Capacity building in advanced social science research methods: researching teaching and learning processes

Increasing attention is being paid to the ways in which research methods are taught, especially to undergraduate students, and response to concerns regarding skills and capacities within UK social sciences.To-date, however, there has been comparatively little empirical engagement with the processes involved in the teaching and learning of these methodologies amongst researchers working in (or towards) a career in higher education (especially outside of specific disciplinary contexts) or as non-academic social researchers. This project, which is led by researchers from the University of Southampton hub of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods, looks specifically at how more ‘advanced’ or ‘innovative’ social research methods are taught and learnt within the UK social science community, related to the remit of the NCRM to build methodological capacity amongst social science researchers. This study marks a step-change from existing research in this area, which has predominantly focused on courses offered to undergraduate/postgraduate students and not on the kind of short courses provided by NCRM and similar training providers. In it we seek to engage advanced methods teachers and learners in working with us with the aim of elucidating the distinctive pedagogical challenges, demands, knowledge and processes involved in this field, our early findings to be shared at the SRHE Annual Conference will offer new insights into the sorts of social research methods capacity building that have been identified as a priority for the role of the UK academy, in an era of global change and heightened competitiveness in higher educatio