Student Research Work: Goals, Content, and Forms of Organization

L. A. GORBUNOVA

(Presented by the scientific seminar of the Department of Scientific Communism)

The practical costs of the currently prevailing empirical level of organization and management of student research in higher technical education make the need for a theoretical and scientific-methodological solution to the problem of students’ research work still more acute. This applies first of all to clarifying such key questions as the definition of the goals, content, and forms of organization of SRWS.

Familiarity with the way research work is organized in certain engineering institutions of higher education, a study of recent publications on the problems of SRWS, and a sounding of public opinion at the level of activists and organizers of student scientific research—carried out by the author in 1967 among the participants of the First Inter-Institutional Scientific-Methodological Conference on the generalization of the experience of higher educational institutions in organizing students’ research work—testify to the absence of clear, theoretically substantiated ideas on these questions and thereby confirm the correctness of the conclusion drawn above.

In defining the goals of students’ research work, one should proceed first of all from recognition of the derivative character of student scientific research in relation to the scientific activity of the higher educational institution¹. The derivative character of student research is so—

is clearly confirmed by practice, is so widely recognized in higher education that it no longer requires special scientific substantiation.

The broad recognition of the dependent character of students’ scientific research in relation to the research being conducted in the scientific units of the higher educational institution does not mean, however, that this thesis has been understood and put into practice in all its fullness and concreteness. This is evidenced, in particular, by the widespread tendency to narrow it: the scientific activity of a higher educational institution is regarded only as the material-technical and scientific basis for students’ scientific research. In such an approach, the richness of the dependencies of “student science” on all of “higher-education science” is replaced by the obvious proposition today that SSRW is a component part of the research work of a higher educational institution and therefore can develop only on the basis of the latter. Such an understanding of the proposition about “higher-education science” as the objective basis of student research is, in itself, absolutely correct, but it records only one aspect of the dependence. It is already being taken into account by practice and therefore cannot serve as a principle for the further improvement of the organization of SSRW.

The task of transforming the thesis about the derivative character of student research in relation to the scientific activity of the higher educational institution into a principle for improving SSRW makes it necessary to give it further concreteness. This can proceed on two planes: in establishing the dependence of “student science” on the specific goals of “higher-education science,” first, and on the degree of interconnection between the scientific and instructional activity of the higher educational institution, second. In determining the goals of “higher-education” science, including “student” science, one must proceed from consideration of their development. A momentary snapshot of the present state of scientific research, without a retrospective view of the question, will leave in the shade many important tendencies and aspects. An analysis of scientific work that is free of the historical approach is capable of recording its multipurpose designation, but cannot determine the significance of each goal, their correlation, or their weight in the formulation of engineering education.

Attempts to determine the goals of SSRW on the basis of its dependence on the target purpose of “higher-education science,” taken in historical perspective, give us the following schematic picture, the principal elements of which have been passed through, or are being passed through, by all the leading technical higher educational institutions.

In the first years of Soviet power, when higher educational institutions were the country’s only scientific institutions and the character of material production did not yet require a research engineer, the principal function of “higher-education science” was the development of science and technology. The development of the individual, however, was limited to the narrow task of preparing scientific successors. This was the main task of SSRW.²

The emergence of the system of academic and branch institutes at one time reduced the extent to which higher educational institutions participated in the development of science and technology, which led to a reduction of this aspect in the target purpose of “higher-education” science and of “student” science.

The tasks of transforming science into a direct productive—

² “The possibility of applying the laboratory or ‘research’ method at all broadly in higher educational institutions is subject to some doubt. It may be assumed that here it will not acquire a predominant position. Pedagogical practice seems to compel the conclusion that the field of its application may be... a school passed through by the graduate student preparing for scientific-research work in the proper sense of the word.” SEC in higher educational institutions. Materials of the Main Vocational Education Administration, pp. 10–11, Ukrainian SSR, State Publishing House of Ukraine, 1925.

