Social research methods and open educational resources: a literature review (C-SAP collections...

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SocialResearchMethodsandOpenEducationalResources–LiteratureReview Kate Orton-Johnson, University of Edinburgh Ian Fairweather, University of Manchester This literature review was written as part of the C-SAP (Higher Education Academy's Centre

for Sociology, Anthropology and Politics) project "Discovering Collections of Social Science

Open Educational Resources". The project ran from August 2010 - August 2011 as part of

Phase 2 of the HEFCE-funded Open Educational Resources (OER) programme. The

programme focused in particular on issues related to the discovery and use of OER by

academics and was managed jointly by the Higher Education Academy [HEA] and Joint

Information Systems Committee [JISC].

IntroductionResearch methods training has an ambiguous place in the social sciences. A recent survey

for the ESRC’s National Centre for Research Methods concluded that there is a high level of

demand for both qualitative and quantitative training (Mosely & Wiles 2011). Research

students expect to get high quality training and are often disappointed with the training they

receive (see for example Frazer 2003). Employers look for researchers who have a broad

skill set and those seeking to pursue a research career increasingly need to demonstrate

their familiarity with a range of methods, both quantitative and qualitative. There is

widespread agreement that undergraduates need to have a good understanding of research

methods in their discipline and that they benefit from the opportunity to do some form of

research, both in terms of their understanding and of their employability (See for example

Edwards & Thatcher 2004, Winn 1995). There is an increasing emphasis on training

students to conduct research, and many degree programmes now contain a research

methodology component (See for example Wagner 2011). Research councils are investing

in and promoting methods excellence in research methods through the launch of the UK

concordat on the career development of researchers and by establishing the organisation

Vitae to enhance professional development for researchers (Mosely & Wiles 2001; 8). All

this has encouraged researchers to reflect upon their training needs, but at the same time,

students often complain research methods courses are irrelevant and uninteresting, too

abstract and dry and not sensitive to their needs, or that they are delivered by lecturers who



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have no real expertise or interest in the topic. Staff are often ambivalent too, perceiving

these courses as difficult to teach and to engage students with.

Nevertheless, there are real gaps in the provision of research methods training and there is

a need to provide high quality training that meets students’ needs at the time when they

perceive it to be relevant. One solution may be online resources, particularly open

educational resources which can be incorporated into existing courses or used by students

directly. However there are problems with accessibility and with ensuring the quality of these

resources. This project seeks to address this by developing a way to make high quality open

educational resources for research methods discoverable to both staff and students. The

turn to online provision and the use of OERs assumes that students are able and willing to

make effective use of the internet. This assumption is often justified on the grounds that

today’s students are ‘digital natives’ who have grown up with the internet and are fully literate

in its use and so the first section of this literature review will explore the evidence for this

idea.

Digitalnativesanddigitalliteracies?Literature surrounding academic and student use of online learning resources points to the

need to understand engagement with and use of these kinds of resources in the broader

contexts of existing disciplinary and academic identities, expectations and learning practices.

What emerges from the literature is an inconsistent and contested picture of how students

use and understand their use of digital resources (Condie and Livingston, 2007). Indeed, the

JISC e-learning and pedagogy scoping study of undergraduate blended learning suggested

that there is a paucity of research which has concerned itself specifically with the student

experience (Sharpe and Benfield, 2005). This has important implications for student

engagement with online resources - learning to learn with technology can undermine student

understandings of academic work, challenging a self imposed adherence to reading lists and

course materials, highlighting concerns with identifying ‘proper’ academic information online

and shifting student perceptions of what is expected of them in the production of academic

knowledge.

Engaging with online resources impacts on existing social and cultural learning practices and

the contexts in which technology use is embedded must be understood (Orton-Johnson,



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2009). Understanding these social and cultural contexts is potentially problematic in the light

of deterministic narratives that assume that students, as users of technology, are in some

way inherently digitally ’native’ (Prensky, 2001) or naturally predisposed to use and, more

importantly, benefit from their use of digital resources.

