Abstract
ABSTRACTAmidst major new initiatives in research that are beginning to address the pedagogic dimension of building capacity in social science research methods, this paper makes the first move to apply the lens of inclusive pedagogy to research methods pedagogy. The paper explores the ways in which learning social science research methods is hard and may be anxiety-provoking, which has sometimes led to a deficit discourse in which learners are positioned as ill-prepared and fearful. Learners can then be blamed for being hard to teach when an inclusive pedagogical lens would support a more asset-based discourse. Nonetheless, the authors argue that without traditional deficit-based solutions of the remedial class, special needs label or special teacher within the methods learning environment, methods teachers have developed their own responses. These pedagogic responses, elicited from the authors’ research using methods of expert interviews, focus groups and video-stimulated dialogue, address challenges associated with the learner, the learning material and the teacher’s context. The paper differentiates between practical solution-focused strategies and more holistic approaches. The authors illustrate how methods teachers reach out to diverse learners and they conclude that data and standpoints are used in inclusive teaching to make connections and to support learning.
Highlights
The research discussed in this paper is primarily aimed at understanding the pedagogy at work in social science research methods teaching
Amidst major new initiatives in research that are beginning to address the pedagogic dimension of building capacity in social science research methods, this paper makes the first move to apply the lens of inclusive pedagogy to research methods pedagogy
The first strand, relates to practical solution-focused pedagogy in the form of strategies and tactics to work around challenges; the second focuses on more holistic approaches including values-based pedagogy
Summary
The research discussed in this paper is primarily aimed at understanding the pedagogy at work in social science research methods teaching. For Alexander (2009, 11), pedagogy is ‘the act of teaching together with its attendant discourse’, and the discourse of inclusive pedagogy is not often associated with adults learning research methods, where the pedagogical discourse generally is under-developed (Kilburn, Nind, and Wiles 2014). It is mostly in research methods textbooks that we can find an articulation of inclusive values. Though, that we draw on literature from both ends of this continuum and that the ‘everyone’ in methods classrooms represents a selective/selected population
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