Focus

1. Capacity building in advanced social science research methods: Researching teaching and learning processes Daniel Kilburn Melanie Nind & Rose Wiles

2. Focus • Research about how advanced and innovative social research methods are taught and learned • To inform and develop the pedagogical culture surrounding research methods teaching

3. Origins NCRM’s overall mission is to provide a strategic focal point for the identification, development and delivery of an integrated national research and training programme aimed at promoting a step change in the quality and range of methodological skills and techniques used by the UK social science community and providing support for, and dissemination of, methodological innovation and excellence within the UK.

4. The social science perspective Problem: Need for a step change in the quality and range of methodological skills and techniques used by social researchers Solution: Training in advanced and innovative research methods – lots of it – face-to-face, VLEs – in context of quality research by top methodologists

5. The educational perspective Problem: Need to understand the distinctive pedagogical challenges that arise in teaching advanced/ innovative social science research methods Solution: Qualitative research, conducted with methods teachers and learners, on their perspectives, experiences and practices

6. Research questions • What are the distinctive pedagogical challenges? • How do teachers & learners respond? • What is the nature of methods teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge?

7. Research design

8. The big challenge: research with… • not seeking to make judgements on others, but instead to foster reflection and co-construction of knowledge • facilitating dialogue and reflection within a community of stakeholders, including teachers as learners and learners as teachers • as methods teachers, learners and researchers ourselves we are inherently part of what we are studying

9. Concerns in the literature • Needs of particular students (mostly UGs) • How to structure or embed methods courses/content • Issues within certain disciplines (or even institutions) • Challenges of teaching particular methods • Effective modes of delivery (instructor reflections) • Student satisfaction and performance in assessments

10. Concerns in the academy • Quantitative skills deficit, even at a basic ‘statistical literacy’ level (MacInnes, 2012) • Pipeline of competent people to meet demands of a competitive global knowledge economy • Methodological weaknesses within particular disciplines (HaPS 2010)

11. Educationalconcerns Limited attention given to ‘pedagogical culture’ in research methods: Although there is a substantial body of literature at the disposal of teachers addressing the “how to” of research methods it does not adequately inform the teaching of methods (Wagner et al, 2011: 75)

12. Data from our Specialist Panel • Emerging themes: • Challenges for teaching and learning • Approaches towards teaching and learning • Pedagogical Content Knowledge • Any thoughts?

13. Challenges for teaching & learning • Emerging sub-themes: • Learners’ confidence • Learners’ prior Skills • Learners’ backgrounds • The methods themselves

14. Challenges for teaching & learning Learners’ Confidence: “I don’t think doctoral students are immune to feeling freaked out about stats” Author of a popular statistics textbook

15. Challenges for teaching & learning Learners’ prior skills: “I think there are deficits […] in the kind of skill set that social science undergraduates emerge from higher education with. Those gaps are all around the use of numbers in different contexts. ” Senior advisor to the ESRC

16. Challenges for teaching & learning Learners’ backgrounds “A bigger issue, I think, is that a lot of people are coming in without what you might call a mainstream social scientific background, so actually I think the complexity of the work does perplex them.” Director of an education research institute

17. Challenges for teaching & learning Methods themselves “I think it’s easiest to lose sight of – when you’re teaching this kind of numerical stuff – that it has a language of its own.” Author of a popular statistics textbook

18. Challenges for teaching & learning Methods themselves “I suspect that advanced learners are just as reticent as students are at coming forward when they’ve not followed something or they’ve got lost… It’s still really easy to go too fast [and] to forget how difficult even the most straight-forward procedure is when you’re trying it for the first time.” Senior advisor to the ESRC

19. Approaches for teaching & learning • Emerging sub-themes: • Building confidence • Embedding methods • Supervision/mentoring • Teaching

20. Approaches for teaching & learning Building confidence “The thing that excites me is kind of empowering people to feel like that they can tackle these things […] under their own steam […] and feel confident in doing that.” Author of a popular statistics textbook

21. Approaches for teaching & learning Building confidence “…a real induction into the academy […] is much more about giving people the confidence to talk about the nature of the problem that they’ve got, rather than somehow feel that they have to come to you with a solution.” Director of an education research institute

