Strengthening Development Education Practice in the Higher Education Sector: Reimagining research

This chapter examines the case for development education research, explores the relationship between research and development education in the higher education sector and considers the implications for development education capacity and practice.  It suggests a number of ways in which research enhances development education capacity, but argues that research and the academic contribution need to be re-imagined to address problematic divides.  Boyers re-imagination of scholarships re-connects research to an ecology of practice comprising engagement, inter-disciplinary collaboration and teaching.  However, engagement is not necessarily synonymous with compliance.  The situation of public higher education is discussed and the chapter concludes with some reflections about global visions of research and the particular relevance of critical, defiant, humanistic and rights-based versions of development education for a sector facing into globalisation, crisis and the pressures of relentless reform.