The case study method: exploring the link between teaching and research

ABSTRACT

Within the ongoing debate on the roles and tensions between teaching and research in higher education, this paper explores the extent to which the pedagogical case study method can contribute to bridge the gap between teaching and research. Based on an initial survey on 1,057 university academics, the results reveal the existence of five major groups of academics with varying degrees of link between the two topics and demonstrate the variations in the contributions that pedagogical case studies contribute to classroom teaching and to scholarly research for each subgroup. The implications for higher education at both the institutional level and the personal academic level are then explored.

KEYWORDS:

• Teaching–research balance
• academic management
• academic motivation
• case study method
• classroom teaching
• scholarly research
• publication productivity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.