Abstract
The aim of this investigation was to gain an insight into how the curriculum of a Psychology School at a research-intensive university could be enhanced based on cross-sectional student views from all years of study. The School curriculum was framed under the research-teaching nexus and 272 undergraduate students completed online questionnaires regarding their research expectations and their learning experiences. The parallel questionnaires were distributed to the three distinct cohorts of students (1st, 2nd and 3rd year of students) at the beginning of the first semester of the 2016-2017 academic year. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the cohorts and summarize the data collected. Chi-square tests were used to make comparisons and identify differences between student research expectations and experiences from the School curriculum. The main findings of this investigation concur with other studies in identifying significant differences between entry level students (Year 1) and those who have experienced learning in second and third years of study. However, the aim of these questionnaires was to study the School curriculum under the perspective of 1) The role of teaching staff in research, 2) Research skills obtained or expected to obtain by students and 3) Research connected with learning process and real-world applications. Potential reasons of the differences of learning experiences amongst students in different years of study and their implications are related to research activities and students’ interactions through dialogue and collaboration with their teachers and amongst their peers in the context of community by studying real-example applications.
Highlights
Many researchers have studied how students engage in research activities and how the relationship between teaching and research might be realized (Brew, 2006; Healey & Jenkins, 2009; Malcolm, 2014)
By analyzing student responses from the second and the third-year students, there was no significant differences between the two groups
The responses of the experimental group were compared to the first-year Psychology students, which formed the control group (CG), as the latter had no learning research experiences
Summary
Many researchers have studied how students engage in research activities and how the relationship between teaching and research might be realized (Brew, 2006; Healey & Jenkins, 2009; Malcolm, 2014). A number of attempts have been made, for example Griffiths (2004) and Healey (2005) provided a set of four labels and a visual typology to describe the research-teaching nexus and placed particular attention to the way the curriculum is structured and the emphasis placed on its delivery. Both researchers developed an educational vocabulary that has informed related discussions amongst practitioners over the years. One starts to wonder if this area is of concern to education researchers, what students may be thinking as they go through their programmes of study?
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