In June 2012 HEA Social Sciences held its first learning and teaching summit which focused on teaching research methods in the Social Sciences.
In December 2012 we commissioned 11 projects that were designed to explore further the issues identified at the summit.
The lack of assessment and evaluation of teaching strategies in the teaching of research methods impedes progress in developing successful teaching pedagogy (Vandiver and Walsh 2010). While a majority of institutions now include research methods teaching in courses at both masters and doctoral level too much of that teaching remains at the static delivery level in both face-to-face and distance learning contexts. This is not a new dilemma (see Ransford and Butler 1982) but it does remain only patchily addressed despite the current emphasis on research skills training at postgraduate level. The static approach to pedagogy means that too much emphasis is placed on covering content that is assessed through written assignments or written tasks and too little account has been taken of how student understanding of different research methods develops. Consequently ‘assessment for learning’ needs to be developed alongside other appropriate teaching strategies if we are to develop the ‘pedagogical culture’ in research methods advocated by Wagner et al. (2010) which would include exchange of ideas in a climate of systematic debate investigation and evaluation of all aspects of teaching and learning research methods.
Therefore this study aims to contribute to a limited body of research in respect of evaluating and assessing a particular teaching strategy in order to develop effective pedagogy leading ultimately to a ‘pedagogical culture’ for teaching research methods.