A digital native is defined as someone able to access and confidently use a range of new

technologies and as someone for whom using the Internet is a first port of call for information

and learning. This notion of a ‘native’ generation is often used to explain, rationalize and

promote the use of new technologies in education with claims made about a generation that

have been immersed in a networked world of digital technology who use and make sense of

in different ways and who have different expectations about learning (Bullen et al 2011). In a

critique of the native metaphor Helsper and Eynon (2010) (along with a growing body of

literature) point to the need to understand digital literacies along a continuum that connects

to learning and learning practices in different ways, rather than associating changing

learning patterns, competencies or expectations with a particular demographic or

generational effect. This may help us understand how users search for, evaluate and

engage with OERs in different learning and research contexts rather than assuming a

natural digital literacy where provision of resources will result in meaningful use.

While students may engage with technologies to the extent that they have become a

normalised part of daily life it is problematic to assume that personal or social use translates

into knowing how to use online resources for academic work. Issues of trust and credibility

remain important as students make strategic decisions about their academic priorities and

focus (Orton-Johnson, 2009). As Helsper and Eynon (2010:504) argue breadth of use,

experience, self-efficacy and education are just as, if not more, important than age in

explaining how people become ‘digital natives’ and the distinction between the digital ‘native’

and the digital ‘immigrant’ provides only an over simplistic binary in understanding use of

resources, overstating a desire for more technologically-focused approaches to teaching and

learning at university (Baym and Ross 2007).

Bullen at al suggest (2011) that the student ‘tool kit’ of technologies is surprisingly limited

beyond general communication or program-specific online spaces and resources. There is

evidence to suggest that the search and reading approach of the ‘net generation’ lacks

coherent selection criteria and quality evaluation skills (Comba 2011) and we cannot assume



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that all students are competent and confident in dealing with and critically assessing

information (Livingston 2008), possibly pointing to a need for information gateways or

portals. However, there is also evidence to suggest that while ‘generation Y’ doctoral

students in particular are increasingly engaging with open web technologies in their

research, reading (rather than contributing to) wikis, blogs and internet forums they have

working patterns and preferences which may challenge the rationale of open resources.

Students prefer tailor-made advice and guidance, are unwilling to share their research

prematurely and look to libraries and peers rather than academic supervisors and teachers

to assist in navigating a broad and growing range of multi-media materials and resources

(Carpenter et al 2010). Again context is key in understanding different patterns of

consumption and engagement with the emphasis being on provision of resources that are

relevant to students learning contexts and course content (Bullen et al 2011). This poses

challenges for generic resources provision and conversely for closing off cyberspace and

using VLE or QERs as ‘walled gardens’ (Baym and Ross 2007) that suggest particular kinds

of understandings of safety and risk, ownership and belonging in online spaces.

Literature focusing on the development of online learning resources also points to a lack of

knowledge about potential users and how they find, access, and use digital learning

resources. Recker et al (2004:94) go further in arguing that we lack an understanding of the

use and eventual effectiveness of educational digital learning repositories and resources in

instructional settings. Their research into academics search and use strategies suggests that

in order for learning objects and repositories to live up to their potential ‘usefulness they

must be age/level-appropriate, current and accurate. Resources must be flexible enough to

allow for flexible and broad online searches, as well as specific searches, often by age-level

and topic (Recker et al 2004:102). For teacher engagement peer recommendation was

valued as were pedagogically focused rather than generic resources. Raising questions

about granularity Recker et al also highlight a preference for resources that need little or no

modification and that can be easily and usefully employed in existing teaching.

Disciplinary differences are also seem to play an important role in the use and understanding

of online resources with a contextual influence on teaching and learning (Jones et al 2004):

“the socio-cultural form of each subject or discipline has a history and a pattern of

engagement with academic resources in teaching and learning. These ways of using

resources carry over into the digital world. Issues arising beyond technology and the



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university also affect the use of digital resources and this is particularly apparent in

the influence of copyright legislation.”

This again suggests that context and the social cultural life of higher education plays an

important role in staff and student understandings of the purpose and position of online

learning resources in the academy.

