INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH ARTICLES AS USED AND MISUSED QUALITY INDICATORS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Author(s):

Britten EkstrandAndreas NordinSanela Nadarevic Elisabet Malmström

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

22. Research in Higher Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

22 SES 05 D, Research Quality Assessment in Higher Education

Paper Session

Time:

2009-09-29

08:30-10:00

Room:

HG, HS 48

Chair:

Contribution

The Bologna Process has been relatively successful at the system level. At the institutional and basic level it has not showed the expected progress. It has been proclaimed that among several important goals in the Bologna Process a qualifications’ framework, based on learning outcomes and the implementation of quality assurance, is to be given priority. The minister of higher education in Sweden recently emphasized the need for a quality system in higher education pointing out, in tune with the Bologna Process, that an important quality factor is internationalization. This development has only just begun. One endeavor to achieve better quality in higher education is to link higher education with research and strengthen the relationship. Academic education requires leading students to the national and international research front. In a Swedish context these legitimate demands and concepts seem to have turned into a simple quantifiable control of citations from abroad. Misleading is assumed to exist. Strengthening the relationship between higher education and research does not follow as a result of identifying research in the local context. Likewise it is not enough to request more funding or promote the research at the institution if it does not meet global demands, changes and challenges. In this context this article broaches the question of hindrance and help using international research articles as quality indicators? Studies have been made that indicate an answer to the question and lay a ground for a discussion in which the following issues and fields are tangled and intertwined: How about the use of international research articles in Higher Education? How about the accessibility of research articles? How about research communication through research articles published in general, between researchers and policy makers or between research and students specifically as is supposed to take place according to the first question? Finally, how about interdisciplinary or intersectional communication in the named trajectories?

Method

The empirical data has in the first place been collected benefiting by bibliometric methods, all of which are analyzed and interpreted in the light of modern theories of a mass university in the knowledge society as part of the sociology of knowledge. Theoretical and methodological foundations are otherwise to be found in discourse analysis and critical social science emphasizing a dialectic process between theory and method.

Expected Outcomes

The result indicates limitations when it comes to research accessibility. It gives a picture of research communication as a field to be expanded. Suggestions are made that could improve the use of international research articles in Higher Education as quality indicators and thus raise the standards.

References

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Author Information

Britten Ekstrand

Kristianstad University College

Educational department/Learning Resource Center

Kristianstad

186

Andreas Nordin

Växjö university

Växjö

186

Sanela Nadarevic

Kristianstad University College, Sweden

Elisabet Malmström

Kristianstad University College, Sweden

Department of Teacher Education