On successful completion of this unit students will be able to:

1. Collaborate with colleagues to undertake and articulate an inquiry-based research project and/or product which critically engages with key Higher Education policy and/or practice issues
2. Justify and deliver the research project and or product to an audience using appropriate media
3. Critically evaluate alternative research paradigms, methodologies and methods situated within a Higher Education context
4. Design a feasible and coherent proposal for an individual Higher Education research project

The curriculum will cover the following areas:

• The study of Higher Education: different levels and units of analysis
• Different approaches to research in Higher Education: positivist, constructivist and critical realist paradigms, ontology and epistemology, methodologies and methods, the role of theory, deductive and inductive theorisation, the relation between theory and data, abduction and retroduction
• Phenomenography, teaching and learning approaches, the scholarship of teaching and learning
• Social Practice Theory, Teaching and Learning Regimes and communities of practice
• Designing aims, objectives and research questions, engaging with, and mobilising Higher Education literature, research methodologies and methods
• Qualitative research approaches: phenomenology, Grounded Theory, ethnography, auto-ethnography, narrative inquiry, case study, action research, the challenges of undertaking insider-research in universities, researcher positionality and reflexivity
• Surveys and other quantitative approaches
• Research proposal planning, structure and process
• Ethics, the ETHOS process, informed consent, values and beliefs
• Dimensions of quality in educational research
• Data collection and recording; data analysis, sense-making and writing up
• Disseminating research findings

1. Group Assessment (40%)

This is a group negotiated assessment on a topic of the group’s choice that addresses a key debate in Higher Education, providing evidence of collaborative working and agreed methods. The format of the submission could consist of, for example, a 30-minute presentation (including time for audience questions), a 15-minute video, 16-page booklet or a 1500-2000 word report. Other negotiated options may be available. All group members will receive the same group mark (40% weighting).

In your group you must research:

Either

• A current debate in higher education or academic practice

Or

• The themes of and approaches to higher education research in one of the disciplines (or a comparison between two or more of them).

2.  Individual Project Proposal (60%)

An individual research project proposal containing:

• A clear explanation of the context and rationale for the research including your chosen research paradigm, methodology and appropriate theoretical framework (s)
• A clear theme, aim and objectives and/or research questions or problem
• A justification of appropriate research methods, data collection and analysis with some assurance of feasibility with regard to access, ethics, resource requirements and timescale
• An annotated bibliography which illustrates how it has informed your research thinking (between 5 and 10 sources)
• A draft table of contents or a chapter outline for the Dissertation
• References list

Guide length: 3000 words