July 2021
This month reports summarises four articles that in/directly relate to the impact of universities. The first represents an viewpoint of Tim Ingold on the current state of universities (Ingold, 2020). The second study investigates the epistemic corruption brought on by the impact agenda (Kidd et al. 2021). The third paper investigates the need for increased impact literacy to maintain the future of the universities (Kokshagina et al. 2021). The last piece of research proposes semantic standards in relation to the concept of research impact (Belcher and Halliwell, 2021).
[1]) He sets out the challenges he thinks that are posed to scholarship and the universities in the 21th century. Part of these challenges come from the university themselves, in their own internal organisation and management. Furthermore, in his solution he does not set out concrete steps, but rather re-affirms a value commitment that is necessary for the university to find back to its own mission of facilitating the common good. He suggest freedom to engage in intellectual inquiry as a foundational requirement. In order to facilitate trust between all the individuals that interact within a university. In his estimation, only such a focus on lifelong education can facilitate the community of teachers and student that represents a university.
[2]) The study explores theoretically informed suggestions of epistemic corruption empirically. They interviewed 50 academics from two research intensive institutions within Australia and the UK, lasting between 30 and 60 minutes and focusing on the influence of the impact agenda. Specifically, they found that ‘game-playing’ and ‘competition’ facilitated these corrupting tendencies. In specific they were corrupting in a ex ante sense, meaning they re-affirmed existing arrangements that the researchers themselves may not agree with. They suggest the solution is constant scrutiny and vigilance, on both the individual researcher and the institutions, in order not to jeopardize the ability to speak the truth in complicated questions with moral or political implications.
[3]) Higher education institutions find themselves increasingly in a situation where they are pressured to demonstrate impact, both informally in order to capture students and formally in terms of research evaluation. They suggest five principles to keep research endeavours humane and beneficial for society enlarge. These are the making the initial assumptions explicit within the framework of participatory research. Seeing research impact as a holistic goal of the entire research process, rather than a merely evaluative exercise at the end. Fostering critical reflexivity and experimentations in all participants. Planning research impacts, as well as concretely defining them, from the start into the research design, and ensuring responsible and ethic research impact.
[4]) The impact agenda is plagued by a disparaging vocabulary where anything and everything can be impact, for example outcome and impact are often used interchangeably. The authors suggest to refer to the direct products of research, referred to as outputs; the occurred change as outcomes; and wider influence in terms of social, economic, environmental, or other physical condition as realized benefits. These semantic standards, in the view of the authors, ought to aid the evaluation of research impact.
[1] Ingold, T. (2020). On Building a University for the Common Good. Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education, 2(1), 45-68.
[2] Kidd, I. J., Chubb, J., & Forstenzer, J. (2021). Epistemic corruption and the research impact agenda. Theory and Research in Education, 19(2), 148-167.
[3] Kokshagina, O., Rickards, L., Steele, W., & Moraes, O. (2021). Futures Literacy for Research Impact in Universities. Futures. 132.
[4] Belcher, B., & Halliwell, J. (2021). Conceptualizing the elements of research impact: towards semantic standards. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 8(1), 1-6.