It is this context and social cultural life which also impacts upon the way research methods

are taught and how this teaching is received by students. A number of pedagogical

challenges have been identified by teachers of research methods, often revolving around

student engagement. Given the wide range of quantitative and qualitative research methods

used in the social sciences, how can students be given a broad grounding in these methods

which they nevertheless perceive as relevant to their own disciplines and research projects?

If high quality open educational resources for research methods were easily discoverable

could they be used by students to meet their own training needs or could they be adapted by

staff to support their teaching. In order to address this question the remainder of this

literature review will be devoted to an examination of the pedagogical challenges associated

with teaching research methods across the social sciences and how open educational

resources might be employed to address them.

Pedagogicalchallengesofteachingresearchmethodstostudentsfromdifferentbackgrounds/disciplinesSocial research is increasingly being evaluated by Government agencies and research

councils in terms of its supposed contribution to the economy in whatever sense that can be

measured and this has lead inevitably to critiques of the value of social research and a focus

on empirical, experimental and often quantitative evidence as the only justifiable outcome of

publicly funded research. Not surprisingly, these changes have raised a number of dilemmas

and concerns about the role of universities in the training of researchers, what constitutes

'good' quality research training and the relevance of postgraduate research training courses

to students' needs. This has focused attention on the provision of research methods training

for postgraduates particularly through the Researcher Development Framework and the

ESRC doctoral training centres but also raised a fair amount of suspicion among academic

communities about how the demands of research funders are related to public policy

agendas or even commercial interests, and whether the imposition of formal training



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programmes and emphasis on competency in research methods compromise some of the

traditional elements of the PhD.

John Hockey has documented the ongoing debate in the social sciences about the inclusion

of formal research training into the PhD and the adherence of the ESRC to the training

based PhD. (Hockey 1991). He also identified important disciplinary distinctions between the

more quantitative disciplines including economics and business studies where the move

towards a training based model was generally well received and the more qualitative

disciplines such as sociology where the model of the PhD as apprenticeship continued to be

popular. For many supervisors in these disciplines ‘perceptions of training courses were that

they were essentially concerned with the transmission of methodological techniques, a

content which some perceived as too narrow’ (Hockey 1991: 201). Many were also

concerned that the time spent on formal research training represented a significant loss of

time for research. Even though Hockey’s research was carried out twenty years ago, these

concerns are still regularly expressed by staff and students in the more qualitative social

sciences. Nevertheless, the NCRM report of 2011 identified high levels of demand for

qualitative and quantitative training, but the level at which this was needed varied: ‘the

demand for quantitative methods training is mostly at introductory level, while the demand

for training in qualitative methods is mostly at the intermediate or advanced level (Mosely

and Wiles 2011: 4). Furthermore, early career researchers tended to look for qualitative

methods training whereas more researchers wanted training in advanced quantitative

methods (Mosely and Wiles 2011: 8). The survey also identified a pressing need for

quantitative training but not at the expense of qualitative training.

As far back as the Dearing Report (NCIHE, 1997) there was discussion of new approaches

to teaching suggesting that the student experience could be enhanced through the use of

resource-based learning. This discussion was connected to the idea that as student

numbers increase, the cost per student should fall to keep the total cost within public

spending constraints (Dearing, 1997: Appendix 2). As Holley and Oliver point out, however,

‘the economic model of unit costs takes pedagogy away from the expert tutor, the subject

specialist, and places it firmly in the hands of management’ (Holley and Oliver 2009: 4). This

shift towards the commodification of education has contributed to a tendency to fragment

teaching into discrete blocks or modules that can be delivered in more flexible ways lending

themselves particularly to online delivery. This modularization is presented as student-



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centred, but Sharpe and Benfield have argued that when e-learning adapts new or unusual

pedagogies learners report an intensely emotional experience and a major concern with time

and time management‟ (Sharpe and Benfield, 2004:7) Nevertheless, ‘with pedagogic choice

becoming a matter of strategy rather than tactics, the choice of teaching techniques

becomes a matter of serving functional agendas of efficiency’ (Holley and Oliver 2009: 5).All

this has had important implications for the pedagogy of research methods that have created

both opportunities and challenges. Most significantly research methods, particularly at

undergraduate level have come to be seen as more or less generic sets of skills and

techniques that can be delivered to large groups of students outside of their disciplinary

context.

