Creating research culture in Caribbean universities

International Journal of Educational Development 30 (2010) 337–344

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Creating research culture in Caribbean universities Theodore Lewis *, Lynette Simmons Studies in Learning, Cognition and Education, University of Trinidad and Tobago, Valsayn Campus, Curepe, Trinidad and Tobago

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Research culture Dependence Developing countries

Recent expansion of tertiary education in the Caribbean via the creation of two new universities invites reflection on what impedes the creation of research culture, and what enables it. We contend that research culture in the Caribbean comes up against the strictures of post-colonial dependence, university education in the region being largely a one-way traffic of ideas from metropolitan centers to island peripheries. To offset this, we call for change both in the external environments in which the universities are set, and their internal environments, within which the ethos of inquiry must become commonplace. Demand for research knowledge has to be cultivated throughout the Caribbean. Accordingly, we call for collaborative approaches between university communities and the various publics they serve, to find and solve problems that can lead to the improvement of well being. ß 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Background The small states of the Caribbean, like their counterparts in other regions of the world, are subject to the pressures of globalisation. Bacchus (2008) wrote here of economic challenges occasioned by the openness of economies, advocating educational reform in these states as the best antidote to external pressures— reform aimed at providing citizens of the region with flexibility enhancing knowledge and skills. In like vein Louisy (2001) has written of the vulnerability of the region to threats of cultural convergence, and of the risk of the marginalisation of the small Caribbean states. In particular she points to limited national and regional institutional capacity for knowledge creation—a capacity that she believes, if improved, could improve the leverage of governments of the region in international forums where prospects for the region are discussed. Thus she advocates that the University of the West Indies (UWI), which is supported by 14 governments in the region, should disseminate the results of research based on regional problems. She writes that the region ‘‘would benefit tremendously from the ready availability of a sound, well researched body of knowledge on the social, economic, political and cultural realities of the region’’ p. 430. Crossley (2001, 2008) has addressed the question of the need for building institutional capacity for research in small states generally, including the Caribbean, cautioning in the process that there be epistemological diversity—the valuing of both positivistic and qualitative modes.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 868 744 7004. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (T. Lewis), [email protected] (L. Simmons). 0738-0593/$ – see front matter ß 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2009.08.005

One globalisation trend has been the expansion of tertiary education, with developing countries accounting for about onefifth of the world’s enrolment (Schofer and Meyer, 2005). The new institutions that emerge with this expansion face a number of challenges. A World Bank report has codified some of these as (a) absence of vision; (b) lack of political and financial commitment; (c) conditions of initial disadvantage; and (d) the disruptions of globalisation (The Task Force on Higher Education and Society, 2000). According to this report, a critical ‘‘initial disadvantage’’ of these countries is that they start with a poor baseline where scientific inquiry is concerned, by not having the necessary intellectual culture needed to sustain it. This disadvantage could be especially acute where the intent is to create research universities. While they constitute a higher order of challenge there is support for the prospect that developing countries should embark upon creating research universities. A UNESCO Forum on Higher Education, Research & Knowledge (2006) yielded presentations that were in support of this. In his keynote, A.H. Zakri, Director of United Nations University-Institute of Advanced Studies, pointed out that while the prospects for success in creating research universities in developing countries were not high; many such countries have developed world-class research programmes. In support, he cited examples such as the Philippines (rice), Chile (astronomy), India (mathematics) and Cuba (health). Zakri contended that the problem of poverty cannot be successfully tackled absent the existence of thriving R&D cultures in universities in the developing world. He framed the needs in terms of research capacity (facilities and human resources), research utility (need for relevant research) and research productivity (ability to better serve society). Resonating with this, Altbach (2007) made the case for developing countries creating research universities as part of development efforts, suggesting

