Methods that teach: developing pedagogic research methods, developing pedagogy

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses ways of researching the pedagogy involved in building research methods competencies in the social sciences. The lack of explicit and shared pedagogy in this area make it particularly important that research is conducted to stimulate pedagogic culture, dialogue and development. The authors discuss the range of methods used in one study with the aim of teasing out pedagogical content knowledge, making implicit pedagogic knowledge more explicit and thereby malleable. The research design and methods deliberately foster dialogue with, rather than cast a judgmental gaze upon, teachers and learners of research methods. Rejecting observational methods on this basis, and declining action research because of the level of participant pedagogic knowledge and commitment required, the authors examine a combination of expert panel, video stimulated dialogue and diary methods for building pedagogic knowledge and culture. These ‘methods that teach’ are argued to offer value for other researchers working in new and emerging teaching fields, where pedagogy is particularly ‘hard to know’ and pedagogic content knowledge and pedagogic culture are underexplored or underdeveloped.

KEYWORDS:

• Pedagogic content knowledge
• pedagogic culture
• research methods teaching
• higher education pedagogy
• dialogic methods
• transformative methods

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) [National Centre for Research Methods grant ES/L/008351/1]. We thank our participants for their generous contribution to this work and we warmly remember W. Paul Vogt who has sadly since died.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Melanie Nind http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4070-7513

Sarah Lewthwaite http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4480-3705

Notes

1. See Potter (2008) and Adendorff (2011) on the challenge of educational discourses for researchers and teachers based in scientific disciplines.

2. Due to the status and specialisms of many of the expert panellists, retaining anonymity before a social science readership would be unfeasible. Therefore with their consent, and advance ethical approval, expert panellists are referred to by name.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) [National Centre for Research Methods grant number ES/L/008351/1].