The Social sciences are typically imagined by those who teach and study them to be a free

form of social and political enquiry (Mills 1959) but the current financial and ideological

contexts in which social sciences are taught raise serious concerns about the ‘ever-growing

subjugation of scholarly and teaching practices to external, utterly alien commercial and

managerial interests’ (Frade 2009: 10). Generic research methods provision offered outside

of departments is often associated with this ‘commercializing’ or ‘instrumentalizing of social

science research’, particularly when compulsory. Methods courses are sometimes perceived

as threatening to reduce social science to a ‘set of bureaucratic techniques which inhibit

social inquiry by “methodological” pretensions’ (Mills 1959: 20) and this impression is

exacerbated if these courses impose a conceptual division between method and theory that

pertains in the natural sciences but disguises the fuzzy relationship between these notions

that characterizes actual practice in the social sciences. In this way, the isolation of methods

from disciplinary teaching and students’ own departments can lead to mistrust of ‘methods

teaching’ and a retreat into disciplinary language and habitus.

The NCRM survey of 2011 identified that ‘the most common reason given for undertaking

research methods training was to meet the needs arising from a current or planned research

project’ (Mosely & Wiles 2011:4) As Maria Birbili has argued, students' motivation - or lack

of it - to participate in research training is a key issue and ‘being aware of the different ways

in which social science research students ‘want and need to access' research training’

(Birbili 2006: 4 ) can help institutions to provide a better student experience. In her

comprehensive review of literature on educational research training Birbili identifies that

research on the views of students about research training, in the social sciences and other



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disciplines, indicates that some students are resistant to idea of compulsory research

training and tend to judge research methods training by its ‘relevance and usefulness to their

own practical work’ (Birbili 2006: 4) often becoming ‘resentful if they perceive that there is a

mismatch between the two’ (Birbili 2006: 4) In many cases students may come to see

research methods training as a distraction from their main purpose of completing their thesis.

Mosely and Wiles found that respondents to their survey did appear to be ‘motivated to train

more by short-term needs than more longer-term wants’ (Mosely & Wiles 2011: 54) 60%

expressed a desire for training relevant to specific research projects and only 5% suggested

that they were motivated by a desire to open up new opportunities for research in the future.

However, Mosely and Wiles contrast short term needs with longer term wants and argue that

‘the wide range and large number of training topics selected by respondents as training

‘needs’ suggests they had more long term and wide-ranging ‘wants’ in mind (Mosely & Wiles

20011:54). This apparent ambiguity may be rooted in social scientists perceptions of how

they learn to do social scientific research.

50 years ago Mills described social science as ‘a craft’ (Mills 1959: 195) as opposed to a

technique or a methodology (Frade 2009:11). He identified three conditions for the pursuit of

social science as a free form of enquiry; a vocation, a ‘sociological imagination’ and a politics

for the social sciences ‘opposed to the handing over of the disciplines and the

accommodation of their practitioners to the powers that be’ (Frade:15). The educational task

of the social scientist, as Mills saw it, is not only the passing on of skills and techniques, but

the transmission of these pre-requisites to the next generation of social scientists. These

values of craftsmanship and disciplinary identity seem at odds with the bureaucratic

principles of efficiency, economy and measurability which often motivate the pedagogy of

methods teaching, particularly the separation of methods from theory and the delivery of

methods teaching in large generic cross-disciplinary courses. So much so that for students

who have developed a strong disciplinary identity accepting that one can be taught methods

independently from theory, or from a specific research project seems like accepting a

debased form of social science.