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that such institutions should focus on fields that are cost effective and focused on national priorities. Goals for such universities should be different than in the developed countries and realistic, he contends, and should include core elements inclusive of (a) creating and retaining an academic community that can communicate with scholars abroad and (b) bringing international trends to bear on local problems. Addressing a factor that lies at the heart of research culture in universities in the developing world, Olukoju (2002) lamented the decline of academic publishing in Nigeria, citing political and socioeconomic factors. Once vibrant journals were in decline or had disappeared. In like vein, Bako (2005) chronicles the rise and decline of research in Nigerian universities, which went from a halcyon period from the 1960s to the mid 1980s when research thrived, to the period after in which it has stood still. He attributes the rise to post-colonial inheritance of viable universities and a sizeable expatriate staff working alongside native Nigerian faculty, to government funding, to a university institutional framework that required a teaching–research–service ratio of 50–30–20%, and to institutional autonomy and academic freedom. The decline of research he attributes to lack of research skills; lack of equipment to conduct research; lack of funding; lack of mentoring, but most of all, to a status quo where research has become completely subservient to teaching. He writes: ‘‘The whole concept of research as an economic activity for generating knowledge for economic development has not yet dawned on the Nigerian ruling class, policy makers, university administrators and staff’’ (p. 9). It is interesting that in discussing research in its period of thriving, Bako never refers to particular areas of disciplinary or interdisciplinary focus. Rather, he dwells upon measurements of rates of return to investment in higher education, a metric that does not quite target research productivity. Still, he calls for a new paradigm in which research will be prominent and made less subservient to teaching. On the broader question of research capacity development in Africa, Sawyerr (2004) set the problem against a broader canvass, calling attention to the fact that goods and services that owe their value added to modern technology dominate global commerce. Thus, ‘‘Every society must have the capacity to generate, acquire, adapt, and apply modern knowledge if it is to take advantage of the opportunities and reduce the risks posed by the rise in the knowledge society’’ (p. 215). This is a challenge for developing countries as they face difficulty coping with unequal access to modern knowledge, and unequal capacity to produce knowledge. He contends that at minimum, these countries need to develop viable indigenous knowledge systems that synthesise knowledge from both home and abroad; that are traditional as well as modern, and that are made reachable to local communities (p. 216). Sawyerr laments the dearth of such systems in Africa, and its effect on ‘‘knowledge poverty’’ there. Speaking directly to the need for creating research capacity in Africa leading to ‘‘indigenous generation of world-class research results and new knowledge’’ aimed at improving the lives of people and communities, Sawyerr envisages an active component, comprised on human resources, and an environmental component comprised of ‘‘the social, institutional, and material factors that provide a setting for the research enterprise and condition its success or failure’’. The environmental component itself is comprised of general conditions which speak to public policy factors that may aid or hinder research, the society, and institutional conditions that focus on the institutional context. On this latter category of conditions he writes: ‘‘The key ingredients here are a minimum of research infrastructure, such as laboratories, equipment, libraries, and an effective system of information storage, retrieval, and utilisation; appropriate management systems; and policies that facilitate and support the research

enterprise including incentives that recognise and reward highcalibre research’’ (p. 222). He contends that the ‘‘extreme weakness’’ of graduate study programmes in Africa, is ‘‘the most serious of the institutional limitations on research capacity development’’ (p. 222). Though the setting of this article is the Caribbean, what Sawyerr has to say about the obstacles in the way of building research capacity in African universities is of great relevance still. In developing our arguments, we draw upon Sawyerr’s active/ environmental framework as illustrative of what we mean by research culture. On one hand this framework speaks of the human side of the research enterprise—the scholars and the creativity and value orientations they bring to their work, and on the other, the extent to which the external (e.g. state policy) and internal (reward systems, libraries) environments are conducive to sustained knowledge creation. As Nkrumah-Young et al. (2008) point out The University of the West Indies has been the flagship university in the Caribbean, emerging in 1962 from the University College of the West Indies. It has been the main centre of research. In 1995 The College of Arts, Science and Technology (CAST), a Jamaican institution, was granted university status. And in 2004 the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) came into being. The new additions to the tertiary education infrastructure constitute a positive development in that their presence amplifies the potential of the region to fashion and undertake programmes of research that address Caribbean problems. They make possible the vision articulated by Louisy (2001) where scholars of the region create a fund of regional knowledge that is informed by local insight. But this is easier said than done. The creation of research culture in the universities of the region is a tall order. We attempt in this article to reflect on the attendant challenges. Our arguments are structured as follows: (a) a post-colonial heritage of dependence, (b) absence of demand in the society for research knowledge, (c) education research as a point of departure, (d) research culture—challenges, and (e) towards research culture. 2. Post-colonial heritage of dependence Developing countries that are former colonies are beset with the issue of breaking away from metropolitan inheritances— inheritances that include political, administrative and education systems, ways of knowing, taste, and dependent economic systems. Quijano (2007) contends that ‘‘coloniality’’ remains the most powerful form of domination in today’s world. Even with the demise of politically based colonialism, there remains a lingering residue occasioned by ‘‘colonisation of the mind of the dominated’’ (p. 169). Thus: In the beginning colonialism was a product of a systematic repression, not only of specific beliefs, ideas, images, symbols or knowledge that were not useful to global domination, while at the same time the colonisers were expropriating from the colonised their knowledge, specifically in mining, agriculture, engineering, as well as their products and work. The repression fell, above all, over the modes of knowing, of producing knowledge, of producing perspectives, images and systems of images, symbols, modes of signification, over the resources, patterns, and instruments of formalised and objectivised expression, intellectual and visual. (p. 169). In this post-colonial era, universities have an important part to play in helping the shift towards more indigenous modes, but they themselves can become part of the problem, where their primary activity becomes knowledge transmission, with such knowledge and its epistemic frames inclusive of cultural assumptions all

