Teaching–research relations, cross-disciplinary collegiality and student learning

University students’ experience of cross-disciplinary collegiality and interaction with research-active teachers are explored using the results from two separate, but related, studies. In the first study, variation in students’ understanding of collegiality and how it is experienced is investigated. The second (quantitative) study explores the relations between students’ perceptions of collegiality in their learning environment and their learning outcomes and satisfaction. Within the collegiate system of the University of Oxford, students describe collegiality as encompassing a sense of allegiance and as a set of interactions with important others. Interactions were common between students in one disciplinary area and those in other disciplines. They are also found between students in one subject and other students in the same discipline, in the same and a different year of study and, in terms of learning, most effectively between students and research-active teaching staff. Where engagements of these sorts are described as beneficial to learning, students self-report that they adopt deeper approaches to learning, with the strongest correlations being between approach to learning and feelings of benefit derived from being in contact with active researchers. This result, from a student perspective, is a significant contribution to the debate on teaching–research relations in higher education within and beyond Oxford University as it bypasses teaching and focuses on the more important relations between university research and student learning.