Social research methods and open educational resources: a literature review (C-SAP collections project)

Social Research Methods and Open Educational Resources –
Literature Review
Kate Orton-Johnson, University of Edinburgh
Ian Fairweather, University of Manchester

This literature review was written as part of the C-SAP (Higher Education Academy's Centre
for Sociology, Anthropology and Politics) project "Discovering Collections of Social Science
Open Educational Resources". The project ran from August 2010 - August 2011 as part of
Phase 2 of the HEFCE-funded Open Educational Resources (OER) programme. The
programme focused in particular on issues related to the discovery and use of OER by
academics and was managed jointly by the Higher Education Academy [HEA] and Joint
Information Systems Committee [JISC].

Introduction
Research methods training has an ambiguous place in the social sciences. A recent survey
for the ESRC’s National Centre for Research Methods concluded that there is a high level of
demand for both qualitative and quantitative training (Mosely & Wiles 2011). Research
students expect to get high quality training and are often disappointed with the training they
receive (see for example Frazer 2003). Employers look for researchers who have a broad
skill set and those seeking to pursue a research career increasingly need to demonstrate
their familiarity with a range of methods, both quantitative and qualitative. There is
widespread agreement that undergraduates need to have a good understanding of research
methods in their discipline and that they benefit from the opportunity to do some form of
research, both in terms of their understanding and of their employability (See for example
Edwards & Thatcher 2004, Winn 1995). There is an increasing emphasis on training
students to conduct research, and many degree programmes now contain a research
methodology component (See for example Wagner 2011). Research councils are investing
in and promoting methods excellence in research methods through the launch of the UK
concordat on the career development of researchers and by establishing the organisation
Vitae to enhance professional development for researchers (Mosely & Wiles 2001; 8). All
this has encouraged researchers to reflect upon their training needs, but at the same time,
students often complain research methods courses are irrelevant and uninteresting, too
abstract and dry and not sensitive to their needs, or that they are delivered by lecturers who

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have no real expertise or interest in the topic. Staff are often ambivalent too, perceiving
these courses as difficult to teach and to engage students with.

Nevertheless, there are real gaps in the provision of research methods training and there is
a need to provide high quality training that meets students’ needs at the time when they
perceive it to be relevant. One solution may be online resources, particularly open
educational resources which can be incorporated into existing courses or used by students
directly. However there are problems with accessibility and with ensuring the quality of these
resources. This project seeks to address this by developing a way to make high quality open
educational resources for research methods discoverable to both staff and students. The
turn to online provision and the use of OERs assumes that students are able and willing to
make effective use of the internet. This assumption is often justified on the grounds that
today’s students are ‘digital natives’ who have grown up with the internet and are fully literate
in its use and so the first section of this literature review will explore the evidence for this
idea.

Digital natives and digital literacies?
Literature surrounding academic and student use of online learning resources points to the
need to understand engagement with and use of these kinds of resources in the broader
contexts of existing disciplinary and academic identities, expectations and learning practices.

What emerges from the literature is an inconsistent and contested picture of how students
use and understand their use of digital resources (Condie and Livingston, 2007). Indeed, the
JISC e-learning and pedagogy scoping study of undergraduate blended learning suggested
that there is a paucity of research which has concerned itself specifically with the student
experience (Sharpe and Benfield, 2005). This has important implications for student
engagement with online resources - learning to learn with technology can undermine student
understandings of academic work, challenging a self imposed adherence to reading lists and
course materials, highlighting concerns with identifying ‘proper’ academic information online
and shifting student perceptions of what is expected of them in the production of academic
knowledge.

Engaging with online resources impacts on existing social and cultural learning practices and
the contexts in which technology use is embedded must be understood (Orton-Johnson,

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2009). Understanding these social and cultural contexts is potentially problematic in the light
of deterministic narratives that assume that students, as users of technology, are in some
way inherently digitally ’native’ (Prensky, 2001) or naturally predisposed to use and, more
importantly, benefit from their use of digital resources.

A digital native is defined as someone able to access and confidently use a range of new
technologies and as someone for whom using the Internet is a first port of call for information
and learning. This notion of a ‘native’ generation is often used to explain, rationalize and
promote the use of new technologies in education with claims made about a generation that
have been immersed in a networked world of digital technology who use and make sense of
in different ways and who have different expectations about learning (Bullen et al 2011). In a
critique of the native metaphor Helsper and Eynon (2010) (along with a growing body of
literature) point to the need to understand digital literacies along a continuum that connects
to learning and learning practices in different ways, rather than associating changing
learning patterns, competencies or expectations with a particular demographic or
generational effect. This may help us understand how users search for, evaluate and
engage with OERs in different learning and research contexts rather than assuming a
natural digital literacy where provision of resources will result in meaningful use.

