The last twenty years have seen an increased emphasis around the world
on the quality and quantity of research in response to national research
assessments, international league tables, and changes in government
funding. The prevailing attitude in higher education embeds research as
the ‘gold standard’ in the context of academic activity. However, a key
feature of this trend is significant gender differences in research
activity. Educational research and development
We argue that research productivity is related to identification as a
researcher, and that identifying as ‘research-active’ or not would
appear to depend upon how an individual academic subjectively defines
‘research’. This article brings together two hitherto separate bodies of
work (1) the impact of gender on academic research careers, and (2)
academic conceptions of research. Through a combination of interviews,
focus groups and questionnaires, we investigate the extent to which
interpretations of ‘research’ and ‘research activity’ differ by gender
within an institution in the UK and the potential impact of these
interpretations.
Although the research found that there are many
similarities in the interpretations of ‘research activity’ between
genders, we found one important difference between male and female
participants’ conceptions of research and its relationship to teaching.
Significantly, our findings suggest that there is a need to expand our
existing conceptualisations of ‘research’ to include ‘research as
scholarship’ in order to address the obstacles that current
understandings of ‘research’ have placed on some academics.
Self-definition as a researcher underlies research activity. A narrow
conception of ‘research’ may prevent individuals from identifying as
‘research-active’ and therefore engaging with research.
