Their conclusion was that research activity didn't make teaching worse, but it didn't make it better either. If lecturer research doesn't enhance teaching quality, or worse still, if it actually affects teaching negatively, universities might reasonably want lecturers to do less research and more teaching. If teaching isn't good for research some institutions whose main business lies in teaching could be run more efficiently as teaching-only universities. The evidence that lecturer research activity has no or negative effects on student learning is indirect and inferred from particular behaviours such as ratings of lecturer performance or student assessments. For example, throughout the world competition for places seems to be fiercest at universities that are internationally renowned for the quality of their research.
New questions open up centred on how lecturer research can be used to benefit teaching.
It would be surprising if so many people who might be expected to possess expert knowledge, have come to the wrong conclusion. The research team decided to directly explore student conceptions of lecturer research and its effects on their teaching by asking them about it. The original study investigated undergraduate samples. The present study applied the same methodology to samples of postgraduate students. The results reported below precisely replicate the methodology from the study of undergraduates.