While students may engage with technologies to the extent that they have become a
normalised part of daily life it is problematic to assume that personal or social use translates
into knowing how to use online resources for academic work. Issues of trust and credibility
remain important as students make strategic decisions about their academic priorities and
focus (Orton-Johnson, 2009). As Helsper and Eynon (2010:504) argue breadth of use,
experience, self-efficacy and education are just as, if not more, important than age in
explaining how people become ‘digital natives’ and the distinction between the digital ‘native’
and the digital ‘immigrant’ provides only an over simplistic binary in understanding use of
resources, overstating a desire for more technologically-focused approaches to teaching and
learning at university (Baym and Ross 2007).

Bullen at al suggest (2011) that the student ‘tool kit’ of technologies is surprisingly limited
beyond general communication or program-specific online spaces and resources. There is
evidence to suggest that the search and reading approach of the ‘net generation’ lacks
coherent selection criteria and quality evaluation skills (Comba 2011) and we cannot assume


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that all students are competent and confident in dealing with and critically assessing
information (Livingston 2008), possibly pointing to a need for information gateways or
portals. However, there is also evidence to suggest that while ‘generation Y’ doctoral
students in particular are increasingly engaging with open web technologies in their
research, reading (rather than contributing to) wikis, blogs and internet forums they have
working patterns and preferences which may challenge the rationale of open resources.
Students prefer tailor-made advice and guidance, are unwilling to share their research
prematurely and look to libraries and peers rather than academic supervisors and teachers
to assist in navigating a broad and growing range of multi-media materials and resources
(Carpenter et al 2010). Again context is key in understanding different patterns of
consumption and engagement with the emphasis being on provision of resources that are
relevant to students learning contexts and course content (Bullen et al 2011). This poses
challenges for generic resources provision and conversely for closing off cyberspace and
using VLE or QERs as ‘walled gardens’ (Baym and Ross 2007) that suggest particular kinds
of understandings of safety and risk, ownership and belonging in online spaces.

Literature focusing on the development of online learning resources also points to a lack of
knowledge about potential users and how they find, access, and use digital learning
resources. Recker et al (2004:94) go further in arguing that we lack an understanding of the
use and eventual effectiveness of educational digital learning repositories and resources in
instructional settings. Their research into academics search and use strategies suggests that
in order for learning objects and repositories to live up to their potential ‘usefulness they
must be age/level-appropriate, current and accurate. Resources must be flexible enough to
allow for flexible and broad online searches, as well as specific searches, often by age-level
and topic (Recker et al 2004:102). For teacher engagement peer recommendation was
valued as were pedagogically focused rather than generic resources. Raising questions
about granularity Recker et al also highlight a preference for resources that need little or no
modification and that can be easily and usefully employed in existing teaching.
Disciplinary differences are also seem to play an important role in the use and understanding
of online resources with a contextual influence on teaching and learning (Jones et al 2004):

“the socio-cultural form of each subject or discipline has a history and a pattern of
engagement with academic resources in teaching and learning. These ways of using
resources carry over into the digital world. Issues arising beyond technology and the


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university also affect the use of digital resources and this is particularly apparent in
the influence of copyright legislation.”

This again suggests that context and the social cultural life of higher education plays an
important role in staff and student understandings of the purpose and position of online
learning resources in the academy.

It is this context and social cultural life which also impacts upon the way research methods
are taught and how this teaching is received by students. A number of pedagogical
challenges have been identified by teachers of research methods, often revolving around
student engagement. Given the wide range of quantitative and qualitative research methods
used in the social sciences, how can students be given a broad grounding in these methods
which they nevertheless perceive as relevant to their own disciplines and research projects?
If high quality open educational resources for research methods were easily discoverable
could they be used by students to meet their own training needs or could they be adapted by
staff to support their teaching. In order to address this question the remainder of this
literature review will be devoted to an examination of the pedagogical challenges associated
with teaching research methods across the social sciences and how open educational
resources might be employed to address them.

Pedagogical challenges of teaching research methods to students from
different backgrounds/disciplines
Social research is increasingly being evaluated by Government agencies and research
councils in terms of its supposed contribution to the economy in whatever sense that can be
measured and this has lead inevitably to critiques of the value of social research and a focus
on empirical, experimental and often quantitative evidence as the only justifiable outcome of
publicly funded research. Not surprisingly, these changes have raised a number of dilemmas
and concerns about the role of universities in the training of researchers, what constitutes
'good' quality research training and the relevance of postgraduate research training courses
to students' needs. This has focused attention on the provision of research methods training
for postgraduates particularly through the Researcher Development Framework and the
ESRC doctoral training centres but also raised a fair amount of suspicion among academic
communities about how the demands of research funders are related to public policy
agendas or even commercial interests, and whether the imposition of formal training


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programmes and emphasis on competency in research methods compromise some of the
traditional elements of the PhD.

