the form of cerebral activity. One of the main goals of the research is to increase our understanding of human consciousness, as well as to study methods that might increase human wellbeing.

Biotechnology

Defined as the application of biological organisms, systems, or processes by various industries, stakeholders and researchers, Biotechnology encompasses science and life, improving the value of materials and organisms through pharmaceuticals, crops, livestock and the environment. While research in plant biotechnology seeks to identify specific genes to eliminate various forms of arsenic contamination, Skovde’s research projects in microbial biotechnology can also be used to develop microbial bioreactors. The mussel research project that is run together with ecologists includes development of molecular markers that will enable scientists to identify different mussel species.

Skovde’s high-impact research also extends far beyond the laboratory, where the school collaborates with  Life Science companies, public organisations and other universities to strengthen its research. Through these partnerships, the school has access to specific expertise, highly advanced laboratories and equipment, as well as PhD studies.

Additionally, the university works with business partners like AstraZeneca , Abbott Diagnostics AB and EnviroPlanning to teach industrial PhD students, and also conduct research in the interest of the company. Students who register for an industrial PhD will be employed by these companies, and receive PhD training at the School of Bioscience – a great career experience that enhances their CV tremendously.

In short, studying at a university with a reputable research foundation not only gives you a firm platform on which you can continue learning, but the skills you master also provide a real advantage over others in the real-world.

Click here to view Skovde’s recent research publications

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Recognizing the Value of Educational Research

• A recent survey shows that research on teaching and learning is not valued at many AACSB-accredited schools across the U.S. and Canada.
• One reason that business schools might not recognize research on teaching and learning is that the journal quality lists they commonly use to assess faculty intellectual contributions focus primarily on discipline-based scholarship.
• STEM fields already place equal value on research on teaching and learning within individual disciplines. By following their lead, two Canadian scholars argue, business schools will enrich their students’ learning experiences.    

If business educators were asked to define the purpose of business schools, they likely would emphasize the need to “prepare the next generation of leaders.” But if this is the case, why do so few business schools prioritize research that advances teaching and curricular design?

Researcher Sanobar Siddiqui first explored this question as the subject of her doctoral dissertation. “One of my thesis findings was that the tenure system’s lack of rewards impedes business academics from pursuing research in teaching and learning,” she explains.

Now an assistant professor of accounting at the University of Regina’s Faculty of Business Administration in Canada, Siddiqui wanted to learn why so many business schools do not value research on teaching and learning (RoTL). This response is puzzling, she says, given that Standard 7 of the  AACSB Business Accreditation Standards  accepts “scholarship of teaching and learning” as documentation to indicate a business school’s teaching effectiveness and impact.

She and Camillo Lento, a professor with the Faculty of Business Administration at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, published a  paper  on the status of RoTL in the April 2022 edition of the International Journal of Educational Management . The paper’s findings are based on a survey in which Siddiqui and Lento asked educators two questions:

• How do AACSB-accredited business schools in the U.S. and Canada define “teaching effectiveness,” according to AACSB’s Standard 7?
• Do these schools consider research on teaching and learning in their promotion and tenure decisions?

This topic is particularly important, says Siddiqui, because business schools serve such diverse student audiences. Moreover, learner success is integral to every business school’s mission. Many of the instructional strategies “that we use in class are not research-informed or evidence-based. Hence, we are shortchanging our students,” she says. “Our teaching needs to catch up with the changes we see in our classroom.”

‘A Last Priority’

Siddiqui and Lento received 78 responses to their survey; in the second phase of their study, they conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 educators in the U.S. and Canada.

Among survey respondents, 42 percent noted that they were “unaware of an explicit teaching effectiveness definition” at their schools, but 58 percent said the policies in place at their schools communicated “an implied definition.” Only one respondent could quote a definition of teaching effectiveness from the school’s website.

Respondents noted a lack of “perceived respect and value” for RoTL, describing this line of scholarship as “a last priority” at their schools. As one educator put it, “Our department does not really care about teaching as long as you are cranking out strong scholarship.”

Schools that consider educational research for tenure and faculty qualification tend to focus on journal quality alone, not on whether published articles are discipline-based.

The good news is that 55 percent of respondents noted that their schools did take RoTL into account when making tenure decisions. Siddiqui and Lento found that these schools have two things in common. First, they focus on journal quality alone for the purposes of tenure and faculty qualification, not on whether faculty’s published articles are discipline-based.

Second, these schools are more likely to consider RoTL when faculty include this work “as part of a larger research plan that includes discipline-based research.” Only faculty following teaching tracks are likely to receive tenure based solely on publications in education-focused journals. 

Additionally, teaching-oriented schools are more likely than research-oriented schools to recognize RoTL. While this makes outward sense, Siddiqui wonders why prolific faculty who produce innovative scholarship on pedagogical issues that are critical to business education cannot “be hired, promoted, and awarded just like discipline-based researchers” at research-oriented institutions.

What Perpetuates the Stigma?

Siddiqui and Lento point to several factors that could be driving the lack of recognition of RoTL among AACSB-accredited schools:

No consensus about teaching quality.  Although many individual educational institutions have defined teaching effectiveness based on existing research, business schools have not yet established a shared definition of what constitutes effective teaching. However, the co-authors emphasize, more dedicated research could produce findings that inspire a common language around teaching and learning.

The complex nature of determining teaching quality. Schools often evaluate the quality of faculty’s research by whether the work appears in academic journals that are rated highly by certain  journal quality lists . However, they find they cannot use a similar approach to evaluate the quality of faculty’s teaching, says Lento. “The evaluation of teaching effectiveness is much more complex and requires many more sources of information, possibly compiled into a teaching dossier that is unique to an educator.”

