SCHOOL OF EDUCATION: Research Methodology in Education

ow is it that researchers can engage with those they research ethically? In response to the challenge of this question, we articulate an ethics of research engagement based on vulnerability and generosity. This is explored with a special focus on the practicalities of organization studies research. Building on developments in reflexive methodology, we draw on Emmanuel Levinas’ relational ethics to consider how research can be approached as receiving a ‘teaching of the other.

This article examines research methodologies for classroom-based research in light of the complementary ideas of Freire and Habermas. After reflecting on classroom-based participatory action research in a secondary mathematics classroom, I discuss the suitability of critical participatory action research in critical mathematics education. Critical participatory action research resonates with central concerns of critical mathematics education as it allows researchers to consider emancipatory alternatives to existing situations.

Across our combined 15 years of experience as methodologists and research methodology instructors, we have found that the concept of ‘failure’ is only a small portion of methodological literature and is similarly missing from scholarship on teaching and learning social science research methodology. We define failure in terms of our inability as researchers to reach the onto-epistemological ideals to which we aspire in our empirical fieldwork with others, both in terms of relationships formed with our research participants and our inability to overcome broader (institutional or socio-political) constraints.

Over the last several decades pedagogy as a field of study within education has enjoyed a well-deserved elevated status accompanied by a corresponding focus on pedagogic research and associated research methods. Historically, however, pedagogy was consigned to irrelevancy and invisibility, at least in the UK and arguably in the Anglo-American world more generally. Referring specifically to the poor status of it in England relative to its more significance in continental Europe, Brian Simon (1981) lamented this state of affairs in his famous piece, ‘Why no pedagogy in England?’ Unsurprisingly this situation meant that over the years pedagogy was under-researched and under-theorized.

Over the last 20 years there has been significant growth in the volume of higher education pedagogical research across disciplines and national contexts, but inherent tensions in defining quality remain. In this paper we present a framework to support understanding of what constitutes internationally excellent research, drawing on a range of conceptual frameworks, international and national performance-based research funding systems, discipline/professional body frameworks, and research council guidance.

South Africa has a number of policies to protect and promote indigenous knowledge (IK). The increasing interest in research into indigenous knowledge and science education in southern Africa has led not only to the production of publications, but also to numerous conferences, seminars, research centres, projects, learning materials, and postgraduate courses.

This qualitative inquiry investigates postgraduate students’ conceptions of research methodology and how it contributes to their learning. It explores factors likely to motivate student choice of research methodology and challenges in understanding research methods. The research was carried out at research-intensive universities in New Zealand and in Malaysia with similar postgraduate programmes.