Compared to disciplinary considerations of the TRN, there is less focus in the literature regarding the year level considerations of the TRN. This may be the result of an implicit assumption that year level will mitigate the extent to which university students are sufficiently advanced in their learning to experience and benefit from the TRN.

Researchers who have conducted studies on students from different year levels have found that students at all year levels can benefit from curricula that make explicit connections between research and teaching (Neumann, 1994). However, the nature of these interactions tends to vary depending on the year level of the student. Zamorski (2002) found many lecturers were inclined to think there were far more opportunities for linking teaching and research by the third year of the undergraduate degree, while students in earlier years were better suited to being taught about the core knowledge and skills of their discipline.

In their New Zealand study of undergraduate students’ experiences of research, Robertson and Blackler (2006) found that undergraduate physics students typically say research as ‘something that others do’. One student observed: ‘It’s like it’s another language really’ (p.221). A third year physics student observed that research was ‘more interesting as you get higher up and you can understand what they are actually doing’ (p.221). By contrast, Geography students in the study ‘even in year 1, consistently recognised the importance of starting with a research question’ (p.222). For these students, the notion of research was closely linked to field work, even from the early undergraduate years.

As conceptions of the TRN expand, the range of possibilities for academics to implement TRN initiatives across year levels becomes wider also. Although certain common manifestations of the TRN such as a small research project may not be possible in first year, there are other means in which teaching can be infused with research for student benefit. For tips and strategies on this, see curriculum design strategies on this website.

Zamorski (2002) suggests that students may welcome the challenges of research linked teaching at an earlier stage of their degree. This desire to be involved in research from the first year was well illustrated in Robertson and Blackler’s (2006) study where a first year English student said:

‘I feel, even though I am a first semester student … that I am working alongside people … there is a collegial aspect … As though we are all discovering something and that they [lecturers] are just doing it at a different level’ (p.225)

Zamorksi found that some students believed both that their teachers expected them to undertake research without proper grounding, while others believed that they weren’t given enough opportunity to conduct research early on in their undergraduate degrees. While this may sound like conflicting responses to the same question, this may not necessarily be so. Zamorski elaborates on what students meant by not being confident in their ability to undertake research – that they believed they were not given sufficient training in research methods in earlier years and they believed they were left to ‘sink or swim’. This would indicate that the students in this study believed that with further training in research methods at younger undergraduate years, they would have been better placed to cope with the demands of their final year undergraduate research project.

Our interviews with Australian academic staff across a number of universities and disciplines have highlighted many creative and innovative examples of how teaching and research are being linked at different stages in the student learning lifecycle. View and download year level-specific examples and case studies demonstrating teaching-research linkages.

For information about curriculum design strategies, including a downloadable matrix, please click here.

To read about the TRN experience of postgraduate coursework students, please click here.

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