Abstract
Research productivity, as traditionally measured by publications in refereed journals, patent counts and clinical trials, is a matter of cardinal importance in public higher education institutions worldwide. Both the prestige of an academic institution as determined by international rankings and the reputation of the individual academic rest largely on these measurements. Given the importance of research performance, leaders in higher education have long been concerned with identifying policy and institutional factors that encourage and sustain research productivity. A substantial body of literature has been developed around the determinants of research productivity; however, the role played by researcher passion is conspicuously absent from the productivity discourse. Passion is regarded as a nebulous notion which is subsumed under the variable of researcher motivation and it is conspicuously absent from institutional strategies focused on increasing research productivity due to its apparent lack of objective measurability. Furthermore, public academic talk about the personal and emotional meanings of research, such as passion, is largely taboo, as this is seen to detract from the objective nature of serious scholarship. To address this gap this paper explores the notion of researcher passion and its alignment to research productivity in the narratives of proven researchers working in a variety of academic disciplines at a South African university through a qualitative inquiry.
Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow, Vallerand’s Dualistic Model of Passion (DMP) for life activities and Neumann’s theory of scholarship as the practice of passionate thought provided the theoretical framework for the inquiry. Csikszentmihalyi (1996) explains high performance in scholarly and creative work, sports and the performing arts by means of the core concept of flow. Flow indicates the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully engaged in a feeling of energised focus, complete involvement and enjoyment in the process of the activity. Flow leads a person to persevere in and return to an activity time and again because of the intense enjoyment the activity holds rather than because of the reward of an external goal. Informed by the work of Csikszentmihalyi and extending the research on motivation, Vallerand posits his Dualistic Model of Passion for life activities. Passion is defined as a powerful inclination towards a self-defining activity which is a valued part of one’s life and identity and in which one engages in sustained and intentional practice. Further, Vallerand (2012b) distinguishes between two types of passion: maladaptive or obsessive passion and harmonious passion. Harmonious passion arises from the autonomous internalisation of the valued activity into one’s identity and it produces sustained psychological well-being through the positive emotions aroused by regular and repeated activity engagement. Maladaptive passion produces a sense of pleasure from the activity which is controlling and which leads to an inflexible persistence towards the activity at the cost of well-being.
While Csikszentmihalyi’s and Vallerand’s disciplinary roots lie in positive psychology, Neumann’s theory of passionate thought is singular in its specific application to the university as workplace. Neumann extends Csikszentmihalyi’s flow by positing a theory of scholarship anchored in the process of “passionate thought” expressed in and through any scientific tradition. Neumann identifies six stages in the process of passionate thought: peak emotion; absorption; sensation; intensified awareness; discernment; and creation. The scholar-researcher experiences distinct and bounded peak experiences of emotion during the practice of his/her discipline, which contribute to an intense and personal absorption in his/her work. This concentrated absorption inspires palpable and vivid embodied sensations of joy, satisfaction and self-fulfilment which, in turn, lead to an intensified awareness of the subject studied. In this mode, the scholar-researcher is propelled towards moments of discernment and insight during which he/she discovers or synthesises new patterns, structures and meanings to solve the “puzzle” at the core of all research, irrespective of discipline. Based on the data uncovered during discernment, the scholar-researcher develops new knowledge and devises new ways of doing things. Passionate thought both sustains the scholar-researcher during inevitable times of frustrationand draws the scholar-researcher back repeatedly into the research process.
Informed by this theoretical framework, in this paper passion is loosely defined as a powerful and compelling inclination toward an activity which is characterised by vivid feelings of pleasure and excitement and which fosters recurrent engagement in the activity.
Against this background data was gathered from a purposeful sample of 14 researchers (six men and eight women) at a South African university. All the participants met the following inclusion criteria: they had been active in academe for more than 20 years and were categorised as “proven” researchers by the institution on the basis of a stipulated number of research outputs. This number had, in most cases, been exceeded by individual efforts. Furthermore, all the participants were married and were over 50 years of age. Six participants also held research ratings from the National Research Foundation.
