https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5461-2307
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ABSTRACT
This article contributes to the discussion on research methods pedagogy by adding a technological dimension to Nind’s use of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) in research methods education (RME). Within a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning approach, this research-inspired reflection is based on the literature, on the scholar’s praxis and on the on-going design-based research project she has been conducting since 2014. Trained in educational technologies more than 20 years ago, she shares an initial understanding of the use of the TPACK framework for the teaching of research methods in education. Findings include initial definitions of each type of individual knowledge (CK, PK, TK), overlapping knowledge (TPK, TCK, PCK) and a proposal for TPACK as a whole. Secondly, the findings show that technology appears to be a revealing indicator of current praxis in RME, inviting scholars to question methodolatry and technodolatry. As a corollary, Content Knowledge (CK) needs more attention to reconnect RME with its philosophical foundations. Research method teachers and students in the social sciences will foremost benefit from this study and are invited to contribute to the debate within a broader collective intelligence endeavour.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data deposition
For this research project, data is available from YARETA, https://yareta.unige.ch/home/detail/0a9383ea-850e-4998-90c0-088df8bfc318.
Notes
1 Research methods education in the social sciences represents the domain to which this article adds a contribution. To avoid repeating it, we abbreviate it to RME.
2 Praxis is meant here in the Freirian sense, i.e. reflection and action intertwined. This idea is also present in Phillips (Citation2017) with knowledge described as a continuum from episteme to phronesis.
3 The debate focused on the role of technology and the main question was to find out whether technology has to be considered as a mere vehicle or if it has a pedagogical impact.
5 We refer here altogether to epistemologies that have been around for some years, e.g. postmodernism, as well as newer ones like postdigital which, since 2021 offer a book series dedicated to the topic, https://www.springer.com/series/16439
6 Research methods education is itself informed by discourse and action and thus also takes the form of a praxis.
7 ECTS stands for European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System. “ECTS credits represent learning based on defined learning outcomes and their associated workload”; it makes courses more transparent and helps students to move between countries pertaining to the European Higher Education Area. 1 ECTS is equivalent to 25 student working hours. https://education.ec.europa.eu/education-levels/higher-education/higher-education-initiatives/inclusive-and-connected-higher-education/european-credit-transfer-and-accumulation-system
8 Blended in the sense of upfront techno-pedagogical design: one face-to-face week alternating with four weeks of on-line work.
11 Early cycles focused on (mis)conceptions of research using Meyer et al. (Citation2005)’s inventory (Class Citation2016, Class Citation2017). It appeared that for the 8 new scholars participating in the research, previous experience with research would lead to consolidation and/or correction of pre-existing knowledge, an encounter with threshold concepts and a non-linear learning path - plateau, doubt, fall. On the other hand, the absence of previous experience would lead to an exclusively upwards learning path, focused on the discovery of new elements of knowledge and ignoring threshold concepts. More recent cycles (Class and Akkari Citation2021) focused on decision-makers' opinion on RME within the specific international training RESET-Francophone. In addition to underlining that research topics in the Global South are most of the time “imported”, this training is considered a "third way" beside the European doctorate and the North American PhD. Activities take new scholars through the different steps of the research cycle and require them to reflect on philosophical aspects that are seldom addressed with their advisors and doctoral schools. Furthermore, more recent cycles of the DBR also focused on the techno-pedagogical design of learning environments for RME (Class Citation2020b), on the importance of moving away from “institutional positivism” (Piron Citation2019) for social sciences’ researchers (Class et al. Citation2021) and on the importance to make the foundations of education visible (Class Citation2022b).
12 This data is part of the SNSF project entitled Open Education for Research Methodology Teaching across the Mediterranean and can be accessed on-line.
13 For instance, with regard to qualitative research, a wide range of perspectives co-exist (e.g. Aspers and Corte Citation2019, Brinkmann et al. Citation2014).
14 There is a crying need for philosophical foundations to be re-introduced in research methods education (e.g. Tesar Citation2022, Given Citation2008, St. Pierre Citation2006).
15 In reference to Jhangiani (Citation2017): “the opposite of open is not closed; the opposite of open is broken”. Talking of science, it is a term he uses to highlight the perversions of the system, such as paying for access to articles written, peer-reviewed and published by academics paid with public funds, and the need to restore good practice.
17 In two words, pastoral power is the power that, in the 18th century went out of churches into the state and society and imposed a new form of power from the state and a "new type of individualization which is linked to the state" (Foucault Citation1982, p. 785).
18 The various studies to which reference is made are those mentioned in the first paragraph of the current Method section. Some of them are part of the SNSF project “Open Education for Research Methodology Teaching across the Mediterranean”.
19 The different scenarii, year after year since 2014 are available in French from https://tecfa.unige.ch/perso/class/ScenarioDetailles2014-2020/