Social Capital And Teachers' Research Development

Higher education now has been playing an important role in the development and innovation of science and technology in China. Annually higher education, especially the research universities receive a lot of research programs and funds. As we all know,the research activities are fulfilled by the teachers of universities. How to improve the level of teachers' research development has become the focus of the whole society, universities and researchers in the relevant fields. There are many factors affecting the development of the teachers' research. Many researches of this issue are still kept on the macro-level. This research aims to discuss the soft social environment of teachers' research development from the aspect of social capital. The theory of social capital is highly regarded in the researches of sociology, politics and economics last twenty years. The theory emphasizes the important role of relationship, trust and regulations in the development of individuals, group and society. In this research, we define teachers' social capital as the relationships that can give the positive influence to the development of teachers' research and help the teachers achieve their development goals. According to the teachers' relationship characteristics, we classify the teachers' social capital into three kinds: the social capital of the relatives, the social capital of the vocation and the social capital of the fellowship. This research selects HUST as the case. On the base of the survey of questionnaire and deep interviews, we discussed the following questions deeply: the whole situation of teachers' social capital; the different functions of social capitals on the teachers' research development; the teachers' willingness and actions to foster the social capital. At last, we propose some suggestions for teachers on how to make good use of social capital.