Mick Healey and Alan Jenkins: June 2009
Extract: "The Academy (http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/) is very pleased to present this piece of work, commissioned as part of the series looking at the relationship between teaching and research. Mick Healey and Alan Jenkins build on their already substantial contribution in this area by focusing on undergraduates’ engagement in research and inquiry... They suggest here a fundamental conceptual shift from the notion of students as a passive audience for the research output of individual academics, to the idea of students as active stakeholders in a research community in which their experience of research within the core curriculum mirrors that of their lecturers...
In particular, the paper stems from the United States undergraduate research movement, which started by providing research opportunities for selected students in selected institutions. We argue, as does much recent US experience, that such curricular experience should and can be mainstreamed for all or many students through a research-active curriculum. We argue that this can be achieved through structured interventions at course team, departmental, institutional and national levels. The argument is complemented by a large selection of mini case studies, drawn particularly from the UK, North America and Australasia."