A lack of attention in business doctoral programs. Most doctoral programs train young researchers to study topics related to their disciplines of choice. As a result of this early training, RoTL “may come with a stigma as it is outside of traditional discipline-specific research,” Lento says.

Lento admits that the reasons listed above are speculative. He and Siddiqui would like to see other researchers conduct follow-up studies that take deeper dives into the broader stigma surrounding RoTL.

Changing Mindsets, Taking Action

In the meantime, Siddiqui and Lento call on business school administrators and faculty to work together to create a “shared and precise definition of teaching effectiveness.” Educators can start by defining teaching quality within their own institutions.

From there, Siddiqui and Lento say that schools can take any or all the following actions to change mindsets about RoTL:

• Set appropriate objectives, incentives, and evaluation mechanisms.
• Create and nurture communities of practice that help like-minded faculty pursue research focused on solving issues they face in their classrooms.
• Consider weighing education research in peer-reviewed articles more heavily, particularly for faculty in teaching-focused roles.
• Recognize RoTL for accreditation and tenure and normalize it as a legitimate form of scholarship.
• Make seed funds available to faculty who pursue RoTL.
• Give awards and incentives to faculty who use research-informed teaching in their classrooms.
• Consider hiring tenure-track academics who also are expert educators with an expressed interest in pursuing RoTL. These scholars can investigate and develop “research-informed teaching tools ready to be put into practice in almost any business classroom,” says Siddiqui. This outcome, she emphasizes, is an indication of how RoTL contributes to the advancement of business disciplines.
• Encourage and teach RoTL in doctoral programs, with the aim of improving and advancing the quality of teaching at business schools.

Siddiqui points out that information on the websites of AACSB-accredited schools “are replete with research centers, research chairs and scholars, core research focus areas, research awards, annual research celebration reports, intellectual contributions, and grant-funding awards.”

There is no reason, she says, that schools could not also highlight information about their teaching philosophies, teaching awards, student feedback, educational leadership and professional development, and faculty research on teaching and learning.

Two B-School Perspectives

So far, Siddiqui and Lento’s paper has captured the attention of other like-minded educators in the business school community. This includes Nicola Charwat, associate dean of teaching and learning and senior lecturer of business law and taxation at Monash University’s Monash Business School (MBS) in Caulfield East, Australia.

MBS prioritizes scholarship on teaching and learning (SoTL) where appropriate, she says, through efforts that include identifying quality education-oriented journals and valuing publication in those journals equally to publication in discipline-based journals. The school uses “a consultative process” to identify journals specializing in teaching and learning that are equivalent to discipline-based journals rated as A*, A, B, and C on the quality list compiled by the Australian Business Deans Council.

“We have also instituted a Business Education and Research Group, which has been awarding both practice- and research-output-focused grants to staff for three years,” Charwat says. “Alongside these efforts, of course, there are moves in the university in line with the broader trend of raising the profile of teaching and ensuring its status is on par with other work of the university.”

Educators in STEM disciplines have long recognized educational research in tenure decisions and regularly reward academics who pursue RoTL in their disciplines.

Despite these changes, Charwat notes that the perception remains that accomplishments related to educational research are “somehow lesser” than those related to discipline-related scholarship. Additionally, many faculty remain uncertain about how to approach educational research. In response, MBS has built communities of practice dedicated to teaching and is now working “to increase awareness of and opportunities to undertake SoTL and education research,” Charwat says.

Charwat says that the questions raised in Siddiqui and Lento’s paper are “essential” to business education, and that their article “has prompted us to start exploring the patterns of our own SoTL and education research.” MBS faculty, she adds, might also pursue a similar study focused on AACSB-accredited schools in Australia. 

Another educator who read the article with interest is Martin Lockett, former dean and professor of strategic management at Nottingham University Business School China (NUBS China) in Zhejiang. Lockett explains that NUBS China uses the Academic Journal Guide , which is produced by the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS), to support tenure decisions and to classify faculty under AACSB accreditation standards.

But in the CABS guide, only four journals focused on teaching and learning are rated as 3, 4, or 4*, which are the targets that NUBS China uses to qualify faculty as Scholarly Academics under AACSB accreditation or for internal recognition of quality research, Lockett says.

This has led to worry among the school’s teaching-oriented faculty that if they focus on RoTL, they risk being classified as “additional faculty,” unless they can consistently publish in the few education-focused journals listed by CABS. That concern, Lockett says, deters most faculty from pursuing RoTL in any substantial way.

While this scenario is all too common at institutions with research-focused missions, it is not mandated by AACSB accreditation standards, emphasizes Stephanie Bryant, AACSB’s chief accreditation officer. She clarifies that whether a business school considers educational scholarship for the purpose of accreditation or tenure is its choice, based on the parameters it has set for its individual mission. “The standards do not say anywhere, or imply, that educational research is not valued,” Bryant stresses. The devaluation of RoTL, she adds, “is a school perspective.”

Time to ‘Balance the Scales’

The stigma surrounding RoTL at AACSB-accredited business schools could be lifted, say Siddiqui and Lento, if administrators acknowledge the benefits that fostering cultures of teaching and learning bring to all business school stakeholders. These advantages include a wider scope of scholarship and more evidence-based pedagogical tools for faculty, richer learning experiences and better learning outcomes for students, and more well-rounded job candidates for employers.

Educators in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines already know this, says Siddiqui. STEM departments have long recognized educational research in tenure decisions and regularly reward academics who pursue RoTL in their disciplines.