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having being imported. Appiah (1991) contends that post-colonial scholars in Africa are dependent on the African university ‘‘an institution whose intellectual life is overly constituted as Western, and the Euro-American publisher and reader’’ (p. 348). Even when writers try to escape the west, their theoretical frames invariably are thus informed. Okolie (2003) asserts that African policies and programmes relating to development are shaped by EuroAmerican-centred knowledge and knowledge production systems that tend to be dismissive of local ways of knowing. This is in keeping with Quijano’s critique of colonialism and its effects, seen from the vantage point of Latin America, thus: The colonisers also imposed a mystical image of their patterns of producing knowledge and meaning. At first, they placed these patterns far out of reach of the dominated. Later, they taught them in a partial and selective way, in order to co-opt some of the dominated into their own power institutions. The European culture was made seductive: it gave access to power . . . Cultural Europeanisation was transformed to an aspiration. (p. 169). Kincheloe (2008) speaks here of ‘‘epistemological colonialism’’ wherein Western ways of seeing the world supersede indigenous knowledge systems, even though there is evidence that in the late twentieth century there began widespread appropriation of indigenous knowledges by western corporations, the commercial value of such knowledge being recognised. Dependency theory states that core countries and periphery countries are in a dialectical relationship that leaves the latter perennially undeveloped. The theory speaks of uneven economic development in a world system. After independence, colonial control of the economy is replaced by neo-colonial mechanisms such as direct foreign investment (e.g. Frank, 1969). The theory rests on three main ideas: (a) exploitation of the periphery countries by core countries; (b) structural distortion of the peripheral economy; and (c) suppression of autonomous policies in the periphery. A key contention of theorists is that the condition of dependency retards economic development in periphery countries. This was shown to be the case in a panel study conducted by Chase-Dunn (1975), and set in Latin America, in which he found that investment dependence and debt dependence, both had negative effect on overall economic development in countries in the sample. Noted Caribbean scholars such as Beckford (1971), Best (1977), Rodney (1982), and Williams (1974, 1981) made critical contributions to post-colonial thought especially from the standpoint of critical examination of the colonial legacy, not just in the region, but beyond. Beckford drew upon dependency theory and the notion of plantation economy to explain poverty in Jamaica. Rodney examined colonial ravaging of Africa. As Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago and inheritor of the country at independence, Williams had a unique vantage point on the aftermath of colonial rule. Indeed 1962, the year of the country’s independence, also marked the establishment of the Trinidad branch of the University of the West Indies. Williams’ doctoral thesis, Capitalism and Slavery, was a retelling of the received history of British abolition of the African Slave trade Williams (1944/1994). He established linkage between slavery and the rise of British Capitalism. An anti-colonialist stance pervaded his scholarship, politics and governance. A glimpse of this can be seen in his commentary in 1976 on the absence of funding for health research in the region. He observed that ‘‘the budgets involved are budgets of underdevelopment, of countries accustomed to leave to the metropolitan power the improvement of life expectancy’’ (Williams, 1981, p. 265). In the early formation of the University of the West Indies, Caribbean professors in the social sciences were acutely concerned

