The Role of Critical Evaluation in Finance Education: Insights from an MSc Programme

Abstract

This paper explores how prepared MSc in Finance students at a British university were for a research-based dissertation; how much they knew about independent research prior to starting the dissertation; and how the university assisted them during this research work. Three changes were carried out within the programme with the aim of immersing students in research practices. Students were provided with the opportunity to discuss and evaluate critically the methodologies and findings of real research studies in Finance. Thus, the study provides practical suggestions on how to support the students' experience of dissertation work. Furthermore, this paper contributes to the literature on what constitutes research in Finance and on how students can learn about standards of academic validation, by offering a subject-specific perspective on information literacy.

Keywords:

• Action research
• finance
• master's dissertations
• information literacy
• research methods

Notes

A number of students every year had to change dissertation topic once they realised that their submitted research proposal was not feasible because of the lack of appropriate literature resources, little availability of data, and their lack of confidence in the use of the research methods required.

This form of research, from its first definition by Kurt Lewin in the context of sociology in the mid-1940s, is understood as research which intends to improve social settings by involving its participants in an iterative process of fact finding, planning, interventions and reflection, and is deeply influenced by the values and culture of the participants (Lewin, 1948).

These were the only classroom activities on a Saturday: no other module had classes on a Saturday.

Students were sent the questionnaire via email and given the option of either replying via email or printing the questionnaire and returning it anonymously.

These questions are based on the work of Levin and Johnson (2005) on MBA students.

In this section students' words were reported in italics.

In the questionnaire these were called ‘Research Methods weekends’ as this is how they were informally referred to by the students.

The overhaul of the research methods provision which would have been a more direct response to the issues raised required a change in the structure of the MSc programme which was not possible in the limited timescale and resources available.

The additional question 18* stated: ‘During the past year, a number of sessions (research workshops and guest lectures) in the Financial Theory module focussed on research in finance. What did you think of them? Comment.’

The interventions were repeated in the following year with only minor adjustments for a cohort of 40 students and produced a similar impact on the dissertation outcomes as described in the reminder of this section.

No interviews were conducted due to the unavailability of students: most students did not complete the dissertation on campus.

While there are numerous critiques (for example feminist, socialist, post-modern) of the extent of the explanatory power of theory in the social context, these do not question the assumption that social context is a subject of research (Punch, 1998, p. 3).

These ideas could already be found in their earlier work (Tashakkori and Teddlie, 1998), where the authors developed a whole teaching module on Research Methods—starting from the conceptual stages of research and ending with the inference process, including practical examples of research—underpinned by a mixed-methods approach.

For example, the research output of 2010 is bound to be dominated by research questions related to the financial crisis and the subsequent recession of 2008–09.

For a critique of check-list methods of assessment of information literacy see Johnston and Webber (2003, p. 342).

This question was added when the questionnaire was used for the 2006/07 cohort.