KUCHING: Society needs competent researchers to play a leading role in social and economic development, says Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus chief executive and pro-vice chancellor Prof Anthony Cahalan.
Cahalan (left) showing the BREC participants the programme arrangements of the conference. — Photo by Chimon Upon
Aware of this, Cahalan noted that the governments of Sarawak, Sabah and Malaysia as a whole, are stressing on the need to have such people.
“It is up to the higher education sector to train and educate these researchers,” he said when officiating at the 2nd Borneo Research Education Conference (BREC) at the Islamic Information Centre here yesterday.
The two-day conference, which started yesterday, was co-convened by five universities in Sarawak and Sabah namely Curtin University Sarawak, Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas), Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) and Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) Sarawak.
Geared towards providing scholarly guidance and collegial support for completion of research degrees, the conference attracted about 30 postgraduate students pursuing master and doctoral degrees.
Being responsible to help the nation realise the target of achieving 60,000 PhD-holders by 2023, Cahalan said institutions of higher learning need to ask both quantity and quality related questions such as ‘how are we going to achieve this target? What kind of PhD-holders does the country need? How can we support and enhance the process of researcher development?’
He said what set BREC apart from other conferences was that it focuses on researchers in whatever stage they are in their careers, unlike many other conferences which look at the product or outcome of the research.
“This (conference) is unique in a way that it is based on collaboration between universities. It is common for universities to be very suspicious of each other, worried about competitions between them. But it is irrelevant in this conference because it is not about competition, it is about supporting research education in Borneo.”
He said besides having collaboration from volunteers and staff of participating universities to make the conference a success, another critical aspect of this conference was that it was supported by the industry, which to him is important.
Meanwhile, the conference chair Prof Debiprasad Dash said the conference was about a specialised area of education that seemed rather less developed, adding there had been a lot of work on areas such as mathematics, education, science education, language education and art education but not much had been done on research education.
“Since researchers may work in any discipline or field, our discussion on research education would also apply to all these disciplines and fields. We are interested in studying how researchers are developed in any field or research.
“Therefore, we welcome all kinds of researchers into this conference. Scientific researchers, social researchers, artistic researchers, design researchers, we welcome you all, because our focus is on you, the researcher, irrespective of your discipline and field.
“We also wish to extend the discourse of research education to include new disciplines and fields such as science, engineering, healthcare, design and so forth. But this requires a strong commitment from all the institutions involved.”
Debiprasad said the expression ‘research education’ was used consciously, with the aim to cast a much wider net than the expression ‘research training’ which is used more commonly in universities.
“Research training generally focuses on the methods and tools of doing research. In practice, the aim of research training is to enhance the technical skills of researchers so that they can design and implement research procedures to answer research questions.
“We think this may not lead to adequate preparation of researchers in their future. The process of completing a research degree ought to be seen within a broader social context. Acquiring a research degree ought to prepare one to play a suitable role as a researcher in society.
“We think research education is more than acquiring technical skills. It is about understanding the environment within which one would have to work as a researcher. It is also about equipping oneself to be effective in that environment.”
He said one of the qualities of being a researcher is the ability to question, but in a constructive way, adding that if the researchers could master the way of questioning constructively, they would have an amazing impact not only on their field of studies, but also on the world in general.