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about this question of colonial inheritance and dependency, making it a central theme of their teaching and scholarship. Lloyd Best, perhaps the scholar who did the most to help the university community understand the nature of this challenge, spent a lifetime on this singular enterprise. In his seminal piece ‘‘Independent Thought and Caribbean Freedom’’ he addressed the question thus: For one thing, the institutions of higher learning at home become tied up in most absurd ways with sponsoring institutions abroad in much the same way as firms in the economy are tied with metropolitan corporations–and with similar results. For another thing, the intellectual work at home often lacks relevant (or even just local empirical) content’’ (Best, 1977, p. 20). Best argued that what was needed among the intellectual classes in the Caribbean was the cultivation of independent thought, and that in this regard there were three requirements: (a) theory, (b) inquiry and (c) dissemination. Though Best offered this triad as his motif for moving Caribbean research culture along, he offered a caution in the same paper against veneration of the scientific method. His contention was that: Western thought and attitudes too carry a fund of lore and set of sacred myths which impede the process of enquiry and delay the progress of the international community. This is true not only in the social and moral sciences but also in the fields of technology and natural science where the character of the subject matter sometimes makes it more rewarding to be curious and less uncomfortable to be skeptical. (p. 19). Thus in the process of proposing a new focus on indigenous thought Best was at the same time arguing basically for the dismantling of western epistemic modes and structures. This disposition, drastic as it may seem, has to be seen in light of perceived requirements for true independence. We see a similar disposition in the call by Smith (1999) for decolonised methodologies. In this article we agree with Best’s call for independent thought and inquiry among Caribbean scholars, but we do not go so far as to reject positivism. The issue for us does not lie in methodologies. Rather, it is the desperate requirement that Caribbean peoples abandon the historical habit of waiting for others outside of the region to find and solve regional problems, thereby defaulting our opportunities to develop creative competence. For example, much of the research on the acoustical and metallurgical aspects of the steel drum, the iconic musical instrument of Trinidad and Tobago, is done at foreign universities. And the region has made little advance in chronicling the medicinal properties of indigenous plants, in spite of a fund of folk tradition on this count. Thus, the desire for new epistemic frames that are more accommodative of Caribbean modes of thought, has to be superseded by a new willingness to focus more on finding and solving the problems of the region, by whatever methodology our researchers find necessary to do so. A major benefit of the consolidation of research culture in Caribbean universities is that it can lead to the development of a cadre of regional experts. It is the case in the Caribbean that governments and industry continue to look to the foreign expert for solution to a host of local problems. This is a tradition that originates in colonial rule. The habit has been compounded by the relationship of many Caribbean countries with multilateral funding agencies (such as the World Bank) that stipulate foreign experts to be part of aid packages. The effects of such stipulations have been chronicled by Powell (2001) in his recounting of

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implementation experiences attending World Bank funded Technical and Vocational projects in Jamaica, and in Gambia. He notes that the projects most likely to fail were those in which there was not local involvement in implementation, and that relied on materials and personnel from the developed world. While it is the case that multilateral agencies impose dependency-producing strictures on receiving countries, it is also true that the Governments of these countries tend also to rely on the imprimatur of the foreign expert or agency to bring credibility to and to cultivate political support for local initiatives. This kind of reflexivity, where more credence is given to the foreign expert than the local, arguably constitutes a psychological hurdle for indigenous researchers in the region. Caribbean peoples have traditionally utilised the aloe plant directly as a cosmetic moisturiser. The aloe has now become the basis of a commercialised product available in developed countries, with patent rights probably residing outside of the Caribbean. The aloe story is a metaphor for the myriad bits of folk knowledge that go unexamined in the region perhaps because of their everyday-ness, but mostly because the understanding of the bases of such knowledge, or their viability, has not been the basis of focused policy initiatives. It must be acknowledged that in the English-Speaking Caribbean, access to tertiary education is still scarce, and hence the provision of places and the turning out of undergraduates have understandably superseded any other purpose of university education. The focus then is primarily on teaching. This focus on teaching has to be seen as a quite different issue than it might be in universities in metropolitan countries, where it has a lower relative rank to research. Teaching in the Caribbean university remains the primary aspect of the work of faculty, despite any contrary claims about the criticality of research. Expansion of tertiary education remains a challenge in all countries of the region. So long as this remains the case, governments are likely to accord a higher priority to access than to research, with implications for research culture creation. 3. Absence of demand in the society for research knowledge A consequence of Caribbean society being historically dependent on the importation of ideas, and of expertise, is that there is weak demand in the region for research-based knowledge, and consequently little tradition of innovation. In metropolitan countries there are agencies whose sole purpose is to provide funding for innovative ideas, in science and technology, and in other disciplinary spheres. In the Caribbean any movement here is quite nascent still. This will improve only when governments and the private sector come to view locally generated research as vital to policy making. But as it currently stands there are no agencies as in major metropolitan countries that have been established solely to provide funding on a consistent basis for research and innovation. Perhaps this requires the forging of relationships—collaboration between the universities on one hand and governments and private industry on the other. The public and private sectors in the Caribbean need to be convinced that it is in their interests to rely on research in their deliberations. The universities probably have to take the initiative here, helping these entities, as well as the public at large, to see the value of research, and joining with them as partners in this. This kind of collaboration has been shown to enhance the research/policy connection in developing countries (see Young, 2005; O’Neil, 2005). It is the case that less developed countries are at a disadvantage historically where research and development activities are concerned. As Todaro and Smith (2009) point out, these countries often do not have the financial, scientific nor technological knowhow needed to undertake the research that would be in their best

