Educational Research: Philosophy and PracticeModule Details

Background and Rationale

This course focuses on quantitative and qualitative research methodology as they are implemented within education. The goal of the course is to teach students to understand and to confidently apply a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods and research designs that are essential for their research. During this course students will be introduced to various models which are routinely used in research at the doctoral level. The principles learned, in this course, also provide a foundation for a general understanding and application of quantitative and qualitative research methodology. The ultimate goal of this course is to enable students to improve their current thinking of research as well as create a provisional research methodology for their doctoral proposal later on. Additionally, students will be able to define key concepts and terms related to quantitative research and learn quantitative methods of data collection and data analysis. They will also be familiar with key concepts and terms associated with qualitative research and learn qualitative methods of data collection and data analysis. Students will be in a position to describe the main steps involved in developing a research proposal and provide useful guidelines for the development of successful research proposals and finally carry out research using the right rules of conduct and principles of ethics in order to protect their research participants, their rights, data, privacy, autonomy and dignity

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course students will be expected to:

1)    Evaluate the doctoral research process. 
2)    Construct a research problem and purpose statement. 
3)    Construct research questions that align with the problem and purpose statement. 
4)    Apply qualitative and quantitative methodologies. 
5)    Examine various qualitative data collection procedures. 
6)    Describe how to compile, summarise and analyse qualitative data, and the use of qualitative data analysis. 
7)    Explore different qualitative designs and data collection possibilities.
8)    Evaluate the purpose of quantitative designs.
9)    Critique quantitative designs.
10)  Practice collecting both quantitative and qualitative data.
11)  Describe various quantitative data collection tool, procedures, and analyses.
12)  Explore the use of “Triangulation”.
13)  Examine sampling methods.
14)  Develop a research methodology.