As one example, Siddiqui points to Carl Edwin Wieman, winner of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize in Physics. Wieman established the  Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative  at the University of British Columbia in Canada to encourage evidence-based teaching methods focused on improving undergraduate science education. Since its inception, the initiative has hired fellows who are interested in conducting education research, particularly based in the disciplines in which they have earned their doctorates. It also has inspired the creation of teaching materials in science education, a dedicated website, and a sister initiative at the University of Colorado Boulder in the United States.

Business schools, says Siddiqui, could achieve comparable results by raising awareness of the importance of RoTL, disseminating RoTL findings beyond peer-reviewed journals, and driving research-informed teaching methods that advance business education.

This year, the co-authors published a second paper that finds that scholarly and practice academics who developed rigorous research skills in their doctoral programs and who publish discipline-based research are more likely to pursue RoTL research. Here, Siddiqui and Lento more directly call on business school deans to reward and incentivize this line of research by creating communities of practice and expanding their journal ranking frameworks to include relevant peer-reviewed publications.

It is imperative, Siddiqui and Lento argue, that business schools place studies based on classroom settings on equal footing with studies based on corporate settings. “Research on teaching and learning balances the scales,” Siddiqui says, “by utilizing evidence-based, efficient, and effective teaching to foster deep learning amongst diverse student audiences.”

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Fifty reasons Why research is important to students

Research is important for students because it helps them develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills, as well as gain a deeper understanding of a subject. It also helps them become independent learners and prepares them for future academic and professional endeavors. Additionally, research can also foster creativity and innovation, and can lead to new discoveries and advancements in various fields.

• Helps students develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills
• Allows students to explore and gain a deeper understanding of a subject
• Provides students with the opportunity to make new discoveries and contributions to their field of study
• Enhances students’ ability to analyze and interpret data
• Encourages students to be curious and ask questions
• Helps students develop strong research and writing skills
• Allows students to gain practical experience in their field of study
• Helps students understand the scientific method and the process of experimentation
• Allows students to develop a sense of independence and self-motivation
• Helps students to gain confidence in their abilities
• Enables students to learn how to work in teams
• Allows students to conduct original research and contribute to the advancement of knowledge
• Helps students to develop expertise in a specific area
• Enhances students’ job and career prospects
• Allows students to participate in undergraduate research programs
• Helps students to develop a sense of responsibility and ethics
• Allows students to gain hands-on experience in their field of study
• Helps students to develop time management and organization skills
• Allows students to gain experience in data analysis and interpretation
• Helps students to understand the importance of replication and reproducibility in research
• Allows students to gain experience in statistical analysis
• Helps students to understand the importance of literature review and citation
• Allows students to gain experience in project management
• Helps students to understand the importance of research design and methodology
• Allows students to gain experience in writing scientific papers and reports
• Helps students to understand the importance of research ethics and integrity
• Allows students to gain experience in presenting research findings
• Helps students to develop a sense of scientific curiosity and wonder
• Allows students to gain experience in lab techniques and equipment
• Allows students to gain experience in data management and organization
• Helps students to develop a sense of creativity and innovation
• Allows students to gain experience in interdisciplinary research
• Helps students to understand the importance of collaboration and networking
• Allows students to gain experience in grant writing
• Helps students to understand the importance of research dissemination and communication
• Allows students to gain experience in working with human subjects
• Helps students to understand the importance of research funding and resources
• Allows students to gain experience in using technology and software for research
• Helps students to understand the importance of research impact and societal relevance
• Allows students to gain experience in working with diverse populations
• Helps students to understand the importance of research policy and advocacy
• Allows students to gain experience in working in international and global contexts
• Helps students to understand the importance of research sustainability and scalability
• Allows students to gain experience in working in industry and government
• Helps students to understand the importance of research regulation and compliance
• Allows students to gain experience in mentoring and supervising others
• Helps students to understand the importance of research evaluation and assessment
• Allows students to gain experience in working with non-academic partners
• Helps students to understand the importance of research as a lifelong learning process

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• Education and Beyond

Why Research is Important for Students, Humans, Education

What is research.

Research means to carefully analyze the problems or to do the detailed study of the specific problems, by making use of special scientific methods.

Research can be done on any topic, be it medical, non-medical, IT, or anything else. In order to do research, first of all, you need to have a topic or the problem on which you can do research. The topic must have relevant questions to answer.

For research, certain steps have to follow like first observation, then background research then preparing of hypothesis, eventually conducting a simple experiment.

The Importance of Research:

Study implications:.

The main purpose of the research is to get deep into the topic so that something helpful can churn out, which can be helpful for everybody and used in that particular niche sector.

The quality which you maintain while research should always be high so that the information that you get can be used in certain policies and any future project implications.

Goals of Research:

Working on a research project will obviously be a challenging and rewarding experience, provided you put the best of your expertise and skill in it.

It is an opportunity that helps you to pursue an in-depth or deep original study about any topic which interests you.

The main aim of the goals is to provide the best of the solution to some of the world problems and also to enhance our knowledge.

The “Iterative” Process of Research:

Iteration is one of the keys to successful research. Researches usually do not end, the study goes on deep and deep.

There may be instances when you will take the time to find the expected results but ultimately you will be getting the outcome.

One thing that you will always observe during research, are the questions that arise one after the other. These questions usually lead to new ideas, revisions, and improvements.

All these, in turn, will be very helpful in the research process making data more effective and useful.

How does research impact our daily life:

In simple words, have you ever thought about how would be the world have been without any development of technology or anything?

Well, the life people enjoy now or the things that we do in minutes which earlier looked impossible are all because of the research.