long term interests. And further, their dependence on foreign technologies hinders the nurturance of local R&D. The Asian Development Bank has offered a useful way to think about this by classifying countries according to stages of economic development—early, investment, and innovation or final. The bank contends that demand for R&D is higher at the final or innovation stage than at earlier stages (Asian Development Bank, 2008). But perhaps this is a default way of thinking. It may be that developing countries at earliest stages of their development need to accord research a more integral role in their strivings. 4. Education research as a point of departure In spite of the nagging question of dependence and hindrances to the development of local capability, countries in the Caribbean must continue to strive to overcome historical deficits, with universities leading this charge. In this section of the article we examine the transformative prospects of research in the region by focusing particularly on educational research. To transform Caribbean education and schooling requires an approach to research that is framed against the backdrop of the larger historical, political and cultural context of the region, the aim being to demystify and to decolonise. Research must lead to concrete answers about how student learning can be improved and how schools can be made better. In a case study drawing from experiences in the small state of St. Lucia Holmes and Crossley (2004) contend that in the discussion about knowledge for development, and research capacity, it is worth asking whose knowledge and values are shaping educational futures. They contend that strengthened local educational research capability could help small states decolonise education systems, and reduce intellectual dependence on external agencies. St Lucian educational researchers are asking questions pertinent to local needs, and the result of collaboration. This need for collaboration with and among locals is seen in an account by Fentey (2001) where the University of the West Indies collaborated with the Canadian International development Agency CIDA) in a project aimed at preparing head teachers. The approach was respectful of the insight of locals. Crossley (2001) describes the case of Belize, where a primary education project was the site of collaborative research, and where qualitative research projects were undertaken with local priorities in mind. Caribbean scholars, sometimes in collaboration with colleagues from outside of the region, have in recent decades conducted and published important work based on questions that are relevant to education in the region (e.g. Fournillier, 2009a,b; George and Glasgow, 1988; George and Lubben, 2002; George et al., 2002; Griffith, 1995; Jennings, 1993; Jules and Kutnick, 1997; Kutnick, 2000; Kutnick and Jules, 1988; Layne et al., 2008; London, 2002, 2003). The themes that can be seen in this body of work include sustainability, barriers to science learning, academic achievement, non-formal learning, and student teaching. While some of this work originates from regional scholars attached to foreign universities, the predominant thrust has been from island campuses of the University of the West Indies. The power of having a critical mass of regional scholars and their collaborators devoting their attention to Caribbean issues and problems can be seen in the document Reconceptualising the Agenda for Education in the Caribbean (Quamina-Aiyejina, 2007), conference proceedings from a UWI biennial cross-campus conference. The conference that yielded this document was a remarkable gathering of an intergenerational group of scholars whose work was interconnected, and thematic, and which highlighted country cases that revealed both the similarity of issues across the islands, as well as important differences. Ongoing educational research in the region in many ways aligns with UNESCO’s notion of ‘Education for All’ in that education is

