About this Research Topic

Background

Teaching research methods courses to undergraduates and postgraduate students across a range of disciplinary and pedagogic contexts highlights the importance of improving the quality of teaching the subject. Such pedagogic enhancements are expected to facilitate a richer student research experience by developing fundamental knowledge of its principles, research design, and operationalization.

The field of research methodology focuses on the systematic study of methods, approaches, and procedures to investigate problems grounded or shaped by a range of epistemological and ontological orientations. However, teaching and learning research methods and their underpinning methodology and assumptions can be complex, partly because of a range of challenges; not least the rapidly changing nature of available data and the limited tools for processing it and developing mastery of methods and methodological underpinnings and assumptions. Also, there is a lack of student motivation to take methodological courses. Furthermore, with the increasing amount of data in various fields, teaching students how to design the data collection, collecting, processing, and analyzing this data can be challenging.

To learn and understand research methods and methodology, students must develop a critical research design, thinking, operationalization, and problem-solving skills. This can involve giving students opportunities to work on real-world research problems (for example, using cases that reflect real-world experience) and encouraging critical thinking about the assumptions made in the cases used. It is also essential to expose students to various methods, discussing their potential and limitations when applied to various research problems. Additionally, staying current with the latest tools and techniques for new data collection methods and technologies can be challenging for teachers teaching research methods and methodology.

Furthermore, educators teaching research methods and methodology face challenges such as student diversity (different levels of prior knowledge on the subject, diverse expectations and goals of undertaking research methods and methodology course, etc.), lack of technical skills (e.g., quantitative or numeracy skills), staying up to date with advances in the field, balancing theory and practice, and encouraging critical thinking (e.g., critical literature review skills). However, by acknowledging these challenges and taking the necessary research steps to address them, educators can create an engaging learning experience that prepares students for success in their research careers.

Postgraduate students come from various disciplinary backgrounds, with varying levels of prior knowledge and experience in research methodology. Lecturers should be able to address the needs of all students in the course by providing support and guidance in methods regardless of the type of methodology where necessary. Themes to be addressed in this Research Topic include, but are not limited to, the following:

• new pedagogical frameworks and tools for teaching research methods and methodologies
• psychometrics and assessment of the efficacy, reliability, and validity of tools for teaching research methods.
• novel ways of collecting and analyzing data
• the role of ChatGPT in research methods and methodologies teaching
• research methods and methodologies teaching in business and management
• research methods and methodologies teaching across multiple disciplines in the social and other scientific disciplines
• data visualization models
• educational data science approaches
• determining quality and rigor in new and old research methods and methodologies
• pedagogical strategies for teaching complex topics such as ontology and epistemology, sample size, statistical power, etc., in research methods
• novel tools for harvesting, processing, and presenting data
• learning analytics and assessment of learning.

Keywords: Research methods teaching, research methodology

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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