BA Education, Leadership and Culture

Social and Cultural Research Methods (hereafter RM) is a core unit for students on the BA(Hons) Education, Leadership and Culture (ELC). The unit gives students the opportunity to understand and explore research principles by conducting their own mini research projects.

Through the unit students develop a functional understanding of qualitative and quantitative research methods and how these can be applied to social, cultural, and education settings.

The RM unit provides an essential foundation for students’ final year research projects as well as giving them the practical skills to conduct research in real-world environments. 

The unit aims to:

• Introduce students to research design 
• Develop student skills in the area of qualitative and quantitative research methods
• Support students in the conducting of a mixed-methods mini-research project

• Research questions and rationale
• The identification of research ‘gaps’ through literature
• Research methods and methodologies
• Collecting qualitative and quantitative primary data
• Analysing data sets
• Conducting qualitative and quantitative analysis
• Presentation of qualitative data
• Presentation of quantitative data
• Presentation of descriptive and inferential statistics
• Writing up results and presenting research findings
• Making research findings accessible and applicable to real world audiences

methodologies in research and how they can be applied in research designs relevant to eduction, leadership and culture. MIE/BA ELC-based guest speakers/authors of research papers having identified research gaps and applied specific methodological approaches in their published work may be invited to share their experience from an author’s perspective. 
The seminars are intended to deepen students’ understanding of the lecture content and invite them to apply the knowledge they have learned, e.g. working effectively with online literature search platforms, critical reading of research papers and reports in view of identifying research gaps and underlying paradigms and methodologies. Emphasis, and related exercises, will also focus on the accessibility of writing and sharing research findings with different (non/academic) audiences.

Based on semester 1 teaching and learning, lectures in semester 2 will focus more specifically on the systematic and practical execution of research projects in terms of research planning and design, sampling, research access, conduct, data storage and analysis, research ethics, etc. MIE/BA ELC-based guest speakers specialising on specific methodological approaches may be invited to share their experience with, and approaches, to, certain research problems. 
Seminars will be used to reflect on the content of lectures and will also involve experiential individual and group research activities, such as interviewing, focus groups, non/participant observation, or digital survey design.   

• describe key research concepts relevant to education and cultural social research
• apply theoretical research methods to practical research projects  

• analyse and evaluate information from academic and non-academic sources
• produce effective and answerable research questions

• search and review information from academic and non academic sources and be able to synthesise this to provide a rationale for their research
• generate both qualitative and quantitative research methods
• choose appropriate data analysis methods to research findings 
   

• organise their time to conduct an independent research project
• select and use appropriate IT packages for the analysis and presentation of data
• communicate complex ideas clearly and accurately in writing that is accessible to both academic and non-academic audience
   

Literature-informed research proposal
1500 Words - 40%

Research findings 2500 words - 60%

15 working days later in writing

Bristol, L. (2012). Postcolonial Thought: A Theoretical and Methodological Means for Thinking through Culturally Ethical Research. In: Lavia, J.M., Mahlomaholo, S. (eds) Culture, Education, and Community. Palgrave Macmillan’s Postcolonial Studies in Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

White, P. (2009) Developing research question: a guide for social scientists. Basingstoke England; New York: Palgrave Macmillan. (Chapter 1 from 2017 edition)

Bryman, A. (2015) Social research methods. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press

Bell, J. (2005). Doing Your Research Project. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Robson, C. (2002) Real World Research. Oxford: Blackwell.  
Maycut, P and Moorehouse, R (1994) Beginning Qualitative Research. London: Falmer Press

de Vaus, David (2001) Research Design in Social Research. Sage Publications (Chapter 1)

Gorard, S. (2013) Research Design - Creating Robust Approaches for the Social Sciences. Sage Publications

Thomas, J.R., Nelson, J.K , and Silverman, S. (2015) Research methods in Physical Activity. 7th edition. Human Kinetics. (Earlier editions)

Finn, M., Elliott-White, M. and Walton, M. (2000) Tourism and Leisure Research Methods. Harlow: Longman

Saunders, M., Lewis, P. & Thornhill, A. (2015) Research Methods for Business Students. New York: Pearson Education.

Seale, Jane; Nind, Melanie and Parsons, Sarah (2014). Inclusive research in education: contributions to method and debate. International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 37(4) pp. 347–356

Veal, A. (2014) Research Methods for Leisure and Tourism. Harlow: Financial Times Prentice Hall.  

Veck, W. & Hall, M. (2020) Inclusive research in education: dialogue, relations and methods, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 24:10, 1081-1096.

Richards, Lyn (2015) Handling Qualitative Data - A Practical Guide. Sage Publications (Chapter 1)

Hooley, T., Marriott, J. and Wellens, J. (2012) What is Online Research? Using the Internet for Social Science Research. Bloomsbury Open Access