John Willison

Commonly known, commonly not known, totally unknown: a framework for students becoming researchers

Providing undergraduate students with research experience has been asserted as a way of reinventing university education. This assertion lacks both substantial empirical evidence and a coherent theoretical framework. In this paper, the authors consider both research and theory relating to undergraduate research and present the Research Skill Development framework, which can be used to both chart and monitor students’ research skill development. An example is given of the practical application of this framework, together with associated preliminary research findings. Further related research directions are also suggested. I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted. I am only very, very curious. – Albert Einstein

When academics integrate research skill development in the curriculum

This study considered outcomes when 27 academics explicitly developed and assessed student research skills in 28 regular (non-research methods) semester-length courses. These courses ranged from small (n = 17) to medium-large (n = 222) and included those from first year to masters in business, engineering, health science, humanities and science, across five universities in three Australian cities. The two-year study used three data sets to determine the outcomes of development and assessment initiatives: student pre- (n = 779) and post-questionnaires (n = 601), interviews with students (n = 46) one year after completing a course that developed research skills and interviews with academics (n = 17) involved in developing and assessing student research skills. These multiple sources provided evidence that students developed a variety of discipline-specific research skills and that these skills were useful for subsequent studies and especially for employment. Academics indicated that the process of making explicit the development of student research skills led to enhancement of their teaching, helping the academics to clarify major course purposes as well as enabling them to provide more substantial feedback to students than in the past. Academics also indicated that this teaching process changed their understanding of disciplinary research and, for some, even suggested new directions in their research.

Complementary Epistemologies of Science Teaching: Towards an Integral Perspective.

Within the science education community, alternative epistemologies of teaching and learning have jostled historically for supremacy. For over 20 years, science education has been a site of considerable struggle between adherents of the competing epistemologies of ‘objectivism’ and ‘constructivism’; recently, proponents of ‘personal constructivism’ and ‘social constructivism’ have locked horns. In this paper, we argue that, in the interest of creating greater equity of access amongst students to a much richer encounter with science, science teachers should consider adopting an ‘integral perspective’ on these divergent epistemologies. First, we illustrate the unhelpful antagonism that exists between proponents of these highly influential but divergent epistemologies of science teaching and learning. Next, in seeking a means of moving towards epistemological pluralism, we argue that a mode of reasoning is needed that differs from the established Cartesian binary and dualist thinking which tends to fuel a discourse of competition between theories. From the perspective of constructive postmodernism, we propose ‘dialectical complementarity’ as a potentially productive way of considering unity-in-diversity amongst opposing epistemological perspectives. Then, in an attempt to overcome the obstacle of literalism, which tends to reinforce notions of difference, metaphor is presented as a frame of reference. The centrality of metaphor to both cognition and science, and its power in supporting a multi-perspective dialogue, is established. The metaphorical bases of both constructivism and objectivism are illustrated, with special attention given to the way in which concepts of ‘understanding’ and ‘making sense’ are metaphorically structured. Finally, we illustrate the viability of adopting an integral perspective on science teaching with a brief account of a doctoral research study into the scientific literacy of a class of junior high school students. From the extensive literature on scientific literacy, a set of complementary but distinctive metaphors was developed: ‘student-as-recruit’, ‘student-as-judge’ and ‘students-as-scientists’. Each metaphor is aligned with one of the three epistemologies of teaching and learning discussed in the paper. The three-metaphor set was employed as an interpretive framework to examine the quality of students’ access to science. Over the period of a year, the student as recruit metaphor was found to prevail and to exclude students with specific learning styles. Students were also tracked through the school day into their other subjects where some of the excluded students were observed to be highly engaged learners. We conclude that the 1

Implementation and outcomes of online self and peer assessment on group based honours research projects

Honours research projects in the School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering at the University of Adelaide are run with small groups of students working with an academic supervisor in a chosen area for one year. The research project is mainly self-directed study, which makes it very difficult to fairly assess the contribution of individual students to a group-based research project. Until recently, a paper-based method of self and peer assessment (SPA) for the honours research projects was used to assess the projects. This was unsatisfactory for both students and academic staff, who found that the same mark was often awarded by the peers to each student without feedback. In 2010, therefore, an online SPA tool, SPARK, together with a set of newly developed assessment criteria, were used for SPA by the honours students. The new SPA criteria are based on teamwork and research skills, and the new rating scales reflect standard academic grades. Surveys of the students confirmed that they found the criteria and scales much more suitable for the assessment of group work and design projects.