John Hockey has documented the ongoing debate in the social sciences about the inclusion
of formal research training into the PhD and the adherence of the ESRC to the training
based PhD. (Hockey 1991). He also identified important disciplinary distinctions between the
more quantitative disciplines including economics and business studies where the move
towards a training based model was generally well received and the more qualitative
disciplines such as sociology where the model of the PhD as apprenticeship continued to be
popular. For many supervisors in these disciplines ‘perceptions of training courses were that
they were essentially concerned with the transmission of methodological techniques, a
content which some perceived as too narrow’ (Hockey 1991: 201). Many were also
concerned that the time spent on formal research training represented a significant loss of
time for research. Even though Hockey’s research was carried out twenty years ago, these
concerns are still regularly expressed by staff and students in the more qualitative social
sciences. Nevertheless, the NCRM report of 2011 identified high levels of demand for
qualitative and quantitative training, but the level at which this was needed varied: ‘the
demand for quantitative methods training is mostly at introductory level, while the demand
for training in qualitative methods is mostly at the intermediate or advanced level (Mosely
and Wiles 2011: 4). Furthermore, early career researchers tended to look for qualitative
methods training whereas more researchers wanted training in advanced quantitative
methods (Mosely and Wiles 2011: 8). The survey also identified a pressing need for
quantitative training but not at the expense of qualitative training.

As far back as the Dearing Report (NCIHE, 1997) there was discussion of new approaches
to teaching suggesting that the student experience could be enhanced through the use of
resource-based learning. This discussion was connected to the idea that as student
numbers increase, the cost per student should fall to keep the total cost within public
spending constraints (Dearing, 1997: Appendix 2). As Holley and Oliver point out, however,
‘the economic model of unit costs takes pedagogy away from the expert tutor, the subject
specialist, and places it firmly in the hands of management’ (Holley and Oliver 2009: 4). This
shift towards the commodification of education has contributed to a tendency to fragment
teaching into discrete blocks or modules that can be delivered in more flexible ways lending
themselves particularly to online delivery. This modularization is presented as student-


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centred, but Sharpe and Benfield have argued that when e-learning adapts new or unusual
pedagogies learners report an intensely emotional experience and a major concern with time
and time management‟ (Sharpe and Benfield, 2004:7) Nevertheless, ‘with pedagogic choice
becoming a matter of strategy rather than tactics, the choice of teaching techniques
becomes a matter of serving functional agendas of efficiency’ (Holley and Oliver 2009: 5).All
this has had important implications for the pedagogy of research methods that have created
both opportunities and challenges. Most significantly research methods, particularly at
undergraduate level have come to be seen as more or less generic sets of skills and
techniques that can be delivered to large groups of students outside of their disciplinary
context.

The Social sciences are typically imagined by those who teach and study them to be a free
form of social and political enquiry (Mills 1959) but the current financial and ideological
contexts in which social sciences are taught raise serious concerns about the ‘ever-growing
subjugation of scholarly and teaching practices to external, utterly alien commercial and
managerial interests’ (Frade 2009: 10). Generic research methods provision offered outside
of departments is often associated with this ‘commercializing’ or ‘instrumentalizing of social
science research’, particularly when compulsory. Methods courses are sometimes perceived
as threatening to reduce social science to a ‘set of bureaucratic techniques which inhibit
social inquiry by “methodological” pretensions’ (Mills 1959: 20) and this impression is
exacerbated if these courses impose a conceptual division between method and theory that
pertains in the natural sciences but disguises the fuzzy relationship between these notions
that characterizes actual practice in the social sciences. In this way, the isolation of methods
from disciplinary teaching and students’ own departments can lead to mistrust of ‘methods
teaching’ and a retreat into disciplinary language and habitus.

The NCRM survey of 2011 identified that ‘the most common reason given for undertaking
research methods training was to meet the needs arising from a current or planned research
project’ (Mosely & Wiles 2011:4) As Maria Birbili has argued, students' motivation - or lack
of it - to participate in research training is a key issue and ‘being aware of the different ways
in which social science research students ‘want and need to access' research training’
(Birbili 2006: 4 ) can help institutions to provide a better student experience. In her
comprehensive review of literature on educational research training Birbili identifies that
research on the views of students about research training, in the social sciences and other


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disciplines, indicates that some students are resistant to idea of compulsory research
training and tend to judge research methods training by its ‘relevance and usefulness to their
own practical work’ (Birbili 2006: 4) often becoming ‘resentful if they perceive that there is a
mismatch between the two’ (Birbili 2006: 4) In many cases students may come to see
research methods training as a distraction from their main purpose of completing their thesis.

