RAE Consultation Response from PALATINE (the Performing Arts Subject Centre of the LTSN (Learning and Teaching Support Network).
PALATINE is the Performing Arts Subject Centre of the LTSN (Learning and Teaching Support Network). (The acronym stands for Performing Arts Learning And Teaching Innovation Network.) It is one of 24 subject centres funded by the funding councils to support learning and teaching.
Because our remit is specialised we shall confine ourselves to answers to do with the interface between teaching and research.
Preamble
In our subject areas (Drama, Dance and Music) research and teaching are inextricably connected. Since our inception in 2000 we have increasingly come to realise that top-level teaching is informed by top-level research. RAE2001 did not specifically encourage reflection on the links between research and teaching, which we feel was an important oversight. A largely retrospective assessment exercise will be an arid affair, and if no interest is shown in the practical application of research, then many academics will feel that an important point of their work has been missed.
Arts academics in many universities consider one of their most important functions to be the delivery of ‘teaching in the context of research’. Across the whole academic spectrum different subject-groups interpret this phrase in different ways, but in the Arts it is taken to mean that our teaching will be informed by our research and we attempt to incorporate as much as possible of our latest research into our courses. Therefore a very obvious question to be asked in the next RAE, especially if the emphasis will change to being a prospective rather than retrospective exercise, will be to ask what track-record colleagues have in this respect, and what plans they have. Since in the Arts colleagues are assessed individually rather than as members of teams, there will be no difficulty in applying this at a person to person level. Indeed, such an approach might provide a more telling assessment of teaching quality than the current process-driven model. If the trend is towards ‘joined-up’ thinking in academia, then the most obvious two things to join up first are teaching and research, because in many people’s minds they were never separate.
Similarly, by the same logic, we wish to propose that pedagogical research, and its incorporation into teaching, should also be an assessable area. This should
demonstrate that it is not in a ghetto or on the margins of our subjects, and therefore should be assessed by the subject panels, not hived off to the Education panel, and indeed subject assessors will be the only people fully aware of the issues in their subject. Already this side of our subjects is developing rapidly, and by the time of the next RAE it will be well-established with a wealth of expertise.
We have become increasingly aware of the very fine line between teaching and research in the minds and the actions of staff in our subject areas. Indeed, some of the development projects we have funded have explored how to transfer and embed people’s research into their teaching. We would urge RAE panels next time to work with the appropriate subject-associations to come to an agreed view on this relationship, especially the issue of practice as research, and especially within this the emerging postgraduate research programmes of practice as research, which are of interest to us because they are at the cusp of research and teaching.
So, to sum up our three proposals:
1The next RAE should assess the extent to which subject-based rersearch is incorporated in teaching;
2Pedagogical research in our subjects should be assessable, together, again, with the extent to which its results inform teaching;
3The panels should work together with their subject associations to come to an agreed view of practice as research (‘practice’ to include both the creation of new works and the creation of performances).
If the best teaching incorporates the results of the best subject-based research, as it should, then it should also incorporate the results of the best pedagogic research.
Group 1 questions
aFor the reasons stated above, we believe the assessment should be much more prospective than in 2001, based on an individual’s track-record. By the time we get to 2008, or whenever the next RAE occurs, there should be plenty of time for colleagues to have shown how to incorporate teaching into their research, if that is what they wish to claim, encouraged (we hope) by us and the other LTSN Centres.
bAlthough this LTSN Centre would not wish to get involved in the actual assessment (because our supportive role depends on our not being seen as judgemental) we would be able to suggest objective data for the retrospective
part of the exercise nearer the time. These would include staff:student ratio (for the amount of teaching influences the amount of research) and data on the research outputs that have fed into teaching.
cAs stated above, we assume that assessment should continue at individual level in our subjects. There is no other appropriate method.
dAssessment by subject is the only logical method, and the establishment of the LTSN is a vindication of the subject-based approach. Since we cover three main subejcts, we should say that we find only limited opportunities to identify themes in common between all our three subjects, and the practitioners in each subject do not understand the preoccupations and practices of those in the other subjects, and so it would be dangerous to compound together assessment panels even into a larger group to match the make-up of our LTSN Centre.
Group 2
Here we would merely observe that if the assessment is to be to any substantial extent prospective, as we believe it should be, metrics of the kind suggested are of
very limited use, since they measure things that have happened, rather than things that people wish to happen. Metrics have, in any case, been used hardly at all in Arts subjects. However, as stated above (1b) SSR is an obvious missing metric.
Group 4
One general point is that if any weight is to be given to the quality of plans to embed research into teaching, as we believe it should be, then this and any other newly-assessed factor would seriously devalue any reliance on historical ratings.
Group 5
The only sections of this group on which we would wish to comment are
cWhat is excellence? We would argue that creativity and applicability, as applied to teaching, are key areas. No, the 2001 exercise did not capture this, because nobody asked these questions.
fSubject communities certainly have the maturity to decide how they should be assessed.