...force, in particular the need to develop the applied significance of fundamental discoveries, once again brought (in the early 1950s) the large engineering higher educational institutions into the ranks of leading scientific and technical institutions. Before “higher-education-institution” science there opened up horizons for its participation in the development of the scientific and technical conditions of society. Student scientific work at that time began to be regarded as a reserve of “higher-education-institution” science. The national-economic effect of students’ scientific research moved to the forefront in the goal-setting of NIRS.

In turn, the unfolding of the scientific and technological revolution, and the ever greater involvement of material production in its system, are placing new demands on engineering education. Under these conditions there is taking shape the special character of “higher-education-institution” science, consisting in the organic combination of the development of science, technology, and production with the training of engineering personnel.

Accordingly, in the goal-setting of students’ scientific work, alongside the development of its scientific and national-economic effect, the role of NIRS as a form of training engineers (its educational effect) immeasurably increases.³ The thesis of transforming NIRS into a form of training engineers has become widespread. It underlies the “Regulations on Students’ Scientific-Research Work...”⁴ It is decisive in determining the content of the various aspects of students’ scientific work.

On the enormous scale of development of genuinely mass student research, the task of educating the scientific next generation is, as it were, lost and pushed into the background. It is as though a shift of emphasis is taking place in the goal-setting of NIRS. This process is understood in this way in a number of higher educational institutions, which is manifested in the neglect of once traditional forms of scientific work that develop outside the educational process.

But a change in the relationship between the task of training scientific personnel and the task of improving the quality of the graduating engineers can also be understood as the unfolding of the principal function of higher-education-institution science—the development of personality. Both the one task and the other will come to appear as different stages in the realization of this function, and the emergence of a new goal-setting for NIRS as an expansion, an extension of this function to the entire category of specialists.

Besides greater logical rigor and coherence, such an understanding also brings practical advantages: on its basis one can avoid unnecessary vacillation in the goal-setting of NIRS, in practice, from absolutizing certain forms of NIRS to ignoring them. It creates, so to speak, greater stability in the practice of organizing student research, which, in our view, constitutes a very serious task. According—

³ The Moscow City Council for Student Scientific Work, called upon to become the scientific-methodological center of “student” science for 56 higher educational institutions of the capital, formulates the new goal of NIRS as follows: “Students’ scientific work is being transformed from the old tradition of training scientific workers into a qualitatively new tradition of training specialists with higher education as a whole. From a desirable, additional element in the education of some students, it is turning into an element that is necessary and obligatory for all students.” Organization of Students’ Scientific-Research Work. Issue 1. Methodological materials based on the results of the Moscow city training of the NIRS active group, p. 2, Moscow, 1968.

⁴ “The goal of students’ scientific-research work is the in-depth study of educational material, the broadening of students’ scientific preparation, and mastery of the techniques and methods of independent scientific research.” Regulations on Students’ Scientific-Research Work in Higher Educational Institutions, p. 1, Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. Leningrad, 1954.

solution of the task of personality development (it is formulated today as improving the quality of specialist training), and of the scientific and national-economic effect of SRWS can be understood only against the background of the growing unity of the scientific, educational, and educational-upbringing activity of the staff of a higher educational institution. The correlation of these goals of students’ scientific-research work is determined, in other words, by the sphere of activity of the higher educational institution with which one or another form of SRWS is more closely connected.

If the specificity of higher-school science is not clearly expressed in the higher educational institution (at the department), if science does not yet revolutionize the content and organization of engineering education, then in SRWS, as a part of it, the features of the scientific-technical reserve of “higher-school” science appear more vividly. Of course, within the framework of work aimed at realizing a national-economic effect, the quality of future specialists is also improved. But only that of those who conduct research work, and only incidentally, spontaneously, with all the consequences that follow from this.

