On 'Research vs. Teaching': A Long-Term Perspective
In: Accounting Horizons, Jg. 14 (2000-09-01), S. 343-352
Online
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Zugriff:
A common, perennial topic of debate within the academic community involves the question of teaching vs. research. Some academics dream of a position with no teaching, or at least an extended sabbatical from teaching (and administration). Others complain that research is irrelevant in a professional school—that it is a form of consumption by the faculty that does nothing to train better managers or accounting professionals. In this commentary we argue that teaching and research are strong complements, not substitutes. Doing more of one increases the value of the other. Few important socialscience research findings have come from think tanks. Virtually all leading academics are located at institutions dedicated to both teaching and research. To preview our conclusion, we reject any notion of separating research and teaching. Students demand relevant course content—questions and answers that enhance their human capital. This helps guide our research and helps prevent us from teaching irrelevant material. In parallel fashion, we stress generation and consumption of research as essential to understanding both the relevance of what we teach and what we research and hence the impact of relevance on research. The relevance and productivity of research activities are essential to the long-run health of our university system. Students tend to be myopic and asymmetrically informed. Faculties often have better information about what students will find useful than the students themselves, or even recruiters. Hence, we would not advocate curricula designed by current students or alumni. Their input often provides useful information. However, the long-run success of our universities depends critically on our ability to design curricula and to provide incentives for research programs that maximize and balance current and future human capital accumulation by us, by our existing students, and by our future students. Accounting research has blossomed in the last quarter of a century. Yet, we continue to struggle with understanding its relevance and how we, as individual academics, might best attain and maintain research productivity. What follows are some personal opinions on the complementary nature of teaching and research and how these affect our
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On 'Research vs. Teaching': A Long-Term Perspective
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Autor/in / Beteiligte Person: | Demski, Joel S. ; Zimmerman, Jerold L. |
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Zeitschrift: | Accounting Horizons, Jg. 14 (2000-09-01), S. 343-352 |
Veröffentlichung: | American Accounting Association, 2000 |
Medientyp: | unknown |
ISSN: | 1558-7975 (print) ; 0888-7993 (print) |
DOI: | 10.2308/acch.2000.14.3.343 |
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