Engaging with postgraduate research: education, childhood & youth

In this free course, Engaging with postgraduate research: education, childhood & youth, you will build on your understanding of how to evaluate research by thinking about a fundamental part of the research process: research perspectives and approaches. Some of the different ways of researching situations that can arise when working in education and working with children and young people will be examined. You will explore distinct and influential ways in which people think about and study the complexities around working with children and young people, the practices involved in learning and teaching and the structures that support and impact on them. You will become familiar with the different theoretical tools used in research, which will enable you to begin to interrogate research literature and the research process itself. 

• Introduction
• Learning outcomes
• 1 The meaning of theory
• 1 The meaning of theory
• 1.1 An example of theory in practice: gender
• 1.2 Theory, practice and research
• 2 The role and nature of theories
• 2 The role and nature of theories
• 2.1 Research paradigm
• 2.2 Ontology and epistemology
• 2.3 Research methodology
• 2.4 Beginning the research process
• 2.5 Thinking about epistemological positions
• 2.6 Thinking about ontological positions
• 3 Competing paradigmatic positions
• 3 Competing paradigmatic positions
• 3.1 Scientific theory and the positivist paradigm
• 3.2 Features of positivism
• 3.3 Paradigm wars?
• 3.4 Interpretivism
• 3.5 Features of interpretivism
• 3.6 So, is there a resolution to the paradigm wars?
• 3.7 Pragmatism
• 4 Bringing it all together!
• 4 Bringing it all together!
• Conclusion
• Further reading
• References
• Acknowledgements