22. Approaches for teaching & learning Embedding methods (within the PhD) “[It] would be better to perhaps be a bit less ambitious about the breadth of the [PhD] curriculum [...], and spend more time on getting deeper learning... I don’t think it’s the place to run past them a catalogue of methods that they might use. I think [...] the research problem […] should determine what their methodological training is.” Head of school of social sciences

23. Approaches for teaching & learning Supervision / mentoring “In terms of further [professional] development for research staff – research assistants, research fellows – I mean that is all done by informal mentoring [and] forums in which people can meet and feel comfortable to talk about their problems as well as their potential successes.” Director of an education research institute

24. Approaches for teaching & learning Teaching “I certainly don’t hold with the view that qualitative research methods can’t be taught… We can teach people how to be good qualitative researchers, […] there are a set of skills and set of practices that can be taught [..] and they must be taught.” Director of two national methods initiatives

25. Pedagogical Content Knowledge • Emerging sub-themes: • The importance of practice • Sharing research experiences • Any thoughts?

26. Pedagogical Content Knowledge The importance of practice “You can’t teach someone how to become a qualitative researcher by standing up and […] lecturing them about it. You have to have a really practically-orientated approach” Director of two national methods initiatives

27. Pedagogical Content Knowledge The importance of practice “There’s some wonderful datasets out there […] So actually getting [students] to work practically on those datasets… So you actually get the students, as Cathie Marsh said, being detectives” Head of school of social sciences

28. Pedagogical Content Knowledge The importance of practice “…that isn’t saying that we’re not teaching. I actually think it’s about having a pedagogic approach which suits the fact that people have to be able to do it […] in order to develop their practice… It is about having really very intensive teaching sessions” Director of two national methods initiatives

29. Pedagogical Content Knowledge The importance of practice “…all of that implies I suppose a much more interactive pedagogy than might traditionally be the case.” Director of an education research institute

30. Pedagogical Content Knowledge The importance of practice “I tell you what I’m moving towards, what I’m thinking towards here, is problem-based learning, rather than just taking a kind of one-size-fits-all [approach]. ” Head of school of social sciences

31. Pedagogical Content Knowledge Sharing research experiences “I tell stories. That’s how I teach. I tell stories […] about my own work, about other peoples’ work… I think it’s important for everybody to engage and not to see research as being about applying a set of techniques and skills.” Professor of qualitative research

32. Pedagogical Content Knowledge Sharing research experiences “When you read methodological accounts, they very rarely give you a warts and all description, because nobody wants to say what went wrong, but let me tell you what went right. So the only way students are ever going to get that is when they hear it from the people themselves... But that’s what I tell; I tell them that story, and [students] love that bit of dirt, you know.” Head of school of social sciences

33. Pedagogical Content Knowledge Sharing research experiences “You know, that’s the other side of the mentoring really isn’t it, that idea that actually we’re embodying some of the values and some of the practices that we want our students to engage in. So I think role modelling is quite a good way of articulating that. .” Head of school of social sciences

34. So, what can we argue (so far!)? • Teaching & learning of advanced research methods has challenges in common with broader HE contexts • Advanced methods can and should be taught, but in ways that are tailored towards research practice • It is possible to tease out distinctive pedagogical content knowledge for research methods but we do not know yet about the wider groups involved • Educational research has potential to help develop a pedagogical culture for teaching research methods

35. Acknowledgements • This research is funded by NCRM • Our advisory group and the NCRM hub at the University of Southampton have provided valuable input

36. HaPS(2010). International Benchmarking Review of UK Sociology, ESRC; BSA; Heads and Professors of Sociology (HaPS). MacInnes, J. 2012. Quantitative Methods teaching in UK Higher Education: The state of the field and how it might be improved: HEA Social Sciences teaching and learning summit: Teaching research methods, University of Warwick, 21- 22 June 2012. Wagner, C., M. Garner, and B. Kawulich. 2011. "The state of the art of teaching research methods in the social sciences: towards a pedagogical culture." Studies in Higher Education 36, no. 1:75-88.