Abstract:

The study is tackling the different literature review and prior studies encountering the linkage between teaching and research and the different strategies and approaches to imply such concept. Moreover, the study moves to more reality case through investigating the students’ perceptions towards introducing research activities in their teaching curriculum. Based on the prior research and the findings of students’ perceptions, the conclusion would employ the appropriate strategy to inhibit research in teaching process, and recommending a course plan for the undergraduate degrees in accounting and finance, business finance and business studies curriculum. However, the recommendations would be more directed to the accounting and finance degree as it includes the majority of the enrolled students, and it is considered to be a comprehensive degree for the accounting and finance disciplines.

The study used a self administrated questionnaire 5 point Likert scale questionnaire to collected from students enrolled in three undergraduate programs in Accounting and Finance, Business Finance and Business.at Durham University Business School (UK). The questionnaire is distribute and then collect the hand to hand as to ensure having acceptable response rate which affect the validity of the research results. As a result of employing this technique the response rate was 100%. data is collected randomly ,including students from the three different programs and for the three levels of study. There are approximately 650 students enrolled in the three programs. The sample includes 224 students representing 35% of the whole population. The questionnaire controlled for the different backgrounds of different students, through their demographic information.

The study findings show that students would be pleased to introduce the research activities and processes in their teaching curriculum. These findings are consistent with the Durham University's research-led teaching’ strategy. This strategy improves teaching effectiveness through introducing research contents for the students as audience (Healey, 2005; Griffiths, 2004). This strategy is consistent with the undergraduate students’ perceptions, as the nature of the program would not give the room for the students to be involved in research activities, due to their numbers and other facilities restrictions, and they are not that qualified to be involved in research activities at that stage, which is clear from the students’ preferences.

Therefore, steaming from the fact that research-led teaching is the main applicable strategy, and taking into consideration that the accounting and finance degree is required to fulfil some professional bodies (such as: ACCA and CIMA) requirements to provide some exemptions for the enrolled students, the ‘progressively develop students’ understanding’ approach introduced by Jenkins et al. (2003) and Healey and Jenkins (2006) will be relied on to structure the degree to imply the research- led strategy.

The recommended plan is to provide in the first and second years of the degree would provide introductory modules for two purposes. First, is to satisfy the professional body requirements to ensure that the new structure would not give up any of the current exemptions. Second, is to ensure that the students have been taught all the basic knowledge that may be useful to progress into the research phase.

Keywords:

Teaching, Research, Professionalism, Questionnaire, Curriculum, Undergraduate.