IS IT POSSIBLE TO TEACH SOCIAL RESEARCH

METHODS WELL TODAY?

Martyn Hammersley

The Open University

HEA, Social Sciences Summit, June 2012

Perennial Problems• The task is not to teach a set of rules to be

simply ‘applied’, but rather to facilitate development of the capabilities and virtues necessary for reading or doing research.

• Can research methods be taught in abstraction from students learning how best to do a particular piece of research?

• The sheer amount and difficulty of the material that could be covered is another problem.

• There are questions about what should be taught to whom and when.

Contemporary Complications

• Deep methodological divisions, not just between quantitative and qualitative approaches, but also within these. Some disputes even relate to what the goal of research ought to be, and whether social scientific knowledge is possible or desirable.

• A more diverse clientele, associated with a widening of the remit.

• Over-administration: strategic management, instrumentalism, and ethical regulation.

Deep Methodological Divisions • What is needed to produce sound causal

knowledge of the social world: strict experiments/randomised controlled trials; the search for correlations amongst measured properties of objects in a random sample from a target population; systematic qualitative comparisons amongst a small number of cases; in-depth description of a single case?

• Is knowledge of the social world possible?

• Should research be ‘critical’?

• Should it be integrated with ‘action’?

Who needs to be taught what, and when?

• Methodological divisions worsen this dilemma through broadening the field of relevant material, for example to include philosophical ideas, such as those associated with constructionism or post-structuralism.

• These ideas relate to deep and difficult issues that teachers of research methods themselves struggle with, not just students.

What attitude to methodological divisions should be encouraged?

• Should we encourage students to adopt a tolerant attitude towards all approaches

Or

• Should we be encouraging them to adopt a resolute commitment to what we believe are legitimate approaches?

A more diverse clientele• Payne and Williamson (2011) have referred to a

‘crisis of numeracy’, but there is also a crisis of literacy, in terms of an ability to think about concepts and to handle arguments.

• There are also more basic literacy problems, partly but not only among international students.

• In parallel, there has been a diversification as regards what students are being prepared for: no longer entirely for academic research but for research-related occupations of many kinds.

Preparing Students for Research-related Occupations?

• What counts as a research occupation?

• What range of knowledge and skills need to be taught under this mission?

• Are knowledge and skills all that are required?

• Should we teach students to denounce spurious appeals to research findings by governments, interest groups, commercial organisations, charities, etc?

Aspects of Over-Administration

• Funding bodies’ strategic management of research and ‘research training’.

• Strategic management within universities relying upon standardised models of postgraduate research. The case of completion rates and the proceduralisation of research training.

• Ethical regulation: time-consuming and tends to reduce ethics to following procedures.

What is to be done?• Facilitate the emergence of genuine research

communities.

• Restructure the field of social research methodology, resisting the excesses of both methodology-as-technique and methodology-as-philosophy.

• Focus MRes and PhD ‘training’ exclusively upon preparing students to do academic research?

• Resist and push back over-administration.

Is Any of this Feasible?

Probably not.

But, in any case, you may not agree with my diagnosis or with my proposed remedies

References

Garner, M. et al (eds.) (2009) Teaching Research Methods in the Social Sciences, Farnham, Ashgate.

Hammersley, M. (1996) 'The relationship between quantitative and qualitative research', in J Richardson (ed.) Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods for Psychology and the Social Sciences, Leicester, British Psychological Society Books.

Hammersley, M. (2004) ‘Teaching qualitative methodology: craft, profession, or bricolage?’, in C. Seale and D. Silverman (eds.) Handbook of Qualitative Research Practice, London, Sage.

Hammersley, M. (2011) Methodology, Who Needs It? London, Sage.

MacInnes, J. (2009) Proposals to support and improve the teaching of quantitative research methods at undergraduate level in the UK. Report of the ESRC Strategic Advisor. Available at: http://www.esrc.ac.uk/_images/Undergraduate_quantitative_research_methods_tcm8-2722.pdf

Payne, G. and Williamson, M. (eds.) (2011) Teaching Quantitative Methods: Getting the basics right, London, Sage.