Creating and maintaining a research culture in higher education institutions: The continuing journey of four HEIs

• Main Author: Villenas, Benilda N.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2008
• Subjects: Education, Higher; Research; Culture > Research; Educational Leadership; Higher Education
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/245; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etd_doctoral/article/1244/viewcontent/CDTG004585_P.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

There is a conspicuous lack of grounded theoretical framework on how the research culture is developed and nurtured in higher education institutions. Even as the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) mandated HEIs to undertake research as one of the functions in the trilogy of instruction-research-extension, studies showed that research remained to be the least of the functions actually performed by colleges and universities in the Philippines. Thirty-nine participants representing different stakeholders from the Vice Presidents for Research to the Intellectual Property Rights Directors in four universities, two private and two state-run, were interviewed over nearly a year to elicit data rooted in the ground. The constant comparison method was used to analyze the interviews using the grounded theory approach where the framework of developing research culture among higher education institutions using actual cases or responses from the field emerged. The emerged theory disclosed that there are strategic and operational levels of research culture creation and maintenance in higher education institutions. At the strategic level, it is important that higher education institutions have proactive leadership that identify the research agenda and priorities so that the appropriate structure and management are set up, collaborations established, and the required research funding and infrastructure provided. At the operational level, administrative practices and policies have to be in place, supported by assembling faculty and staff who have the necessary education and training, knowledge and positive attitude toward research and research orientation. All research activities must undergo monitoring and evaluation to ensure quality and standards. Furthermore, to motivate faculty researchers and research staff to vi undertake research activities they must be given appropriate rewards, incentives and recognition and protection as creators of new knowledge or creative works through an Ethics and Intellectual Property Rights Policy. The study also brought to light that there are internal and external factors that pushed the creation and maintenance of a research culture in higher education institutions. Among the internal factors are the institutional vision and mission, goals and objectives and/or charter even as the external factors of bureaucratic requirements of regulatory and quality assurance bodies such as the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and accreditation/ISO agencies bear on the decision to create and maintain a research culture. Serendipity also turned up a grounded typology or frames of reference based on three hypotheses which build upon creating and maintaining a research culture. The first hypothesis is that there is an evolutionary process in the attainment of a stable research culture that may be summed up in three stages: nascent, transition and fully grown or mature research culture. The second hypothesis engendered a number of elements of research culture such as shared beliefs, shared values, shared fears and shared sense of achievement thriving in open communication, participative governance, and drive and passion for research. Once the research culture creation and maintenance sets in, there are three indicators in higher education institutions that mark a viable and mature research culture. The first indicator is research production where the community of researchers produces applied and various types of researches, internally or externally funded. The second indicator is research dissemination where research results or outputs are reported and published in various media professional associations, national and international fora, printed, broadcast and electronic media and to stakeholders and end- vii users. The third indicator is research utilization which applies research results or outputs to inform institutional processes and practices, the immediate community, the country or the world of knowledge as a whole. The study proposes that the system underlying research efforts be rationalized so that scarce research funding will not be dissipated, research be accentuated as a major function of policymakers and administrators of higher education institutions so that more funds can be funneled for research and faculty research rewards, inter-institutional collaborations be strengthened to build theoretically-oriented scholars and to enhance research skills, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary researches be led by funding agencies and big universities to mentor the research skills of institutions that are starting to build their research cultures, ethical, IPR and related problems be addressed, and future studies be done on supporting viable research environments. CHED may likewise reconsider its uniform mandate of instruction, research and extension for higher education institutions. Given the historic beginnings of most HEIs as purely teaching institutions and the tremendous effort and expense in transforming HEIs from teaching to research-intensive universities, would it not be possible for certain institutions to focus on specializing in being good teaching institutions and the rest who have the logistics and the capacities to be research-driven universities (Salazar & Acosta, 2007)? Looking at the bigger picture, the conclusions and recommendations given in the study help enrich the discourse among researchers, scholars, policy and decision makers concerning the weakest among the functions invested in institutions of higher learning: the research function.