Research not limited to any one sector but has been done for almost every sector.

Some of them are technology, healthcare, defense, precautionary steps against natural calamities and many more.

So research plays a very important role in our day to day life.

Research is the best and reliable way to understand and act on the complexities of various issues that we as humans are facing.

What is Educational Research?

Any kind of educational research requires a few steps of inquiry to provide the solution to any particular research query.

Creswell defines educational research as,

Types of Educational Research:

There are majorly 3 types of educational research.

Descriptive:

This type of research will try to describe things as they presently are.

Correlation:

This type of study will try to identify the relationship between two or more things.

Experimental:

This research tries to display a relation between two or more things. They usually might be groups.

The Importance of Research in the Advancement of Society:

“Human needs never end”

Believe it or not, but it is the truth. We have habituated to adapt to new things, as our desires and wants increases day by day.

As our demands increase, the requirement of research also rises. It can also be said that research is what that makes our life easier. It is just the result of curiosity or a new innovative idea.

When we have any problem, we usually think of a solution or get confused. Several questions arise in our mind like what do you think will the next big thing? or what to do to overcome this problem.

Here comes the role of research. This helps us in many ways and provides us with a complete solution to the problems faced by humans. Now when we humans, satisfied without any problems, this results in the advancement of society. So research overall helps in the advancement and development of society.

Why Research is Important to Students?

The research is important for the students because it helps them to have a detailed analysis of everything. When you have a proper in-depth analysis of any topic, the result comes out to be fruitful and also the knowledge is enhanced. Other benefits of research to the students are as follows:

1. Enhances knowledge:

When you research any topic, you get to know detailed information about that topic. The more the knowledge of the topic, the more successful is the research. So, in order to get good output, the student needs to do maximum research.

2. Clarifies confusion:

The research helps in clarifying the complicated facts and figures. If the student has any doubt on the subject, the student must research and study it in detail so as to remove all sorts of confusion and get a proper understanding of the content.

3. To have a proper understanding of the subject:

To understand the subject, one needs to go in depth of the lines. The scanning of the content will never do any good for the students.

In order to learn the subject and to know the unknown facts, research, detail study, and full analysis are the must.

4. To learn about the methods and issues:

Proper reading , the finding is the only way by which you can learn about the methods and the current issues. Not just the current issues, rather the previous past issues can also learn in detail through the research. The research includes various methods by which it can be done.

5. Understand the published work:

Research is done through the work already published. The experts and the researchers had already done some of the research and the students are asked to go through that published material to understand the idea and the vision of those researchers.

6. Learn to create a balance between collaborative and individual work:

When the students do research, they get to know how to create a balance between the collaborative and the individual work . Individual work in which the student has to do, while the collaborative work means that work which has already been done by the previous researchers.

So, in this manner, the students get to know which points to take into consideration and which points are to be ignored.

7. To know the interest:

The students also get to know their area of interest. Sometimes, the students aspire to become researchers only in their near future which is quite helpful.

So, through this, we come to know that the research not only helps with the accomplishment of the work but also helps in understanding what needs to be done in their future.

8. To know how the original study originated:

Research is performed to understand the concept from scratch. Like, if you wish to know from where has the concept originated, then this could be done only through the research work.

It can also define as an investigation because the student eventually ends up with expanded research.

9. Understanding the rationale:

By engaging in the process of research, the students understand the concept in an easier manner as the rationale of the topic know in a better manner.

For example, by preparing the hypothesis, one truly understands the nuances of the research topic. Not just this, the research also helps in being a source of one on one mentorship which also plays a vital role in the brain development of the individual.

So, above are the reasons by which we come to know the benefits of the research for the students.

What is the Importance of Research to Humankind:

Humankind involves everything from a pin to an elephant. Every bit of information, the things to live and survive are needed for mankind, should be known.

As if the essentials will not be known then we will remain illiterate, unaware of what is happening in the society or around the world. Research is important for humankind because of the various factors:

1. Helps in understanding society:

When one does some research related to society, the human becomes aware and also alert of the good and bad things. In order to know society’s norms, policies, code of conduct, one needs to do proper research or it may become difficult to survive in society.

2. Helps in knowing the culture:

Every society has it’s own culture. In order to understand the culture of a particular society, research about that society needed.

If you do not do research or read maximum about any topic, you will fail to know the hidden meanings and the concepts about society’s culture and will remain unaware of the same. So, if you are curious to know and learn something new , then the research work will help.

3. For more awareness, research needed:

To make yourself aware, reading is the key. Read the published books and the research already done by an expert.

Once you have gone through the research work of great alumni, you feel like being on the top of the world as the information flows into your head. Not just this, if you wish to plan any holiday, you become aware of the weather and the requirements of that particular place. This way also research is very helpful.

4. For making the right choices for a career:

Research needed in all fields, i.e. it is pervasive. For even the smallest information, one needs to research and understand.

For example, if you need to know about careers with greater scope overseas, you will have to research that too. So, this way research is of great importance to everyone, be it a student, a traveler, teacher, professor, researcher himself.

5. Knowing the truth:

If you wish to know the truth about anything like reading, learning, and research is the only way. When you read and research on any topic, you get to know the truth.

The real facts and statistics come across which enlightens the person and also increases one’s knowledge.

6. Update about the technology:

If there comes any new technology, the human gets to know about that also through the research work.

So, basic research is helpful to humans to know what new is coming in the market. Also, it helps in being updated about the present scenario of the society one is living in.

7. Differences between good and bad:

When a person reads the already published material, it builds trust and also enlightens one’s mind. The person is able to differentiate between right and wrong which further helps in the decision making process .