The increasing unity of science and instruction seems to restore harmony in the relation of these goals of SRWS. Educational-research work, specially intended to improve the quality of training in a higher educational institution, is often also accompanied by a major contribution to the development of technology and production (real design work, for example). And scientific work outside the educational process, aimed at realizing the national-economic significance of SRWS, is organically incorporated into the general system of forming an engineer in a higher educational institution (student design bureaus, for example, are also subordinated to the goals of the educational process).

Determining the goals of the work makes it possible to analyze its content. Naturally, the discussion cannot concern the entire richness of the content of “student” science, but only its most significant aspects.

Speaking of the content of students’ scientific-research work, one should first of all determine to what extent the concept “scientific” is applicable to it.

The concepts “students’ scientific work,” “student research,” “students’ scientific creativity,” and “research skills” do not have an unambiguous definition in the practice of organizing this work. Traditional ideas about them, under the pressure of objective changes, have proved insufficient, while the new ones have not been systematized and have not been theoretically substantiated.

Clarifying their content is possible only on the basis of the general concepts: “scientific research,” “scientific creativity,” and “scientific work.” The practice of scholarly usage also gives them no unambiguous meaning^5).

Research is understood as a process of cognition “directly aimed at achieving, in thought, a result that is new not only for the given subject, but for the subject in general”^6); by novelty is meant uniqueness^7). Scientific inquiry is defined

^5) “Speaking of the logic, methodology, and organization of research, we use the term ‘research’ in such an indefinite way that from the very beginning we undermine the possibility of a mutual understanding and productive study of problems.” A. I. Rakitov. “The Nature of Scientific Creativity.” Voprosy filosofii, 1968, No. 12.

^6) The Logic of Scientific Research, p. 9, Moscow, 1965.

^7) “One or another unit of scientific knowledge is considered new if it meets the requirements of scientificity and at the moment of its creation is absent from the list of previously established scientific knowledge.” (A. I. Rakitov, “The Nature of Scientific Creativity,” Voprosy filosofii, 1968, No. 12, p. 42).

as a type of scientific research as a result of which fundamentally new results are obtained (those that have the significance of scientific discoveries, new regularities). In this concept “the very process of discovering the new is fixed, i.e., the heuristic activity of the subject, the moment of transition from the known to the unknown and the transformation of the latter into the former”^8). It seems to us that it is inappropriate to single out scientific search from research as a moment of the subject’s heuristic activity. For research itself is understood as heuristic activity, if its basic criterion is the so-called “list criterion of novelty” (according to Rakitov). Therefore we shall not distinguish these concepts and shall use them as synonyms.

In all definitions of creativity that we find in the logic of scientific cognition and in the psychology of thinking, what is emphasized above all is that its result is the creation of something fundamentally new.

“The essence of creativity,” B. S. Dynin believes, “lies in the creation of qualitatively new material and spiritual values which a person does not find in the environment around him and in the system of knowledge already acquired in the course of socio-historical development, and which are necessary for the further progress of society”^9). G. S. Batishchev: “The creative process must be useful as an act of the history of creativity, consisting in the creation of fundamentally new possibilities on the basis of those available as a result of past activity”^10).

V. N. Pushkin: “Heuristic activity should be regarded as that variety of human thinking which creates a new system of actions or discovers previously unknown regularities of the objects surrounding man”^11). A. A. Zvorykin, in his latest studies on the creation of a methodology of scientific creativity, proceeds from the same understanding of creative activity as labor directed toward the creation of the socially significant, the new, the unknown, in contrast to labor in which already known rules, techniques, and actions are applied, leading to results known in advance^12).

Creativity is distinguished from “non-creativity” not only by the results of activity, but also by the mode of its realization and by the significance of its results. Creativity is unrepeatable in its movement toward the result; “non-creativity” is characterized by the repeatability and stereotyped nature of techniques and ways of achieving results. Creative activity is the direct engine of progress, determining its qualitatively different stages; “non-creativity” is only a means for the quantitative accumulation of conditions for fundamental changes, i.e., for creativity^13).