The use of open educational resources has considerable potential to address this problem

by making generic methods resources freely available to researchers and teachers as and

when they need it in a form that can be tailored to a particular research project or



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incorporated into a more theoretical course. The challenge is to offer research methods

resources in such a way that consulting them is not considered what Walter Benjamin would

have called a ‘mechanical Duty’ which’ does not flow from the work itself’. (Benjamin 1915:

78-9) The achievement of such provision, however, risks falling prey to the bureaucratization

of academic practice itself, as Frade puts it:

Naturally, when meeting managerial targets is the master motive driving

vocational practices, any language which deviates from counting, efficiency,

quality’ and the like is bound to be dismissed out of hand as anachronistic or out

of place (Frade 2009: 10)

Nevertheless, without ways to contextualize open educational resources for research

methods in their disciplines and in their own research students are unlikely to engage with

them or find them useful.

The existing literature on research methods provision in the social sciences suggests that

key areas of concern are students' reaction to research training; the content and and

structure of methods courses; and pedagogical issues such as the extent to which face-to-

face teaching can be substituted by technology-mediated learning and how to incorporate

practical experience in research training (Biribili 2006: 1). The Researcher Development

Framework indicates a number of skills and competencies that research students are

expected to acquire including the basic principles of research design and strategy,

awareness of a range of methods and tools, as general research skills such as, bibliographic

and computing skills, Students are expected to 'develop and practice' competencies such as,

communication skills, research management and team-working skills. As a number of

commentators have pointed out, however, research involves 'more than selecting

appropriate methods and carrying them out' or 'executing a set of prescribed steps' (Birbili

2006, Amulya, 1998; Walker, 1999). Although researchers need to develop an

understanding of the methodological tools available within their disciplinary tradition,

research training must ‘prepare students to think about research as a dynamic process [and]

appreciate the many factors (e.g. personal, ethical, theoretical, political, technical, social etc)

that shape it’ (Birbili 2006; 3)



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The literature suggests that the success of research training also depends upon students

perceptions of what constitutes research and their assumptions about the nature of different

research methodologies such as the relative value of qualitative and quantitative methods. A

preference for quantitative research can lead students to query the 'validity' of qualitative

inquiry and vice versa (Glesne and Webb, 1993). All of this is strongly influenced by their

disciplinary background but also by their individual experience and the orientations of their

lecturers or their supervisor. This makes it all the more important that students see the

relevance of methods training to their disciplines and individual research projects. As Winn

has observed, for many students research is not in itself an 'intrinsically appealing' subject

(Winn, 1995, p. 203) Winn argues, therefore that students benefit particularly from practical

experience of research which allows them to appreciate issues such as building field

relationships, gaining access, or working within time constraints but also gives them the

opportunity to gain an understanding 'of how the various stages of research fit together in

the research process' (Winn 1995, p. 204).

Successful engagement of students in research methods training relies on a sound

understanding of the processes of, and obstacles to, learning. These may be related to

students’ conceptions of research itself which are in turn related to the research cultures of

their institutions and departments. As Claire Wagner and her colleagues have pointed out,

‘The choice of teachers for a research methods course tends to reflect the perception of

methodology within a department or even the institution as a whole’ (Wagner et. al. 2011:

83). In some institutions methods training is regarded as the transmission of basic

information and skills and junior staff members or postgraduate students are asked to teach

the course. In others, where it is viewed as an ‘esoteric interest’, it is left to faculty members

with a ‘methodological cast of mind’ (Wagner et. al. 2011: 83). A recent development,

fostered by Vitae and the Researcher Development Framework is the shift from the idea of

methods training and ‘transferrable skills’ to the idea of reflective professional development

of researchers throughout their career. On this model research methods provision is part of

the development of the individual researcher into a rounded professional who may continue

in an academic career or find themselves engaged in commercial research. Mosely and

Wiles analysed the content of job vacancies for research posts in social sciences and found

that ‘skills in both qualitative and quantitative methods are sought and, in each of these

approaches, skills in data analysis in particular’ (Mosely & Wiles 2011: 53). Their analysis

also showed that of employers are seeking researchers with skills across a range of



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methods, suggesting a growing need for social researchers to have generalist research

skills. Research students, however, tend to be focused on their primary research project,

which they see as the route to an academic career and, as a result they are not necessarily

aware of the requirements of employers.