So, above are the reasons which say why one should do research or what is the importance of research. It is for the whole of mankind, which involves individuals from every group and age. Whatever an individual reads, it somewhere and at sometime surely helps as it gets accumulated in the knowledge bank of an individual.

Why is Research Important in Education:

As earlier said, the role of research is important in all fields, in a similar manner, the importance of research in education is very vital. This is because of various reasons like:

1. It is a systematic analysis:

In education, research is essential as it gives a systematic analysis of the topic. Also, the objectives clearly defined in the research process. One needs to study in a systematic and controlled manner, and this is exactly what the research work provides an individual.

2. Leads to great observations:

In the field of education, the research helps in coming to one conclusion. That conclusion can achieve by observing the facts and figures in depth.

So, such in depth knowledge is provided by following various research methods only. In this way, research also assists in leading to greater observations.

3. Results in predictions, theories, and many principles:

The researchers come up with valid predictions, theories, and great results through the observations, hypothesis and research queries. So, this way also helps researchers to come up with great conclusions.

4. Improving practices:

The educational research is important for the students to improve practices and at the same time, it helps in improving those individuals who really wish to bring improvement in those practices.

So, this way educational research helps in the overall improvement of the individual . Be it a student or any teacher who is researching on some topic, it is of great help to them. It acts as a lighthouse and empowers the individual.

5. Develops new understanding related to the learning, teaching, etc:

The educators benefited through various research as it helps them in having a better understanding of the subject. Along with this, it develops greater understanding related to teaching, learning and other educational administration.

The new knowledge further helps in improving the educational practices of the teachers and professors.

6. Helps in initiating the action:

The research you do should result in performing some action or practice. So, the research should aim to produce the highest result which compliments the study. Also, you should make sure your study ensures the applicable findings so as to match the result.

Research helps in performing well and also sheds away all the problems. This way, you are able to understand the role of research which further helps in the decision making process.

7. Helps in decision making:

Good research requires proper time and effort. It prepares the person for taking essential decisions which further necessitates the same from all the participants involved in the process.

For better results, the participants need to consider the required consequences and all the risks involved in the whole process.

8. Brings consistency in the work:

When the work is done with full in-depth analysis, it tends to be right and accurate. The process of research help brings consistency in the work, which lessens the flaws and mistakes in the final outcome of the process.

The consistency needed in all sorts of work or you might have to end up getting the wrong and inaccurate result. The research takes lots of time and effort, so the researcher has to be specific and sure with the facts so that the end result is clean and without any silly mistakes.

9. Motivates others:

Educational research builds patience because it is a lengthy process. In order to get fruitful results, you need to build patience and only then you will be able to motivate others.

Also, if your research is full of the right facts and figures, it will ultimately motivate others. Not just this, accurate research assists in enhancing the reader’s knowledge which might not be possible for any other person.

So, above are some of the benefits that research provides in the field of education. Every kind of research, every kind of method has been always useful and gives a positive result. In case, you find something fishy during the research work, it is advisable to consult someone superior to you, or some expert.

Research is useful in all the fields and is used by all the departments, whether public or private. The research work is done by all age groups, whether the students or the teachers and even humankind in order to understand the society, it’s rules and other policies.

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Summer students act as an important catalyst for research

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Investing in undergraduate projects advances science and develops future researchers

Summer projects offer an exciting window into the world of research. For undergraduates, practical chemistry is confined to the structured experience of teaching labs – a far cry from the day-to-day reality of working in this field. Often the lack of context for techniques and experiments means students struggle to see the applications of the skills they are learning, or how those experiments connect to the wider world.

Source: © Julie MacLeod

Abigayle Boyce is now doing a PhD in organometallic chemistry – something she didn’t consider before her summer placement

Placements therefore provide a valuable opportunity: a chance for students to dip their toes into research, building on existing skills and tackling real-world problems. ‘These projects give a wider overview of why we’re doing chemistry,’ says Stephen Mansell , a catalysis researcher at Heriot-Watt University, UK. ‘They give students the experience of what research is really like and that will definitely help them decide whether they want to carry on with chemistry as a career.’

A summer placement between the second and third year of his undergraduate degree was an important part of Mansell’s chemistry journey. ‘There are always hard points in university and I think second year was probably one of them,’ he says. ‘Having that opportunity to work in a lab enabled me to boost my skills and I started third year feeling much more confident and with experiments going better.’ This newfound confidence and interest in research was ultimately a vital stepping stone on the way to Mansell’s current position as an assistant professor. In the years since, he has been keen to ensure that others enjoy the benefit of similar opportunities, hosting 10 summer students over the last 10 years.

Source: Courtesy of Stephen Mansell

Having been inspired by his own undergraduate placement, Stephen Mansell regularly hosts students in his lab over the summer

Placements aren’t only beneficial for the undergraduates. These short-term positions offer an excellent opportunity for permanent group members to gain mentoring experience by supervising the placement students. ‘Often PhDs don’t realise all of the useful and specialist skills that they’ve built up over two or three years,’ says Mansell. ‘I think it’s quite a confidence boost for them to feel that they know enough to teach somebody else about it.’

Many academics also have more projects than group members available to work on them so an enthusiastic pair of hands can be really helpful to drive these dormant projects forwards.

An eye-opening experience

Mansell is adamant that these vital contributions by summer students should be recognised and a recent paper from the group, 1 exploring the design of an improved rhodium C–H borylation catalyst, names three summer students who contributed results to the project over three consecutive years. ‘It’s predominantly the work of PhD student Paul Morton , and the undergraduate summer students explored different topics around it,’ Mansell explains. ‘ Abigayle Boyce worked on forming the tethered carbene ligands and hexane borylation, Lennox Stewart ran and analysed some of the catalytic reactions, and Anamarija Pišpek did the computational chemistry with Stuart Macgregor .’