The concept of scientific work is defined by its result: “the presentation of new data and information that may be the basis—

^8) The Logic of Scientific Research, p. 223, Moscow, 1965.
^9) B. S. Dynin. In the Mysteries of Scientific Creativity, p. 4, Moscow, “Znanie,” 1964.
^10) G. S. Batishchev. “On the Question of the Philosophical Premises of a Rational-Rational Understanding of Creativity.” Problems of Dialectical Logic. Materials for a Symposium of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR, p. 145, Alma-Ata, “Nauka,” 1968.
^11) V. N. Pushkin. Heuristics—The Science of Creative Thinking, p. 32, Moscow, 1967.
^12) A. A. Zvorykin. Scientific and Technical Creativity, Methods and Results of Its Study. Information Bulletin No. 23. Series: Materials and Reports, pp. 118–119, Moscow, 1969.
^13) The Logic of Scientific Research, p. 223, Moscow, 1965.

…for further activity, by determining experiments and observations possessing the maximum degree of demonstrativeness for the practical and economic suitability of the new method”^14).

Thus, uniqueness, novelty, from the standpoint of humanity as a whole, is the principal feature of scientific creativity, scientific research, and scientific work. The strict emphasis on it is explained by the fear of profaning these concepts^15).

To what extent are these concepts applicable to students’ participation in the scientific research of a higher educational institution? Does their use in relation to students constitute such profanation?

In answering this question, one must remember the specificity of “higher-school” science, determined by the educational character of this scientific institution itself. This specificity enriches the content of the scientific work of a higher educational institution with such a new direction as the scientific-methodological reworking of scientific data for the purpose of training specialists. From the standpoint of a strict definition of science, this direction seemingly cannot be classified as scientific.

Taking into account that this specificity also extends to SRWS as a part of “higher-school” science—that is, in other words, taking into account the dual conditioning of the goals of SRWS—one may consider the application of these concepts to it justified.

Student research has the character of scientific work from the standpoint of the manner in which the activity is carried out (the student is placed in the position of a researcher, a discoverer, proceeds in clarifying the problem by untraveled paths), in terms of the results of the effect of this work on the student himself (the work develops a research approach and skills, improves creative abilities), and, finally, from the standpoint of the novelty of the results of the research (it belongs to a part of research).

Such an approach, in our view, agrees with the conclusions of the psychology of scientific creativity (the conception of S. A. Rubinstein, N. A. Menchinskaya, K. A. Slavskaya, and others) that the thinking of all people is creative. According to it, a psychic property common to all people—“the productivity of the thinking process,” which makes it possible to seek, discover, and create something new^16)—is developed in all people to varying degrees. Its highest development is talent. The levels of creative thinking are therefore also different^17). And the results of the creativity of different people may have different social resonance. The outcome of the intellectual work of a theoretical scientist may be a revolution in people’s conceptions of the laws of nature and society, while the work of a student in a student design bureau may end with the designing of a modest device adapting a known technical idea to the conditions of a particular production process.

^14) M. A. Yudalevich. On the economic content of the concepts “sphere of science” and “scientific work.” Ways of Increasing the Efficiency of Scientific Labor (materials for a scientific-practical conference), part 1, p. 82, Novosibirsk, 1966.

^15) G. S. Batishchev, in particular, draws attention to this: “Creativity has become a fashionable topic for ratiocination, and this threatens a new danger of ‘inflation’ of this concept. The executivism that permits itself to be called ‘creative initiative’ may shift onto scientific works, covering up its naked routine and fussiness with respectably scientific garments of modernized, cyberneticized terminology.” G. S. Batishchev. Cited work, p. 144.

^16) See on this: A. Brushlinsky. Psychology of Creativity. Kommunist, Moscow, 1967, no. 5, p. 78.

