Teaching educational research methods

Maria Birbili, Oxford University

Setting the context

The last two decades have seen considerable changes in the conceptualisation of the PhD and the nature of postgraduate research training both in the UK and other countries (de Werd, 1991; Becher et al., 1994; OECD, 1995; O'Brien, 1995; LaPidus, 1997; Page, 2001). Not surprisingly, those changes raised a number of dilemmas and concerns about issues such as, the purpose of the training-model PhD and its relevance to students' needs (Collinson and Hockey, 1997), the role of universities in the training of researchers (Blume, 1995; LaPidus, 1997), what constitutes 'good' quality research training (Blume, 1995) and whether the imposition of formal training programmes and emphasis on competency in research methods compromise some of the traditional elements of the PhD (Collinson, 1998; Leonard, 2000; Pole, 2000). The latter is one of the arguments used against the introduction of formal research training within the PhD, all succinctly summarised by Hockey (1991) in a literature review on the social science doctorate.

Within this context, a lot has been written about research training in different disciplines (Fenwick, 1992; Parry et al., 1994; Thyer, 2001). Interestingly, as Pallas (2001, p. 7) says, 'there is scarcely a literature on the preparation of education researchers'. As he explains' this is not to say that there is a shortage of writing about research methods and methodology, some of them quite prescriptive' but that there is 'little research support for the most common features of research-intensive doctoral study'.

Despite the lack of the research support that Pallas is talking about, the literature that exists gives an indication of the issues that concern those planning and teaching in educational research methods courses at the doctoral level, such as: students' reaction to research training; the content and the structure of research courses; the methods of teaching; the extent to which face-to-face teaching can or should be substituted by technology-mediated learning; and the importance of practical experience in research training and ways of organising it. These are the issues to be addressed in this paper.

In 1997, addressing BERA, Donald McIntyre pointed out that 'we have not given the kind of attention to the training of professional educational researchers […] that might have been expected from a professional association' (p. 127). To borrow Pallas' (2001, p. 11) words, 'the field could benefit from adopting a critical, reflexive stance toward doctoral research preparation, and interrogating the rationales for current practices'. This task needs to be the responsibility of all those involved in doctoral education irrespective of whether they are teaching educational research methods or not (Page, 2001; Pallas, 2001) for, as Barrett and Lally (2000, p. 272) point out, improving the quality of educational research training is important for the future of the profession.