Elizabeth Frazer conducted focus groups with students in Sociology, Anthropology and

Politics Departments at the University of Oxford in 2003 to explore students' views about

research methods training. It emerged from the focus groups that ‘there was no uniform

conception of what research training should consist of, and in general the conceptions that

were articulated were vague’ (Frazer 2003: vii). Nevertheless, Frazer reported general

discontent with methods programmes that did not meet students' expectations. Sociology

students were disappointed by the lack of theory in their methods courses and by a

perceived bias towards quantitative methods. They were unhappy with the assessment of

methods courses and some reported feeling ‘insulted’ by them. (Frazer 2003: vii).

The anthropology students in Frazer’s study were extremely negative about their research

methods training ‘they were not only in disagreement with the faculty as to what training

should comprise, but […] the scope for communicating this disenchantment was virtually

non-existent.’ (Frazer 2003:xii) Some students expressed the view that the theoretical

grounding that they received was their real training. They were most positive about

opportunities to hear about other students or researchers’ experiences. ‘There was strong

disagreement over the issue of whether teaching the methodology of a technique (such as

interviewing) should be subservient to a critical awareness of the social relations involved in

that technique’ (Frazer 2003: xiv). For these students there is some scope for teaching and

learning insofar as it aids critical thinking and self- reflection on fieldwork, but on the whole to

attempt to teach in any systematic way ‘field research methodology’ provokes resentment’

(Frazer 2003 xv) Many students did, however express the belief that there is a basic set of

anthropological tools which can be taught to all students and applied more or less universally

in the field’ (Frazer 2003: xiv). There was also a suggestion that training could be overly

theoretical and lacking in ‘practical training in specific techniques relevant to particular

students’ areas of research’ (Frazer 2003: xiv) Interestingly there was considerable

scepticism about lecturers ability to teach practical skills.



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Politics and International relations students felt that the research training courses were too

generalized, and did not have enough specific reference to their own research projects. The

teachers of the courses did not understand their specific research requirements and their

supervisors tended to ‘strongly recommend’ all courses, rather than taking account of their

individual needs either. Students said that political science did not have unique

methodologies, but encompassed the methods of other social sciences. They felt that

political scientists were trained to be theoretical (Frazer 2003: vxii). As for other disciplines

the connections made between methods training and employment were tenuous. ‘A general

perception was that professional political science work, in particular, is often

methodologically basic’ (Frazer 2003: vxi). Training in basic software packages was

considered more important for professional work than any specialist political science skills.

In all disciplines there was little clarity about what “skills” social scientists develop. Frazer

reports that ‘The word “skills” met with laughter from some students while for others “Skills

has a very manual labour-type connotation”’(Frazer 2003: ix) At the same time, Frazer’s

research found that ‘students did not have clear knowledge of employment opportunities

outside academia. In fact, the majority of students seemed happy and even to wish to limit

the acquisition of skills to those directly required for their own research projects’ (Frazer

2003: vii). There is a strong suggestion here that students’ ambivalence or even antipathy

towards generic methods courses is connected to a lack of understanding about what

becoming a professional researcher entails and how generic research skills might relate to

that. Learning ‘practical’ skills is useful only if students understand when and why it would be

useful to apply for what purposes. (Frazer 2003: xxiii). Another issue was timing and some

students reported frustration that courses that would have been helpful in developing their

research were delivered too late to be of any use. This suggests a need for greater flexibility

so that students could take courses at times appropriate to their needs.

The idea of ‘teaching’ or ‘learning’ many of the skills necessary for good social science

research can be problematic in itself. Often the assumption is that they are best acquired

through practical research experience (for anthropologists this is connected to the idea of

fieldwork as a rite of passage). For this reason the supervisor and peer group are of crucial

importance in student’s decisions about their development partly in providing guidance about

what training opportunities to pursue, so any strategy for promoting engagement with OER’s

must target supervisors as well as students themselves. A key problem with methods



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courses (which came up for Frazer’s focus groups) relates to employability. Many students

are focused upon obtaining academic posts through teaching and publication and acquiring

skills that may be important in professional/non-academic careers is not their main concern.