^17) A. A. Zvorykin. Scientific and Technical Creativity: Methods and Results of Its Study. Information Bulletin No. 23. Series: Materials and Communications, p. 97. Moscow, 1969.

But both one and the other are creativity. It is such not only in the manner in which the activity is carried out, but also from the point of view of novelty, if one does not take its scale into account. And the point here is not only the different “ranks” of researchers—on the one hand, the scholar, on the other, the student. Creativity at different stages in the development of a scientific idea generally yields conclusions that differ in the degree of their impact on social life².

Thus, scientific character and creativity, in terms of their application to research in the field of technology, must become the most important component of the content of scientific-research work. However, the degree of creative charge in the various ways of involving students in the scientific activity of a higher educational institution is different. Just as the distinction between scientific work proper and work in the sphere of science increases (the growing distinction between them is based on the objectively developing division of labor in the scientific sphere of society), so too one should see the qualitative content of the stage of scientific research at which the student is involved.

Therefore, the concept of “scientific-research work” is not appropriate for every form of student participation in the scientific activity of a higher educational institution. A student may be involved in it (and this is a very widespread phenomenon in higher educational institutions) as a skilled worker, a draftsman—in short, as an executor who facilitates scientific creativity but does not participate in it. Consequently, the use of the term “students’ scientific-research work” should be considered improper, obsolete with respect to all forms of student participation in the scientific work of a higher educational institution. The range of application of this concept should be limited only to forms of student participation in immediate scientific (creative) work. With respect to all the other forms, the concept “research work” should be used.

Taking into account the special place of a technical higher educational institution in the general movement of science toward production, one should distinguish, in the content of students’ research work, an orientation toward production.

Finally, the principal purpose of Students’ Scientific-Research Work compels us to see in its content also an educational-upbringing orientation, and, first of all, work on developing research skills.

Each aspect of the content of students’ research work requires consciously organized efforts and measures to accentuate it. In the organization of student research work, for example, there is, in our view, an erroneous principle of the automatic development of students’ research skills that is spontaneously embedded. But the pursuit of research itself, even scientific research, does not automatically or spontaneously solve the problem of inculcating a research approach and cultivating definite research skills. Serious methodological efforts and measures are needed so that students become interested in and consciously relate to the very process of research, and not only to its results. To this end, higher educational institutions are increasingly beginning to offer students courses on the fundamentals of scientific research. Work is being conducted in the same direction to improve the organization of all forms of research. In a number of higher educational institutions, they are proceeding along the path of developing a special methodology for selecting material for work—

work in a circle, a student design bureau, a seminar, a sequence in carrying out assignments, and so on, so as to give the student a school of research. Practice shows that if, in educational-research work, its scientific-production character is not emphasized, students cease to perceive these forms as scientific work.

In the matter of defining the forms of organization of students’ scientific work, a general shortcoming inherent in this work is evident: an empirical solution, the absence of a theoretical justification for one or another principle of classification. And therefore in different higher educational institutions, at different departments, there is their own conception of the forms of organization of SSRW.

Most often, students’ research is divided according to an external feature. One group consists of those forms that are included in the educational process; the other, of those that develop outside it, in addition to it. The conventionality and relativity of such a division lie on the surface and are absolutely obvious. Both these forms mutually pass into one another and intersect, which makes practical use of such a division difficult (in organizing their management, in reporting, etc.). Numerous discrepancies arise, hampering the analysis of the work and the exchange of experience. The more detailed classification of students’ research according to the organizational principle should be recognized as an equally non-exclusive division: student design bureaus, scientific and subject circles, students’ work under economic contracts, students’ work at the department on state-budget topics, educational-research work (including research laboratory practicums, research industrial practice, real course and diploma design, work according to an individual curriculum).

Our approach to the problem of SSRW—in particular, the consistent implementation of the thesis on the interconnection of the scientific and educational processes of the higher educational institution as the objective basis of SSRW—puts forward, as the principle of classification, division according to goal orientation.