Boyce, Stewart, and Pišpek have all since started or secured PhDs and cite their summer placements with Mansell as a key part of their respective decisions. ‘I was a Covid graduate so when I took part in the summer project, we didn’t have lab experience and I’d really lost my confidence in chemistry,’ says Boyce. ‘I’m so grateful that I got the experience – I ended up loving it so much that I went on to do a PhD in organometallic chemistry, which I wouldn’t have even considered previously.’

Source: Courtesy of Lennox Stewart

Lennox Stewart was able to gain practical skills missed when teaching labs were cancelled due to Covid-19

The two years of intense Covid restrictions had a profound impact on how undergraduates learnt chemistry, with social distancing rules requiring departments to rapidly develop alternatives to traditional teaching labs. ‘We were meant to get one lab session a semester and they had shortened the experiments. We did the first one, but then there was the second lockdown and that was pretty much it,’ recalls Boyce. ‘You just had to watch a video or read a script and then you would be given sets of data to write the lab report. We basically had no practical skills and chemistry stopped being fun.’

‘Going into fourth year we’d have to do an independent project and I was concerned that I would have no idea what I was doing,’ explains Stewart. ‘There were so many individual skills that we’d just missed completely.’

During their placements, Boyce and Stewart were able to practise their underutilised lab skills, building confidence in the basics and learning a raft of unfamiliar specialist techniques such as using Schlenk lines and glove boxes. The complex analysis required to interpret the outcomes of their experiments also allowed the pair to put their theoretical knowledge of characterisation techniques like x-ray crystallography, 2D NMR and gas chromatography into practise for the first time.

Almost as soon as I finished the project I knew I really wanted to do a PhD Abigayle Boyce

The more relaxed timescale of placements compared with teaching labs reduces the time pressure on individual experiments and gives students time to think about what they’re doing and why, says Mansell. He adds that this focus on the bigger picture, rather than generating the perfect lab report, is a much more realistic view of chemistry research and isn’t the only surprise for undergraduate students. ‘We often set them tasks where we don’t know the answer so the interactions between supervisors and research students are really important. It’s much more of a discussion than they expect.’

Being immersed in a research group was particularly eye-opening for Boyce. ‘I loved the collaborative aspect, learning the process of research from other people, and the freedom and creativity of the work,’ she says. ‘Almost as soon as I finished the project I knew I really wanted to do a PhD.’ 

Industry involvement

The support of Johnson Matthey through their Platinum Group Metals (PGM) award scheme was key to facilitating Boyce and Stewart’s work. ‘There isn’t really any consumables budget from the university for summer students so you’ve got to have the chemicals in place or some other funding,’ explains Mansell. ‘Johnson Matthey’s involvement in this project was crucial – without the loan of rhodium trichloride we’d have had to abandon the rhodium project completely.’

Source: © Stephen Mansell

Three undergraduates contributed to different aspects of the catalyst design – and their involvment meant Johnson Matthey contributed a crucial supply of rhodium (green)

As part of their leadership in sustainable technologies, Johnson Matthey’s PGM scheme loans out small amounts of platinum group metals (which typically cost hundreds of pounds per gram) to facilitate research into new applications of these catalytic elements. Any research waste is then returned to the company, which can recover most of the precious metal through its on-site recycling facility, later making this material available to other teams. All researchers are welcome to apply but the organising team are particularly keen to support projects that widen participation or bring new researchers into the field. ‘We supplied Stephen with 5g of rhodium metal – at today’s market price that’s around £580,’ says Barbara Breeze , a senior principal scientist at Johnson Matthey. ‘We’re delighted that this award supported three summer students and has resulted in a journal publication.’

Johnson Matthey, like many other companies in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, also offers its own summer placements on-site, providing two-week experiences for A-level students and longer placement opportunities for over-18s. ‘Building that talent pipeline is critical. Obviously if we’re going to meet the energy transition and sustainability goals, we need as many chemists, engineers, and scientists going into this field as we can,’ says Breeze. ‘Student placements enable us to train up and enthuse talented individuals for a career in industry, with the potential to hire these individuals after they’ve completed their studies.’

Most of Johnson Matthey’s summer placements are initiated by students sending a CV and covering letter expressing their interest in the experiences they would like to gain. This contact often inspires and shapes the resulting project and this is exactly how Gareth Hart , now a research scientist at Johnson Matthey, secured his placement between school and university in 2018. ‘I wanted to develop skills and understand the chemistry in industry better – I really saw myself wanting to work at the interface of academia and industry,’ he says.

Being in that team environment is really conducive to developing good collaborative skills Gareth Hart

Over the course of two months, Hart worked on a variety of projects across health, metal recycling and platinum group metals and was particularly excited by how the specific skills developed in an academic environment applied in an industrial setting. The contrast with academic chemistry, especially regarding the relative importance of safety, scaling and lifecycle considerations, was completely new and Hart recalls how he was supported by the various site teams as he built an understanding of these different industrial priorities.

In addition to the extensive technical experience gained from this placement, the opportunity also enabled Hart to develop soft skills that are often overlooked in undergraduate study. ‘Summer placements can be one of the first experiences of significant teamwork within science for students so being in that team environment is really conducive to developing good collaborative skills,’ he explains. ‘Communication is another key one – reporting findings and putting them into presentation format for digestion by others.’

