On Research

Today my new boss at the university told me that I should focus my research topic on something specific that I could build a career on.  I took those words with an affirming smile, but deep down I shook my head.

I recently became a research assistant for this professor, and to this date I've mostly transcribed for her and helped a bit with the technical know how regarding online data sharing.  I took the position because I valued the experience of working in research and I didn't want to betray the recommendation from the professor that essentially handed me the job in the first place.

The whole situation is rather ironic, because I'm notorious in the faculty of education for speaking of research pejoratively, even to the professor that recommended me for the job.  Succinctly, I feel, and have felt for many years, that at this juncture society needs great teachers far more than it needs great researchers.  What value is any research if next to no one cares to know about it?  In a disengaged society that largely hates to learn, research is basically futile.

However, my contempt for professional research lay mostly in the motivations of certain researchers.  On the first day of my compulsory research methodology course, I argued that research should always be a means, and never an ends in itself.  Numerous authors, philosophers, and professional researchers have argued, and continue to argue, that research should serve the common welfare of humanity.  However, the welfare of humanity remains a low, to no, priority for many researchers.  For many professionals, research is nothing more than a means of livelihood.  At worst, it merely serves to boost egos.

After all, contemporary professional research is first and foremost a business.  Believe it or not, many researchers have a bottom line, and scrutiny of their ethics as researchers often doesn't extend much further than Ethics Review Boards whose primary responsibility is to the research participants, not the general public.

Of course, I'm not condemning all research, just that which doesn't immediately serve the public welfare.  Every area of research "could" be valuable, but some areas are definitely more pertinent to our well being than others, at this time.  I myself am confronted with the issue of whether or not my own research will be a means to serve the public immediately.  I'm interested in the value of dialogical methods of teaching.  It seems contradictory to spend so much time writing about dialogue when I could just do it, through Students Teaching Students, and the like.  Here's hoping if and when I do a PhD, I don't rue the day I published this post.