| المستخلص: |
This investigation attempts to advance the debate about the teaching/research nexus as currently being under discussion in higher education worldwide. It is assumed that since both teaching and research are central to higher education and seen as the two core activities of academics, there is a need therefore for active interaction and integration between them. \\ A primary focus of this work was to investigate the academic staff perceptions of the relationship between their teaching and research at the undergraduate level in Saudi universities. To address this issue, the study included an extensive review of the relevant international literature, a critical evaluation of the teaching/research context within Saudi higher education and was illustrated by semi-structured interviews with 12 teaching staff from three different departments in the Faculty of Education, King Khalid University. \\ The case study revealed that the teaching/research relationship appeared to operate in two ways, although flowed more freely from teaching to research than vice versa due to some factors related to promotion and academic identity. Whereas research as content satisfactorily informed staff teaching and their subjects, research as skill and process -often called research- based teaching was not highly emphasized within classroom context. It seemed that the predominance of traditional lecturing, teacher-centered instruction and content-based assessment was likely to have a role in this. \\ Across the three departments there were a range of barriers and impediments to a strong teaching/research nexus, most of which were related to heavy-burdened workload, .inadequate reward and appraisal systems and insufficient in- service individual and professional training. Consequently, a number of suggestions and recommendations for policy and practice to strengthen the nexus had been addressed
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