Higher Education Research Methodology

A Step-by-Step Guide to the Research Process

Ben Kei Daniel, Tony Harland

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351369473
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book is for anyone who wishes to improve university teaching and learning through systematic inquiry. It provides advice, but also a constructive critique of research methods and, in turn, the authors also make a contribution to the theories of research methodology.

Topics covered include ontology, epistemology and engagement with academic literature, as well as research design approaches and methods of data collection. There is a keen focus on quality in both the analysis and evaluation of research and new models are proposed to help the new researcher. The authors conclude by examining the challenges in getting work published and close with some words on quality of thought and action.

The ideas in the book come from the authors' extensive experience in teaching research methods courses in higher education, health and the corporate sector, as well as several empirical research projects that have helped provide a methodology for higher education. It will be of particular interest to postgraduate students, academic developers and experienced academics from a wide variety of disciplines.

1

The study of higher education

Introduction

This chapter sets the scene for the study of higher education and examines some of the current conceptions and the values of qualitative research methods. The aim is to help academics understand the broader context in the study of higher education and to provide some ideas for understanding and responding to the many questions the new researcher will need to answer. The seven topics in the chapter have emerged mainly from our research methods teaching, in particular from the conversations we have had with academics entering the field for the first time. There is no doubt in our minds that the transition from a scientific quantitative background, or a positivist view of knowledge, is a major challenge for new researchers, but the study of higher education is quite unique in the university because academics study their personal social circumstances. The aim of this chapter is to respond to the concerns and curiosity of novices in such a way as to provide some clarity around the context for higher education research. The seven topics are as follows:

1.The higher education community

2.Research as a form of teaching

3.The evolution of teaching research

4.The intellectual exercise of qualitative research

5.Discovery

6.Jargon or disciplinary language?

7.Research methodology as a field of inquiry in higher education

1The higher education community

Who studies higher education? The answer to this question is not so straightforward but those entering the field need to know something about their new research community. Six distinct groups of people have been identified (see Table 1.1) (Harland, 2009).

Table 1.1People who study higher education

Group	Including
1Education department researchers	Researchers who work in education departments and have higher education as their interest
2Research institute professionals	Policy researchers
3Part-time researchers	Academics from all disciplines who have a primary research subject but also do some higher education research, usually about teaching
4Disciplinary specialists	Academics who specialize in teaching research in a single discipline
5Academic developers	Research active academic developers
6Administrators	University managers, administrators and support staff

Each ‘partner’ group has a different background but what they all have in common is an interest in the broad subject and practices of higher education, even though they might not label what they do as ‘higher education’. However, confusion may arise because of a sense of place. All subjects conduct higher education research because the work is done in higher education (e.g. in a university). If a chemistry or history lecturer was asked if they did higher education research, it is likely that there would be an affirmative answer.

The first group in the table consists of education department researchers. In some way they have certain claims over the field that the others do not, partly because of education’s long established history, and also because this is where the field started. These researchers typically have undergraduate or postgraduate qualifications in education and so can be seen as time-served apprentices. Group two are the professional researchers who can be located in government and specialist research institutions. Their interests typically include higher education policy and governance. Group three are the part-time researchers who make up the vast majority of researchers in the field but usually see higher education as a secondary interest. They include the historians, biologists, accountants, mathematicians and so on, who typically investigate teaching and learning within the context of their discipline. These part-time researchers have a primary research field and tend to be self-contained within their own disciplines. They have discipline-specific journals (e.g. Journal of Accounting Education) and conferences, or include educational streams at mainstream discipline conferences.

The fourth group appears more rarely in the higher education community. Members of this group work in a discipline context but differ from the part-time researchers because they only do research on education in that discipline. An example from the health sciences would be ‘medical education’, and although we include such groups, it is debatable whether or not they would see themselves as higher education researchers. Then there are people like the authors of this book, the academic developers. Not all in this profession are researchers, but the numbers worldwide who are active is substantial enough to hold international conferences. The sixth group consists of university managers and administrators who also make contributions to higher education through specialist journals and conferences.