PhD prepared: research skill development across the undergraduate years

Purpose Many countries are looking for ways to enable students to engage more effectively with PhD study. This paper aims to consider the effects of explicit discipline-specific research skill development embedded in multiple semesters of an undergraduate degree on PhD preparedness. Design/methodology/approach This case study of one Bachelor of Health Science programme determined the effectiveness of the implementation of a conceptual model, the Researcher Skill Development framework, across the undergraduate degree programme. Data were gathered through interviews of 9 academic staff and 14 students in their fourth year of undergraduate study, which is a research-focused year. Findings All students and academics stated the benefits of the use of the Researcher Skill Development framework in undergraduate study including: deepening metacognition of research processes; assisting students toward acting and thinking like researchers; and the research-capacity building of the school. While all academics and all but one student recommended that the framework be used early in the degree programme, a number of interviewees specified problems with the existing implementation of the framework. Research limitations/implications While the results are not generalisable, the approach is worth studying in other degree programme-wide contexts to determine its broader capacity to enable students to be more research ready for PhD study when compared to current practice. Practical implications When adapted to the context, whole-of-degree research skill development may enable developing countries to have more students and developed countries to better prepared students commencing PhD studies. Originality/value No studies currently provide results for explicit research skill development across a degree programme, or of the benefits of this approach for PhD preparation.

Who Writes the Recipes in Science? Possibilities from Four Years of Action Research with Students and Their Scientific Literacy.

This paper presents an action research study on student scientific literacy, which is analysed by two metaphors of learning, introduced by Sfard (1998), and adapted to fit the context. These metaphors are students working in science as if they follow recipes and students working in science as if they devise recipes. By looking at the relationship between the metaphors in each of four vignettes that represent the research, possibilities are considered for the usefulness of the metaphors as a framework that provides common ground for otherwise divergent views about scientific literacy. Issues of how to represent and legitimate some action research, and considerations for the need to tightly integrate reading, writing, conversing and experimenting tasks to facilitate scientific literacy are also prominent.

Shifting dimensions of autonomy in students’ research and employment

ABSTRACT This study considers the conceptual space, or extent of autonomy, given to coursework Masters students before, during and after a Business Ethics course that explicitly developed and assessed their research skills. This vocationally oriented and academically challenging course used the Research Skill Development framework as its conceptual model to reshape the learning and assessment environment, articulating to students not only the research skills required, but also clarifying the resulting autonomy in their research-orientated learning. In the study, seven students attended semi-structured interviews and transcript analysis of interviews revealed the level of student-declared autonomy before commencing coursework Masters, while completing the Business Ethics course, and near the end of their Masters degree. All of the students interviewed were studying part-time and working part-time, and so the applicability of the research skills to students’ work environment emerged as a major issue of interest. This paper richly represents the students’ perceptions, and is the first paper to directly address coursework Masters student autonomy in research in a longitudinal manner; as such it provides a deep and nuanced understanding of the conceptual space that students need for success in study and as preparation for employment.

Research skills that men and women developed at university and then used in workplaces

ABSTRACT This qualitative study probed the mismatch between graduates’ and employers’ perspectives, especially in regard to graduates’ learning orientation and investigating skills. Specifically, the study delved into male and female graduates’ perceptions of research skills that were developed explicitly during their undergraduate degree and used by them in employment for research, investigations and for ongoing learning that kept them current. Thematic analysis of the qualitative data revealed substantial similarities between the male and female graduates’ emphasis about four of the six research skills investigated. However, the skills that graduates did not emphasize – embarking and clarifying for men; analyzing and synthesizing for women – give some clues as to why those interviewed may not have, use or transfer, the full set of skills needed to engage in investigation and learning in workplaces, and this incomplete skill set may lead to lower employer satisfaction with graduate skills.

The Impact of a Research Vignette on My Metaphorical Understandings

A particular classroom incident, and the vignette I used to portray it, had a significant impact on the interpretative framework for my research into scientific literacy. In this chapter, I will trace the salient elements of this vignette including its construction, justification, and effects. I present the vignette, and then track back to the research methodology that I employed, which guided the writing of the vignette. I explain how this writing led to the emergence of a metaphorical framework for scientific literacy and conclude with a discussion of the criteria used to judge these forms of representation.