• Offered for Year: 2026/27

• Module Leader(s): Dr Pamela Woolner
• Lecturer: Professor Liz Todd, Dr Karen Laing
• Other Staff: Professor Jill Clark

• Owning School: Education, Communication & Language Sci
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

Semesters

Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Aims

To further develop student knowledge and appreciation of the complexities and skills required to critically evaluate, interpret, and successfully undertake research. To provide a deeper understanding of, and the facility to, actively use varied research designs and methods. This module explores the strengths and weaknesses of quantitative and qualitative methods and explores the basic design principles of instruments that address particular research problems or questions. The module also enables students to apply these basic design principles and concepts to a potential or actual proposal for their thesis/dissertation.

Outline Of Syllabus

• What is research in education?
* Finding and critical reading of research
* Methodologies: qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods research
* Planning research: research questions and proposals
• Ethics in research
* Research designs: cross sectional, longitudinal, ethnography, case study, experiments, action research.
• Validity, reliability and generalisation
• Interviews and focus group; visual methods
• Document analysis
• Observation
• Surveys and sampling; questionnaires
• Using these methods in practice
• Quantitative data, including secondary data analysis
• Qualitative data
• Evaluating research

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

This module is taught using 2 hour interactive sessions, part workshop and part mini-lecture, supported by directed learning in the students’ own time, some student-led group work and synchronous online drop-in sessions. The learning activities for this module will include: critical reading of research, group discussion, research design, computer-aided and other data analysis of quantitative and qualitative data, research planning, ethics. Implicit in the design of each session, is an attempt to engender a deep and active approach to learning, but also to develop both subject knowledge and key skills. The mini-lectures during the sessions, supporting materials online and the directed tasks, enable assignment work to be planned and developed.

Assessment Methods

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Other Assessment

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

Assignment One consists of two parts.

Part One:
To write a critique of two research articles of the student's choice; to include reflection on possible relevance of said articles for student's own research.

Part Two:
To write a research proposal, upon which the dissertation can be based.

Both parts of the assignment are intended to enable the student to apply the skills and ideas from the module to the connected tasks of reading the research of others and planning their own research. To enhance the academic integrity of the assessment, given possible misuse of AI, the process of developing each part is assesses rather than only the product. Therefore, since the choice of articles for the critique is central to its success, clear general advice will be given (e.g. that the article should report empirical work) and students can seek clarification, but students will have to make the final choice. Similarly, the process of building a research proposal from topic to research questions to methodology, which is taught through specific sessions, will be tracked to ensure that the submission is the result of this process. Additionally, as a key part of the assignment brief is that the proposal is appropriate and realistic, reliance on AI generated content that is inappropriate to the student's research context will be penalised.

Reading Lists

• EDU8095's Reading List

Timetable

• Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
• EDU8095's Timetable