However, all these groups also cross boundaries and work within multi-disciplinary communities such as those fostered by the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA), the UK’s Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE), and Canada’s Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE). These societies provide events and conferences that bring the wider higher education group together and are the catalyst for journals that accept the whole community of researchers. When starting out, it is important to realize that, for example, the specialist nursing or geography education journals will often contain relevant, high quality articles of interest to all those who study higher education, regardless of which field of study the researchers situate themselves in.

In all of these contexts, higher education seems to be an ‘open access discipline’ (Harland, 2009). It appears that virtually anyone can do this work, perhaps needing only some prior research or writing skills. A background in the subject of higher education may be desirable but it is not required (Tight, 2012), and so it is inevitable that such a field sits at the bottom of the knowledge hierarchy of our institutions and society (Becher, 1989). What we argue is that the open nature of the higher education field and the diversity of researchers should be celebrated. It belongs to all those who work in higher education and have an interest in higher education’s practices, regardless of what subject is normally studied or taught. However, there is a caveat, in that most of what is published seems to be descriptive accounts of practice. There are 3.7 million hits in Google Scholar for ‘problem based learning’ and you don’t have to drill down too far to find the majority of work is essentially descriptive. We propose that many of these studies would have been of higher quality had a critical approach been taken to research and this idea is foundational to our thinking about research methodology and higher education scholarship.

2Research as a form of teaching

On the whole, within universities and among scholars, the status hierarchy in science attributes the highest status to basic research, secondary status to applied research, and virtually no status to formative and action research.

(Patton, 2002, p. 223)

Patton’s argument has a central idea about explaining how research is valued and we believe that this hierarchy has been sustained over time. It still carries weight and influence among the academic community, with pure or basic research having the highest status. However, the conceptual order has recently come under serious criticism. In New Zealand, the government, through research accountability exercises, has challenged the higher education sector to ensure that the research it does has some practical relevance to society. This phenomenon is part of the worldwide neoliberal shift in how governments see the relationship between universities and society and the role they have in supporting the so-called free market. Although concerns are mainly with research in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and work that has direct economic gain, there is still some room on the margins of the main argument for research that addresses ‘wider’ societal benefits. It is here that higher education research can claim a legitimate place, if its central purposes are considered to meet the new utility criterion and if practitioners can demonstrate the benefits and applied nature of their work.

We would contend that all research (in all subjects) is done first to help the researcher learn, then to help colleagues and peers learn and then the broader community (see Chapter 2). Research is therefore one of the purest forms of teaching. In this conception, it has practical intent and when we directly address research to the subject of higher education, utility comes from the impact it makes on teachers and other practitioners who either listen to or read the research accounts. As this research is disseminated, it can influence practice change and the quality of education for university students should improve.

Bear in mind that most university lecturers are employed as novice teachers who must learn their craft in the first years of employment through trial and error. The errors and trials can negatively impact on successive generations of students while improvements in practice during this time have the opposite effect. It goes without saying that the sector requires teachers of the highest calibre and learning from research is an essential part of academic development for both the individual and the profession. However, learning from carrying out research is just as important for professional learning. Learning through research into practice and recognizing ‘higher education research as teaching’ are foundational values that can inform every part of the research process. For example, for the authors of this book, our work is always done to contribute to theory and to help our colleagues learn about practice. In the process we improve our practices. However, we would argue that our wider impact on society is through helping to improve the quality of academic work and so the quality of student learning. Those outside the field may interpret this latter claim as an ‘indirect benefit’ but we would argue that if we can contribute to high quality teaching and learning, this is also the foundation of all future research across all subjects, including pure research, STEM subjects and research done directly to improve economic success.

3The evolution of teaching research

If research at the start of the 20th century, particularly in the field of education, is examined, we can see a clear divide between theory and practice. Research was largely quantitative and theoretical, while teaching was a practical endeavour. This quantitative-theoretical legacy remained dominant in the social sciences for much of the century, even though John Dewey (1910) had rejected such dualistic thinking and challenged the distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge by proposing that the process of inquiry was the same in either construct and so could provide a unifying concept for practice (Dewey, 1938). Dewey claimed that the properties of inquiry are contained in thinking and action and the patterns of inquiry are the same for all epistemological conceptions. It does not matter if the inquirer is addressing a question in science or a problem of everyday professional practice; k...