Disciplinary fields represented were the humanities, social sciences, the arts, management and economic sciences and the natural sciences. Semi-structured in-depth interviews explored how participants had expressed passion in their scientific and creative work during their professional careers. An opening question requested participants to recollect their career experiences in general with a view to opening up a space to explore the role played by passion in researcher productivity. A broad and flexible interview schedule allowed for further exploration of pre-planned topics of interest, including personal development as a researcher; research and creative endeavours; research foci; career highlights and setbacks; and institutional research climate and incentives. All interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim for analysis. Ethical requirements were fulfilled by obtaining institutional clearance, informing participants of the research aim, voluntary participation and participant confidentiality through the use of pseudonyms and the removal of specific information that could lead to identification. Although the study did not aspire to produce a grounded theory, analytic guidelines for grounded theory analysis were adopted in the data analysis. Trustworthiness of data was sought by the application of Guba’s criteria: credibility, dependability; confirmability and transferability.
The findings present four main interpretative themes: the discovery of research passion; flow and the stages of passionate thought; passion and sustainable high research performance; and fostering a culture of passion for research. Firstly, participants confirmed that becoming a researcher is part of an incremental and lengthy process of individual personal development starting as far back as childhood, as well as the gradual socialisation into a community of scholars. However, all participants referred to an outstanding peak experience marked by strong positive emotion: a micro-moment of enlightenment in their career trajectories which marked the birth of a serious, intentional commitment to doing research. Secondly, flow as defined by Csikszentmihalyi and described by Neumann’s first, second and third stages of passionate thought (peak emotion, absorption and sensation) were discernible in participants’ accounts of doing research. During these experiences time and self-interest were suspended in the joy of the creative moment and participants recognised this as the spur to further research activity. Two participants, however, alsoidentified a darker side of flow: its potential to take over other legitimate activities and to dominate normal life. These instances illustrated how insidiously harmonious passion can slip into obsessive passion. Thirdly, passion as described by the participants drove and sustained their research productivity over the long term. Thus, passion kept the researcher on task until the fifth stage of passionate thought (creation) was reached, no matter how long or arduous the process and irrespective of daily frustration and occasional failure. Fourthly, participants recognised that passion for doing research cannot be separated from institutional policy, structures and resources that make research possible. In this regard, they identified several external enabling factors for doing research. Yet they remained convinced that research revolves principally around the researcher’s intrinsic pleasure and fascination in a puzzle-solving enterprise above reward-driven motivation. They agreed that to foster a culture of passion in the university is no easy task: it requires a shift in thinking about the drivers of high performance, a revision of organisational architecture and the commencement of a new conversation around research productivity.
The study was confined to a fairly homogeneous group of participants who had inhabited the same university environment and had been exposed to the same institutional research culture for a similar period. It was thus recognised that participants’ shared beliefs and experiences about research could be cohort and context specific. Notwithstanding this limitation, the findings connected with the interdisciplinary literature on passion and suggest how a culture of passion could be recognised and supported by institutions to enhance research productivity in higher education. University leaders should take seriously the role played by passion in research and devise ways in which they can promote a culture of passion as an emotional reality in the university environment. To do this, passion for research has to be introduced into the public discourse of academe. This calls for a disruption of the view that valid academic endeavour is a disembodied and dispassionate activity, stripped of creative imaginings, the appeal of the aesthetic and strong positive emotions.
Keywords: culture of passion; Dualistic Model of Passion (DMP); flow; higher education; passion; passionate thought; proven researchers; qualitative inquiry; research productivity
Lees die volledige artikel in Afrikaans – “Navorsing voed my siel”: Die verkenning van passie en produktiwiteit in die vertellings van erkende navorsers.
The post “Research is what keeps my spirit alive”: Exploring passion and productivity in the narratives of proven researchers appeared first on LitNet.