Depending on which orientation predominates in the content of the work, all forms of students’ research may be divided into three groups: educational-research, scientific-research, and production-research work³.

Educational-research work, in the multipurpose function of SSRW, places the emphasis on the training of specialists and on instilling in them a research approach. In it, the instructional side is especially prominent; it teaches the student the methodology of research. In this sense, educational-research work stands on the boundary between scientific work and forms of instruction, passing into one or the other. The scientific-production return of these forms is not excluded, but it is not assumed as an end in itself. The educational-research character of the work is also emphasized by the special presentation of the research results: a course project, a report on a laboratory practicum, a course research paper, etc.

Scientific-research work, on the contrary, places the emphasis in research on achieving a scientific effect. The tasks of training a specialist here become concomitant. Hence also the corresponding—

the corresponding presentation of the research findings: articles, scientific reports, patent applications.

Production-and-research work, directed toward solving certain national-economic problems, is, in its content, work in applying known technical ideas and principles to specific production conditions. It is a kind of practical training for students, a test of their knowledge. The presentation of results takes the various forms by which developments are introduced into practice.

Like any classification, ours is an artificial division. Life presents a varied picture that does not fit into the rigid frameworks we establish. In other words, conventionality and relativity are inherent also in the grouping of works according to the principle of content. And it is impossible to include in this classification all the richness of the real forms by which students are drawn into the institute’s scientific research. Real design work, for example, may yield very serious scientific results and be accompanied by a strong national-economic effect. Writing scientific articles based on its results becomes part of practice. And the nature of many student design bureaus which, according to our division, ought to belong to production-and-research forms of work, is used in a number of higher educational institutions in the system of training engineers (within them educational work is carried out: design, practice).

But this relativity is of another order. It is the consequence of the close intertwining of educational, scientific, and national-economic tasks in the forms of students’ research work, the result and the factor of the fusion of the university’s scientific and educational activity.

The advantage of division according to the target orientation of SRWS consists in the fact that it carries more precise information about the nature of the work and its goals. Such a classification, arising from a methodological solution of the problem, takes into account the essence of the process of development of students’ research work. It is easier to use in practice; it facilitates a conscious approach to choosing the form of student research depending on the nature of the scientific work of the department or another scientific subdivision of the higher educational institution. The division into scientific, educational, and production-and-research work makes it possible to determine the degree of creative charge and the educational-upbringing potential of each specific form, and therefore to approach work on improving them more concretely and consciously. Finally, such a classification makes it possible to penetrate into the essence of the development of students’ research work and to understand the principal tendencies of its development.

1. This thesis has acquired the character of a directive. The order of the Minister of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the USSR No. 186 of June 8, 1961, approving the statute on students’ research work, emphasizes: “Students’ research work is included in the overall plan of scientific work of the higher educational institution, faculty, and department. The plan of research work of the department must reflect the participation of students in carrying out research and experimental-design work.” Higher School. Collection of Basic Resolutions, Orders, and Instructions, vol. I, Moscow, 1965, p. 390. ↩

2. “At the stage of direct contemplation and empirical cognition, scientific discovery appears as the establishment of a new fact; of abstract-theoretical thinking—as the theoretical generalization and explanation of already known facts and the prediction of new ones, as the discovery of a new law, the creation of a new theory, the advancement of a new hypothesis; at the stage of practical verification and the use of scientific knowledge—as a technical invention.” B. M. Kedrov, On the Dialectic of Scientific Discoveries. Voprosy filosofii, 1966, No. 12. ↩

3. The attempt to separate these concepts is attested, in particular, by the third collection of instructional materials on the organization of students’ scientific and educational-research work, Moscow, 1970, published by the Moscow City Council for Students’ Scientific Work. The idea of separating them is even reflected in the title of the collection. ↩