Promoting Engagement in a Research-Rich Curriculum (on the Example of Enquiry-Based Tasks in Lexicography)

Abstract

Thinking carefully about the impact that research might have on teaching is a topic of international interest. The main aim of the paper is to explore the complexity of the linkage between research and teaching in institutional context, with peculiar reference and on an example of postgraduate program of English philology (Lexicography) at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University. Lexicography provides an intriguing test ground on which to examine the connections between research and teaching because of the position it holds at the intersection between the theory and practice (theoretical lexicography and the lexicographic practice).

It is suggested that undergraduate and postgraduate students are likely to gain most benefit from research in terms of depth of learning and understanding when they are involved actively, particularly through various forms of inquiry-based learning (Sambell et. al, 2017). From this perspective, teaching and learning in higher education is a multifaceted process, based on subtlety and artistry, as opposed to more functional definitions of teaching and learning, because it is not just a simple matter of knowledge transfer. Hodge et al. (2007) emphasize how engaging students with research can go further than more traditional paradigms of learning. Their model frames the “student as scholar” (Hodge et al. 2007), rather than simply a learner. At the level of course curriculum design, Healey (2005) noted that the research-teaching relationship can be developed along a spectrum which ranges across several different dimensions: research-tutored, research-based, research-oriented and research-led.

Accordingly, the curriculum of lexicography had been radically redesigned so as to explicitly focus on the research-teaching paradigm. Examples of inquiry-based learning activities in curricular design, that benefit student learning through direct involvement in research, are included in the paper. Lecturers draw upon a wide range of techniques to help make their courses inquiry-driven, student-centred and active, as in the following small-scale examples:

1. To support students to practice data-gathering techniques, under the course of Learner Lexicography and Metalexicography, students were able to explain what is done in research into dictionary use and explain its significance in lexicography, choose an appropriate method for their scientific hypothesis and apply it, analyse scientific publications from the field, formulate problems in the field and solve them through discussion, develop an individual usage study.
2. During the practical course of Georgian-English Lexicography, research tasks provide a compact and hands-on overview of basic tools, methods and technologies in today’s digital lexicography (TlTerm, Lexonomy, etc.). The focus is on the use of the tools for the structured representation of lexicographic data as well as on technologies for data management, storage and presentation.

As a result, it is similarly important that university teachers endeavour to reflect upon and seek to enhance the research-teaching nexus because it is often seen as a vital contributory factor to students’ all-round development. They have important decisions to make, on personal and professional levels, so they need to become equipped with the skills of critical analysis, gathering evidence, making judgements and the capacity to reflect on what they are doing and why.