Students accept that methods training may be useful in employment, but as most research

students intend to pursue academic careers, it is significant that ‘students overwhelmingly

think that “research training” is irrelevant to an academic career except in so far as it aids

their research (Frazer 2003: xviii)

Mosely and Wiles found that researchers do appreciate the importance of gaining a wide

ranging skill set. Staff with responsibility for training social scientists in particular emphasised

a

need to promote training in what might be viewed as the ‘fundamental’ skills of social science research methods, as well as the need to support training in transferable skills, many of which are IT related (Mosely and Wiles 2011: 53)

However, as Wagner has identified, textbooks on research methods tend to address

the ‘how to’ of research methods, rather than the pedagogy of teaching methods

(Wagner et. al. 2011: 75). Their survey of articles published between 1997 and 2007

identified seven themes in the discussion of, research methods teaching. The first

referred to general issues or aspects of teaching research methods and was often

theoretical in approach. The second concerned data analysis and data analysis

software particularly in teaching qualitative research methods. Theme three focused

on teaching quantitative research methods and theme four on teaching mixed

quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Theme five described specific techniques

for teaching research methods and theme six concerned the way in which research

methods pedagogy is conducted within a specific disciplines. Finally, theme seven

concerned teaching ethics in research (Wagner et. al. 2011: 78).

Literature providing an introduction to research methods in the social sciences has tended to

go over much of the same ground, focusing on how knowledge of the social world is gained

including, for example, surveys, interviewing, participant observation, and documentary and

comparative research (eg Bryman 2008, Gilbert 2008, Silverman 2005). Methods are have

to be delivered as a set of techniques that are generic enough to be adopted by diverse

researchers in order to equip them with a toolkit of procedures for collecting data that fits

their research template. Despite considerable investment in the development of research

methods, such as the ESRC’s research methods programme, the National Centre for



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Research Methods and the Researcher Development Framework, recent publications aimed

at teaching research methods to students often eschew an abstract or ‘how to’ approach in

favour of focusing on specific examples (eg Devine and Heath 2009 or O'Donoghue, and

Punch,2003) Some contemporary research methods literature concerns itself with the

relationships that are held to exist between theory and practice, and the place of values and

ethics in the process of carrying out research (eg Sayer 1984, Churton and Brown 1999).

Tom O'Donoghue, and Keith Punch (2003) discuss a series of examples of research

conducted by postgraduate students in order to demonstrate the interplay between the

application and the context of the research problem revealing the way in which the

application is moulded by and to that context (O’Donaghue and Punch 2003:1). The

methods covered are common to other methods texts, including grounded theory, life

stories, phenomenology discourse analysis, social semiotics and participant observation. But

the approach of presenting actual research projects allows students to see how an

interesting question was tackled in terms of both strategy and technique, or to identify what

other research methods might have been appropriate. Students can see how others have

explored the principles that underpin a method and how they argue the case for using that

method in their research. This provides an opportunity to discuss themes of good practice in

research (O’Donaghue and Punch 2003:1).

Kim Etherington concentrates on developing reflexivity in research, offering an insight into

the processes of doing research through the personal stories of researchers. In her view,

‘many research books are difficult to read and seem to have little relationship to the reader’s

own lived experiences of undertaking research’ (Etherington 2004) The narrative approach

she adopts to discussing research projects brings to the fore the theoretical ideas of

postmodernism and social constructionism that are present in her own thinking and her

struggles to make sense of these ideas in her practice of narrative therapy. In this way the

problematic relationship between methods and theory is highlighted in a core research

methods text.

This may seem like an attempt to bridge a formidable gap but some discussion of this is

problem is increasingly regarded as essential for courses in research methods training.

