Linking research and teaching to benefit student learning in higher education: complexity, collaboration and a tailored approach

This article examines the value of research in improving the quality of teaching and learning in higher education. Drawing on a longitudinal body of work from two interrelated research projects involving university teachers and students in the UK, this article argues for the need to move beyond positivist quantitative approaches which conceptualize and categorize effective teaching and learning reductively as technical, decontextualized processes that can be transparently quantified and mastered. Instead, this article highlights the value of developing more collaborative, discursive approaches to research between educators and students that acknowledge the complex, context-specific and qualitative nature of the teaching-learning interrelationship