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viewed generally in the region as a democratic right, with the aim of schooling being to create critically conscious, empowered citizens who can help reform the region attain the goal of a more indigenous post-colonial order. In general, achieving this goal means in part that teacher education programmes would help prepare teachers to challenge the historically based inequities that are deeply embedded in systems of schooling still, as a means of promoting social justice, so that children’s life chances will be positively altered (Cochran-Smith, 2001). In the Caribbean, equality of opportunity in education remains a challenge. Errol Miller (2002) writes that despite gains made in the region in the period leading up to and after independence, there still remains an unfinished agenda where access is concerned, as ethnicity, race and class still constitute barriers to many. Miller (2000) points also to the asymmetrical distribution of educational provision from kindergarten to university across the region. Reporting on the situation in Jamaica, Hickling-Hudson (2004) reported that ‘‘. . . the ghost of colonialism remains in the deep-seated inequities that are difficult to dislodge from the education system’’ (p. 290). Among such inequities is the scarcity of places in prestigious public secondary schools, and the higher probability of the children of the middle and upper classes passing the exams that are the passport to such schools. Research that is premised on the tenets of ‘Education for All’ comes up against many long standing problems, especially the failure of these post-colonial Caribbean states to change in accordance with new realities. Beyond the question of inequities in educational access is the equally compelling question of continued absence of students’ cultures and experiences in the curriculum. The importance of local culture in curricular reckoning and in teaching is highlighted in the work of June George (e.g. George and Glasgow, 1988; George and Lubben, 2002) in which local context, including notions of ‘‘street science’’ are drawn upon in an attempt to understand preconceptions that children bring to school that may challenge their abilities to understand conventional science. In the Caribbean the sea itself is a surprising absence as a curricular commonplace, even as the coral reefs degrade, and fisheries are ravaged by the effects of international trawling. Questions relating to sustainability in the region, as fragile ecosystems come under stress could inform research agendas. The result of continuing absence of local content in the curriculum is that students graduate from all of the stages of schooling, including university, without fundamental grasp of a store of knowledge that is peculiarly Caribbean in content. And this even as the region must deal now with the growing presence of international franchises that replace indigenous fare in many spheres of existence, including construction practices and local cuisine. This relentless receding of things local in all spheres surely is in part a reflection of a failure of the education systems of the region to focus and inspire locally rooted creativity. It also reflects a failure of research. We cannot teach what we do not know. Caribbean folk wisdom that used to be taken lightly locally, now manifest in lucrative consumer products in North America, the use of the aloe plant as the basis of a cosmetic being but a case in point. Rizvi has argued here that ‘What is imagined defines what we regard as normal’ (Rizvi, 2000, pp. 222–223). Popkewitz has explained that the function of colonial imagination was to ‘form individuals into the seam of a collective narrative’ believing and depending on the structures of knowledge transmitted to them (Popkewitz, 2000, p. 168). The issues of colonialism are still alive and continue to impact upon the education system through globalisation, which engenders hegemonic or unequal economic and social power relations. The emerging challenges include educational policies and practices that need to be appropriately contextualised in local human conditions and social realities. Education and schooling must be

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transformed to include diverse ways of knowing that inform, challenge and affirm self, culture and community. This allows not just only for positivistic or interpretive approaches, but also for emancipatory dispositions that help educators to understand the political nature of teacher education and schooling (e.g. Freire, 1970). We see some of this in the work of London (2002, 2003) as he points to the connection between curriculum and instruction in the Caribbean under colonial rule. The emancipatory prospects for inquiry in education of which we speak here is consistent with the ideas of Habermas (1989) who sees curriculum as being informed by the twin intentions to expose the operation of power and to bring about social justice, thus engendering the realisation of individual and social freedoms. One challenge for educational researchers in the region is the disconnect between the language of the official curriculum, which is Standard English, and the default language of children across the region, which is a version of Creole. London (2003) points out how critical it was under colonial rule for English to be the primary language of instruction. This has had lingering effects. Many children who are deemed to be academic failures probably are so deemed not because they lack fundamental understandings, but because the language in which they think is different from that in which they are instructed. The critical point that Bernstein (1971) makes here is that often children are looked at as deficit systems, as if they were culturally and linguistically deprived. Therefore schools see their work as compensating for their deficiencies, rather than finding ways to help students negotiate the linguistic divide they must confront. Students’ language and experiences must be considered as their cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1973) in which teacher education must engage as pedagogic resources for teaching and learning. Local knowledge must also promote selfdevelopment and schools must be the place for a reinvention of self (Hooks, 1994). This pedagogy constructs and celebrates diversity and difference, respecting and honouring everyone’s difference. Difference here speaks about ‘identities that connect to how we come to know ourselves, understand the world and act within it (Dei, 2004, p. 245), There are implications in all this for the larger question of creating research culture in Caribbean universities. In the case of educational research, we have pointed to historical problems tied to a legacy of colonialism. The teachers who are to be prepared in the new Colleges of Education must emerge seeing themselves as researchers—as transformative intellectuals (Giroux, 1988). They can become so if the disposition that informs the way they are taught in university classrooms is that of critical inquiry. The teacher educators must see their own teaching as research, as opportunities for modeling inquiry-based pedagogy. 5. Research culture—challenges While the focus here is upon the Caribbean, which has its own peculiar cultural circumstances that must be addressed if research culture is to be realised, and while research culture in developing countries may face different kinds of challenges than in developed countries (Young, 2005), it is the case that some of the attendant issues are universals. An important challenge is the question of globalisation and increasing pressures on universities to conform to dictates of the state, such that research is as much political as scientific. St. Clair and Belzer (2007) point to this concern in their review of changing research culture in the UK and US where there has in recent times been strong state suggestion as to what constitutes research. In the UK pressures to meet research quality standards has led to tensions between researchers and teachers; between pure and applied researchers; and between theory and practice. In the US a legacy of the Bush administration has been the reification of positivism, with only studies with rigorous statis-

