A Study of Faculty Members’ Attitude about the Relationship between their Research and Teaching Activities

The study of relationship between research and teaching activities of lecturers, especially faculty members, is an interesting and at the same time a controversial topic which has been researched over and over without coming to a final conclusion as a comprehensive result. The purpose of this research was to investigate faculty members’ attitude about the relationship between their research and teaching activities. The sample was 100 faculty members and lecturers of three colleges of Arts, Engineering and Basic Sciences in University of Mashhad who were selected via improbability quota sampling method. The participants answered two researcher-made questionnaires about their research and teaching activities. A descriptive research method was used for this study. Demographical characteristics of the faculty members were utilized as control variables. The result of multiple regression analysis showed that research status predicts up to 58.4% of teaching quality. Moreover, the demographical characteristics of the faculty members including gender, field of study, academic ranks, teaching experience, average hours dedicated to research and teaching, number of articles and research projects - that were considered as control variables- predicted 32.8% of variance in teaching quality.