Devine and Heath, for instance highlight the crucial link between the choice of research

methods and research findings (Devine and Heath 2009: 3) and point to a growing distance



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between theoretical developments which are critical of past empirical research and

proponents of empirical methods who dismiss theory as irrelevant (Devine and Heath 2009:

4). Mike Savage and Roger Burrows have addressed the changing significance of empirical

research in sociology in a context where data gathering for non academic purposes has

become ubiquitous (Savage 2007). They identify a crisis of confidence in sociological

methods of data gathering both quantitative and qualitative associated with a ‘shift of

expertise away from the academy’ (Savage and Burrows 2007: 10) This crisis cannot be

addressed by more methods training but by reflection on how sociologists should relate to

the proliferation of social data gathered by others (Savage and Burrows 2007:12).

Tim May also attempts to address the relationships between theory and method in social

research through major philosophical and methodological debates touching on problems of

objectivity, positivism and realism through to postmodernism and feminism that have

impacted upon the way social scientists collect and interpret their data. (May 2001). May, for

example, draws a parallel between postmodernism and the problem, of establishing a

general explanation of beliefs beyond their social context in comparative research. Such

important methodological critiques associated with ‘the post modern turn in the social

sciences’ (Devine and Heath 2009:8) raise questions about the interpretation of empirical

data which cannot be addressed in isolation from theory. ‘The ways in which we collect

evidence and the methods by which we do so are, then dynamic issues in the social

sciences’ (Devine and Heath 2009: 10) The challenge for methods teaching here is to

explain complex topics in a succinct and straightforward manner whilst addressing practical

issues of concern to researchers planning fieldwork such as, conducting a survey, including

sampling, using questionnaires, or advice on coding and analysis. (May 2001). This literature

suggests that methods training cannot be restricted to such practical concerns but must

relate theory, methodology and method.

Other barriers to accessing methods training are lack of time and lack of funding, particularly

for contract researchers. (Mosely & Wiles 2011:9). There is a considerable demand for

locally-based training but the establishment of the ESRC Doctoral Training Centres will

concentrate research methods provision in fewer centres that may be more distant from

researchers’ home institution, making face-to-face short courses more difficult and online

research methods training will be expected to fill this gap.



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One of the ways to overcome some of the problems identified as barriers to training, such as time limitations and accessibility is to make use of internet-based training. When asked whether they had ever used internet-based research methods training resources only a third said ‘yes’. (Mosely & Wiles 2011:43)

Access to OERs could be a means of providing for the practical needs of researchers in a

timely fashion that is difficult to achieve in traditional methods courses, without researchers

having to travel, but the current level of use of these resources is very low. The NCRM

survey of 2011 found that their was a willingness among researchers to use such resources

but their was a lack of knowledge about their availability and a problem of ensuring quality

and appropriateness (Mosely & Wiles 2011:5) Researchers perceived a lack of suitable

training or resources in the topic areas in which they were interested and some expressed a

preference for face-to-face training (Mosely & Wiles 2011:43). ‘A lack of time to locate and

make use of on-line training or resources was frequently noted’ (Mosely & Wiles 2011:43).

It has been observed that the introduction of technological (e-learning) solutions do little to

change established pedagogical practices (see Oliver 2009) and it remains to be seen

whether access to good quality OERs for research methods in the social sciences will be an

agent of change. Schoenfeld argues that what is most important in preparing students to

become researchers is 'providing a supportive environment that lives and breathes research

issues, is open and reflective, allow people to pursue ideas that they really care about, and

provides them with many opportunities to learn, early on, from their mistakes they will

inevitably make.' (Schoenfeld 1999: 200) Flexible alternatives to compulsory research

methods programmes are most likely to overcome students' resistance by meeting their

differing needs (Collinson and Hockey, 1997) and access to good quality OER’s could

provide a means for students, in consultation with their supervisors, to assemble a

customised research training package. This entails examining not only social theory,

methodology and method, but also the relationships between them.

References

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Social research methods and open educational resources: a literature review (C-SAP collections...

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