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tically-based methodologies counting as good research. Research culture in the UK and US has been responsive to market dictates. We expect this to be a factor in the Caribbean as well. Bland and Ruffin (1992) contended that research culture is affected by personal as well as organisational characteristics. They note that even the most productive scientists experience decreases in output when they transfer to organisations with environments less conducive to research. Research, they argue, is both social and political, and requires exchange and interaction. They identified 12 organisational factors that affected research productivity, namely: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Clear goals that serve a coordinating function Research emphasis Culture (distinctiveness; shared values) Group climate (having research oriented colleagues) Assertive participative governance (belief in participatory leadership) Decentralised organisation Communication Resources Size, age, and diversity Rewards Recruitment and selection Leadership (Bland and Ruffin, p. 387).

consistent with the tenor of accountability and funding systems, and of management strategies that treat teaching and research separately. 5.2. Role of collaboration Learning is fundamentally a social act that can best take place under conditions where there is community sharing and support (e.g. Lave and Wenger, 1989). This fundamental notion can underpin the architecture of research culture. Individuals do not have necessarily to go it alone. Research culture can be fostered if it is a shared value, and if those within that culture are prepared to collaborate when necessary in the solution of problems of common interest. Collaboration could take place on many levels. For example, there can be inter-university collaboration where faculty at multiple institutions combine their talents Or, there can be collaboration between universities as external organisations such as industry or government agencies. Within universities there can be collaboration by faculty across departments, or within departments. One form of collaboration could be mentoring. Another form could be the formation of communities of practice where groups of scholars come together to share ideas and to help each other along. 6. Towards research culture

Of these they concluded that leadership was the most critical. The focus that Bland and Ruffin place upon organisational factors is in line with Sawyerr’s attention to environmental factors as he described challenges to the consolidation of research culture in African universities. Reporting on a successful case of changing research culture, set at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, the authors reported their first hand experience as leaders seeking to deepen research culture among faculty in their School of Management Studies (Pratt et al., 1999). The challenge was how to raise the research productivity of faculty. These authors note that it is not sufficient to change just the attitudes of people to research. There is need also for organisational change. Drawing on Schein (2004) their disposition was that the actual values of an organisation may not relate to the espoused values. This was the thrust of their focus, which led to a major change in research productivity (measured by per capita publications), as well as greater external focus. 5.1. Research versus teaching An almost universal tension attending the development of research culture in universities is the relationship between teaching and research. Teaching loads often constitute the reason why some faculty members do not publish. If research culture is the desired end state, then universities have to determine the relative relationship they desire between teaching and research in faculty effort. One option here is a differentiated staffing approach, with some faculty assuming an essentially clinical posture, while others assume an essentially research posture. Even so, clinical faculty really should come to see the inquiry possibilities of their practice. Research and teaching need not be mutually exclusive activities. For example, Hattie and Marsh (1996) have observed that research performance predicts good teaching, and that that research and teaching share common qualities (such as high commitment, and creativity). Coate et al., 2001 note that in higher education in the U.K. research has a higher value than teaching brought about by the oversight of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) which evaluates the research productivity of departments and individuals. The RAE has given research high status, leading to pressures to compartmentalise teaching and research. They note that this push to compartmentalise is

