ReseaRch Quality assuRance foR the futuRe a ... - Lund University

Panel 5 – BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE
research culture, given appropriate additional staffing and an improvement
in the recruitment of doctoral students. We make some recommendations
below which are designed to strengthen the Department’s stated intentions.
2.2 Research infrastructure
As is evident in the Department’s report, staffing levels have declined
over the period 2003–2007 and the flow of doctoral students has been
problematic. There has been some success in securing external funding,
though funded symposia and other meetings, while providing the potential
for research collaboration, of course do not in themselves constitute
research.
2.3 Research quality
The self-evaluation report gives only scant information on publications.
Among the texts mentioned in the report over the period 2002–2007
the most advanced are those on research on multicultural education.
There has been further work on the discussion since the 1970s on
language and knowledge from a post-structuralist perspective, but the
relevance of these studies for the development of any significant theory
of education is difficult to identify. It is surprising that the list of ‘publications
which best represent renewal of research activities’ includes
an introductory text that, while comprehensive in its coverage, does not
constitute original research.
What we have not found in the report is evidence over the period under
review of research with relevance for any general theory of education
or even in promising relation to other educational research in Swedish.
Research in Norway and Denmark is not considered either, despite the
fact that contact with Nordic researchers is claimed. And we can find
nothing in terms of engagement with Anglo-American philosophy of
education since Dewey or with German Bildungstheorie, which seriously
diminishes any international voice the Department might have.
‘Learning Lund’, however, is an interdisciplinary research unit which is
engaged in investigations with interest and implications for the whole of
the University and beyond. Its publication record is good, it engages in
practice-oriented research, and its work encompasses a focus on multicultural
and multilingual education which fits with the future research plans
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