This positive experience crystallised Hart’s career ambitions to work at the intersection of academia and industry and in 2021 he returned to Johnson Matthey as a research scientist. ‘There was always a strong desire to return here having seen all of the great science and the impact that it can have on the world,’ he explains.

Investing in the future workforce

The majority of the chemistry community recognises the value of these opportunities and most academic institutions and commercial organisations are happy to be approached by interested students. But finding a suitable position is just the first step – funding these placements is also hugely important. ‘Unpaid placements can only benefit a real subset. It’s got to be paid if it’s going to be fair and accessible to everyone,’ says Mansell. ‘But there’s no centralised system or regulation to ensure that the funding’s there and it’s up to each university or organisation to decide how much they want to put into summer placements.’

Large companies such as Johnson Matthey often have a budget allocated for outreach and summer placements so it’s always worth asking the question, says Hart. ‘Johnson Matthey are also heavily involved with the RSC’s Broadening Horizons scheme, which offers a structured route for disadvantaged or underrepresented students to obtain summer placements and mentorship,’ he says.

More broadly, there are several national schemes in place to support these opportunities in academia, or where this outreach budget isn’t available. The RSC offers Undergraduate Research Bursaries for six to eight week summer placements each year and students are invited to submit a project proposal with their chosen supervisor to apply for funding. UKRI also recently changed its regulations, allowing universities to divert any leftover funding from PhD studentships to support summer placements.

How to fund these projects and where the responsibility should lie is difficult to determine but it’s clear these opportunities are a valuable investment in the future of the chemical sciences workforce. ‘Doing a summer placement absolutely changed the path of my life,’ says Boyce. ‘It empowers you to make the decision about your future in chemistry and without it, I would be going down a completely different path.’

1 PA Morton et al , Organometallics,  2024, DOI:  10.1021/acs.organomet.4c00025

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• COVID-19 shutdown flips drug overdose mortality rates among industries
• Spring undergraduate fellows tackle critical public health issues
• CPH graduate finds her path through public health, receives several honors

Drug overdoses, firearm injuries, a cancer-causing virus, and social needs in health care delivery: this past spring, four University of Kentucky College of Public Health (CPH) students worked on research projects related to these important public health issues as part of the Spring 2024 Undergraduate Research Fellowship program.

Brayden Ward, Mason Taylor, Ashley Grospitch, and Khushi Arora participated in the fellowship program, which is funded by the University’s Office of Undergraduate Research and provides funding for students as they to work with a faculty mentor on a research project.

Brayden Ward: Fatal Drug Overdoses

Brayden Ward’s research focuses on post-incarceration fatal drug overdose rates in Kentucky. Brayden is working with Dana Quesinberry, JD, DrPH , an assistant professor at the CPH and associate director of the Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center, to use publicly available data to examine fatal overdoses among individuals post-incarceration. The research aims to identify modifiable factors leading to the increased overdose risk.

When reflecting on his motivations for becoming a fellow, Brayden emphasized that he wanted to broaden his horizons.

“Going into this fellowship, I wanted to expand my experiences in public health research in a way that grew my skills both professionally and educationally, but also have the opportunity to make a difference in the community,” he said. “When Dr. Quesinberry reached out to me about this topic, I knew it was an opportunity to do both of those things, and I was immediately excited to get started.”

Dr. Quesinberry highlighted the importance of intellectual curiosity in research.

"An important characteristic of a researcher is having a curious mind. While we started with a topic that Brayden had no experience with, his natural curiosity became engaged with the complexity of the topic," said Dr. Quesinberry.

Brayden’s research work serves as an important starting point for addressing the intersection of incarceration, substance use disorders, and public health by identifying a population that is often overlooked in public health initiatives. By highlighting the correlation between incarceration status and increased overdose risk, Brayden's work emphasizes the need for targeted interventions and support services tailored to this demographic.

"Brayden provided an energy to a project that had been sidelined because of conflicting priorities,” Dr. Quesinberry said. “His preliminary findings have created a team energy around the data he wrangled and its potential to answer a number of research questions that will translate into both corrections and public health practice."

Brayden said, “This fellowship has given me an opportunity to expand my experiences in the world of public health research. I think that is the value of doing something like this program. Being exposed to so many real-work events as an undergraduate gives me an experience and knowledge I could not get in a classroom.”

Mason Taylor: Firearm Injuries

Mason Taylor's research project focuses on analyzing morbidity and mortality data related to firearm incidents in Kentucky. Mason is collaborating with Julia Costich, JD, PhD , Jacqueline Seals, DrPH , and Alaina Murphy, MPH , from the Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center (KIPRC), to analyze the data and produce a manuscript summarizing his findings. This research aims to provide insights into the prevalence, patterns, and potential risk factors associated with firearm injuries in Kentucky.

Mason shared that his inspiration to pursue the topic of firearm violence stemmed from analyzing Kentucky injury trends from the past decade; he noticed a concerning increase in emergency department admissions related to intentional and unintentional firearm injuries.

“Mason was very enthusiastic about his topic and eager to work with the KIPRC team on a scholarly manuscript,” said Mason’s mentor, Dr. Costich. “Mason’s identification of issues related to firearm violence has mobilized a group of faculty and staff to initiate more focused and collaborative research on this critically important topic. I am not sure we’d be where we are in the development of this focus without his work.”

The research identifies patterns and risk factors associated with firearm incidents, advocating for comprehensive public health interventions to prevent injuries and fatalities.

“Firearm violence is a glaring public health issue in the United States that truly exists,” said Mason. “It is almost constantly seen in the media, but I do not believe individuals see it as a public health issue. Our research proves that firearm violence should not be a social norm but an area where public health interventions can help prevent it from occurring.”