Creating and consolidating research culture in Caribbean universities is a challenge that must be addressed not just within their walls, but outside in the wider society. This is one of the critical lessons to be gleaned from African experience reflected upon earlier in this article, especially in the contribution of Sawyerr (2004). Research culture requires stable political climates and democratic tradition with high tolerance for free speech. The Caribbean generally has had a positive history of this. The campuses of the University of the West Indies have been at the centre of political discourse traditionally, the professors often being leaders in popular conversation for social reforms. This climate of freedom that has been supportive of thought is an important platform for the construction of a broader based approach to inquiry that must extend more intensively now into empiricism. The external climate must also be one that is receptive of the idea that researchers can help in the solution of practical community problems. Within the universities research culture requires in the first instance, a mission for which both the espoused and reflexive values are aligned. This is a lesson that the Waikato case suggests (Pratt et al., 1999). Research must be front and centre, and this reflected in workloads that are balanced to allow time for inquiry, and reward structures that are premised on faculty productivity. At the heart of cultures of research on the campuses of Caribbean universities must be conglomerations of talented faculty, who view inquiry and publications as the very essence of their work. In the research universities of North America, research culture is embedded in the tenure process that makes scholarly productivity the basis for sustained employment. Tenure has to be integral to the consolidation of research culture in universities in the region. Research culture cannot thrive in places where there are not penalties for lack of productivity. Research culture in the Caribbean can benefit from deliberate, systematic attempts to find and prioritise questions that should become the basis of inquiry. Given that resources to be devoted to research would be scarce, projects that are funded should meet some needs threshold. The questions that are of worth could be arrived at by collaborative processes. This is not to suggest that good problems cannot be found by individual faculty. Indeed, research culture should by nature be inclusive, and supportive of

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those who have individual passions that they wish to pursue by solo effort. To speak of research culture is to speak of universities that offer doctoral preparation such that groupings of faculty and students come together in community to conduct inquiry jointly. There must be an ethos of scholarly excitement on the campuses. Developing countries cannot make neat distinctions between research and teaching universities as in developed countries because of scarce resources, and because they would lack the trained talent pool to sustain both types of institutions. Every university in the Caribbean therefore should see research as part of its mission and obligation to the region. The new universities such as University of Trinidad and Tobago, and University of Technology, must plant seeds of research culture that in time will germinate. Since these universities will not have the physical resource capability of institutions in metropolitan countries, they will have to opt for models of research culture that view existing societal institutions such as schools, industry, agricultural fields, and hospitals as natural laboratories within which part of their work could be carried out. The world is flat now, made so in part by computers, the World Wide Web, and the Internet. There are stories of great scholars of the past, having to wait for months to get access to papers that were critical to their work. Today, a faculty member at a university in the Caribbean has instant electronic connection with leading scholars in his/her field, anywhere in the world. The crossfertilisation that computer technology now makes possible, has drastically transformed the conception of a university, and what it takes to start one that has a research focus. Universities now have become less reliant on walls and physical structures. They indeed have become for the most part virtual spaces, as the increasing number of online institutions suggests. New Caribbean universities that are now venturing into research are starting at a place that is infinitely more advanced than those that did so at the middle of the last century. Students at the new universities have through their lap-tops, access to the same common pool of knowledge as their peers world-wide. In this new world, universities in the developing world can focus more on talent, than on physical space, and they can venture into research much sooner than would have been the case in the past. The call for the creation of research culture in Caribbean universities is a call for a new kind of independence, where the region draws on itself for regional knowledge. The universities can arrive at research culture by understanding that their role is to help re-shape the history of the region. They can do so by deliberate resolve to place inquiry at the core of the work-life of faculty, by adopting tenure as a basic value, by a collaborative ethic, by narrowing distinctions between research and teaching, and by being in the vanguard of innovation. Acknowledgement We thank our colleague Dr. June George, Department Head, School of Education, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago for reading an earlier version of this work and providing critical suggestions that we have incorporated here. References Altbach, P.G., 2007. Peripheries and centres: research universities in developing countries. Higher Education Management and Policy 19 (2), 111–134. Appiah, K.A., 1991. Is the post- in post-modernism the post- in post-colonial? Critical Inquiry 17 (2), 336–357. Asian Development Bank, 2008. Education and Skills: Strategies for Accelerated Development in Asia and the Pacific. . Bacchus, M.K., 2008. The education challenges facing small nation states in the increasingly competitive global economy of the twenty-first century. Comparative Education 44 (2), 127–145.

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