Seed-beds: a research culture from university

Abstract

Etymologically the word seed-bed means “an area of ground where young plants are grown from seed.” It is also “a place or source of growth or development.” Applied to research, seed-bed is the space to culture students and teachers talent to, for and by research and so guarantee the generational relay and to improve quality in Teaching, Research and Social Projection. In general terms, research seed-beds are small learning communities of one or several disciplines, put together to answer a question, develop an idea, a topic, a research proposal. They might be also defined as student groups made up to develop self-learning and research practice. (Maldonado, 2007) From the academic point of view, they are spaces for extension and extra curriculum education to reach a research education where students are the protagonists of their own learning and, eventually, responsible to build their own knowledge and attitudes and aptitudes of the research exercise.