Mason plans to pursue a career in public health, motivated by the diverse and interdisciplinary nature of the field.

Ashley Grospitch: Social Needs and Health Care

Ashley Grospitch's research project, conducted in collaboration with Rachel Hogg-Graham’s Team Up collaborative, focuses on developing a social needs screening and referral experiential learning opportunity.

Ashley’s research work examined models for delivering screenings and referral services and how students can be integrated into the work. Her work informed a model where UK HealthCare will work with students to support the referral process to community resources.

“I wanted to pursue this topic because creating a student program, in particular, provides a unique opportunity to increase awareness through both education and experience of the impact of the social drivers of health on health care outcomes,” shared Ashley.

Dr. Hogg-Graham praised Ashley's contribution to integrating student involvement into health care initiatives.  

“Ashley worked closely with our team to examine the roles students can play in social need screening and referral strategies,” said Dr. Hogg-Graham, DrPH, who is an associate professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy. “Her work has been used to build an experiential opportunity with UK HealthCare where students will support the population health team in their work bridging patients with unmet social needs to community resources."

She added that Ashley's efforts have not only enhanced student education but will also help improve social need referral outreach.

Reflecting on her time as a research fellow, Ashley shared, “Completing research this semester as an Undergraduate Research Fellow has been an immensely positive experience. Working on Dr. Hogg-Graham’s Team Up Collaborative, in addition to my Public Health Showcase experience, has reinforced my long-term interest in pursuing research as a career, and I hope to continue in this field after graduation.”

Khushi Arora: HPV

Khushi Arora’s research project focuses on tracking trends in human papilloma virus (HPV) positivity rates from 2000 to 2023. HPV is known to cause cervical cancer, but vaccines can prevent many other types of HPV infections as well. Khushi's study looks at how changes in HPV testing guidelines and the introduction of vaccination programs have affected the rates of HPV infections.

The importance of Khushi's research lies in its potential to show how effective these preventive measures have been in reducing HPV infections. By understanding these trends, public health officials can assess the impact of vaccination programs and testing guidelines on the spread of HPV and ultimately on the rates of cervical cancer. This information can help guide future public health policies and interventions aimed at further reducing the burden of cervical cancer and other HPV-related diseases.

“This fellowship program has allowed me to further delve into research and dig deeper into analysis of given data for my project,” shared Khushi.

She added that she gained valuable experience in navigating institutional review board submissions, conducting human subject research, and presenting findings at scientific conferences.

“She will be finishing off her work with me culminating in a quality assurance report that will be submitted for regulatory purposes summarizing the changing trends in HPV testing volume and positivity rates,” shared mentor Julie Ribes, MD, PhD.

After graduation, Khushi plans to pursue a career in medicine. In the interim, she intends to continue engaging in research. She added that being involved in research not only provides her with valuable insights but also enhances her ability to understand and interpret research conducted by others, which she intends to incorporate into her future medical practice.

Learn more about fellowship opportunities and undergraduate research here at cph.uky.edu/programs/bachelor-public-health/undergraduate-research .

• UK researchers secure grant to enhance understanding, improve child welfare systems

College of Public Health 111 Washington Avenue Lexington, KY 40536 [email protected]

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In pursuit of gold: UC Davis undergraduates strike again in research excellence

• by Isabella Beristain
• May 08, 2024

Three UC Davis students have won the highly prestigious and competitive Barry Goldwater Scholarship. UC Davis 2024 Goldwater Scholars Avantika Gokulnatha, Madeleine Rose, and Shih-Na Liu submitted research spanning multiple STEM fields and topics. Read the full article .

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Students build prototype of world's first hydrogen-powered engine: 'A very significant milestone'

M ajor car manufacturers have been unable to make hydrogen-powered internal combustion engines available to consumers. However, a group of undergraduate students stepped in and built their own — the first in the world. 

This type of engine is innovative and encouraging because hydrogen is a carbon-neutral fuel . Unlike gasoline, hydrogen produces no carbon dioxide and contributes to larger sustainability goals of diversifying clean energy sources and curbing planet-overheating gas pollution. 

The development is especially timely considering the proposed ban on selling new gasoline and diesel vehicles in 2035. 

University of Bath engineering students used a sponsor-provided, modified single-cylinder gasoline engine as a starting point to create the hydrogen engine. Using a specialized control unit and hydrogen-specific fuel injectors, they reengineered the engine and switched it on with instant success. 

One of the students and team leaders, Samuel Ray, shared , "We started by reading all of the research and literature we could find, analyzing and cataloguing it all to understand it and prioritize what was possible for us to pull off, as a fairly small team." 

Hydrogen is among the most promising fuel sources on our planet because of how it could change the future of ground transportation and air travel . Clean energy developments like this can lead to the development of zero-emission vehicles and reduce our society's dependence on dirty energy . 

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Challenges exist in storing ample hydrogen in a car because of its high energy density per unit mass and low energy density per unit volume. To overcome these issues, the students could try compressing hydrogen at very high pressure or storing it as a liquid at minus 418 degrees Fahrenheit.  

To ensure its safety, the hydrogen engine must be tested outdoors and remotely controlled behind a protective panel.  

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"Getting the prototype engine running has been a very significant milestone in this project," said Dr. Kevin Robinson, the team's academic supervisor. "It's still early days, but we have completed about three hours of continuous operation so far, including several minutes at full load."

Students build prototype of world's first hydrogen-powered engine: 'A very significant milestone' first appeared on The Cool Down .