Mosely and Wiles found that respondents to their survey did appear to be ‘motivated to train
more by short-term needs than more longer-term wants’ (Mosely & Wiles 2011: 54) 60%
expressed a desire for training relevant to specific research projects and only 5% suggested
that they were motivated by a desire to open up new opportunities for research in the future.
However, Mosely and Wiles contrast short term needs with longer term wants and argue that
‘the wide range and large number of training topics selected by respondents as training
‘needs’ suggests they had more long term and wide-ranging ‘wants’ in mind (Mosely & Wiles
20011:54). This apparent ambiguity may be rooted in social scientists perceptions of how
they learn to do social scientific research.

50 years ago Mills described social science as ‘a craft’ (Mills 1959: 195) as opposed to a
technique or a methodology (Frade 2009:11). He identified three conditions for the pursuit of
social science as a free form of enquiry; a vocation, a ‘sociological imagination’ and a politics
for the social sciences ‘opposed to the handing over of the disciplines and the
accommodation of their practitioners to the powers that be’ (Frade:15). The educational task
of the social scientist, as Mills saw it, is not only the passing on of skills and techniques, but
the transmission of these pre-requisites to the next generation of social scientists. These
values of craftsmanship and disciplinary identity seem at odds with the bureaucratic
principles of efficiency, economy and measurability which often motivate the pedagogy of
methods teaching, particularly the separation of methods from theory and the delivery of
methods teaching in large generic cross-disciplinary courses. So much so that for students
who have developed a strong disciplinary identity accepting that one can be taught methods
independently from theory, or from a specific research project seems like accepting a
debased form of social science.

The use of open educational resources has considerable potential to address this problem
by making generic methods resources freely available to researchers and teachers as and
when they need it in a form that can be tailored to a particular research project or


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incorporated into a more theoretical course. The challenge is to offer research methods
resources in such a way that consulting them is not considered what Walter Benjamin would
have called a ‘mechanical Duty’ which’ does not flow from the work itself’. (Benjamin 1915:
78-9) The achievement of such provision, however, risks falling prey to the bureaucratization
of academic practice itself, as Frade puts it:

Naturally, when meeting managerial targets is the master motive driving
vocational practices, any language which deviates from counting, efficiency,
quality’ and the like is bound to be dismissed out of hand as anachronistic or out
of place (Frade 2009: 10)

Nevertheless, without ways to contextualize open educational resources for research
methods in their disciplines and in their own research students are unlikely to engage with
them or find them useful.

The existing literature on research methods provision in the social sciences suggests that
key areas of concern are students' reaction to research training; the content and and
structure of methods courses; and pedagogical issues such as the extent to which face-to-
face teaching can be substituted by technology-mediated learning and how to incorporate
practical experience in research training (Biribili 2006: 1). The Researcher Development
Framework indicates a number of skills and competencies that research students are
expected to acquire including the basic principles of research design and strategy,
awareness of a range of methods and tools, as general research skills such as, bibliographic
and computing skills, Students are expected to 'develop and practice' competencies such as,
communication skills, research management and team-working skills. As a number of
commentators have pointed out, however, research involves 'more than selecting
appropriate methods and carrying them out' or 'executing a set of prescribed steps' (Birbili
2006, Amulya, 1998; Walker, 1999). Although researchers need to develop an
understanding of the methodological tools available within their disciplinary tradition,
research training must ‘prepare students to think about research as a dynamic process [and]
appreciate the many factors (e.g. personal, ethical, theoretical, political, technical, social etc)
that shape it’ (Birbili 2006; 3)


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The literature suggests that the success of research training also depends upon students
perceptions of what constitutes research and their assumptions about the nature of different
research methodologies such as the relative value of qualitative and quantitative methods. A
preference for quantitative research can lead students to query the 'validity' of qualitative
inquiry and vice versa (Glesne and Webb, 1993). All of this is strongly influenced by their
disciplinary background but also by their individual experience and the orientations of their
lecturers or their supervisor. This makes it all the more important that students see the
relevance of methods training to their disciplines and individual research projects. As Winn
has observed, for many students research is not in itself an 'intrinsically appealing' subject
(Winn, 1995, p. 203) Winn argues, therefore that students benefit particularly from practical
experience of research which allows them to appreciate issues such as building field
relationships, gaining access, or working within time constraints but also gives them the
opportunity to gain an understanding 'of how the various stages of research fit together in
the research process' (Winn 1995, p. 204).

Successful engagement of students in research methods training relies on a sound
understanding of the processes of, and obstacles to, learning. These may be related to
students’ conceptions of research itself which are in turn related to the research cultures of
their institutions and departments. As Claire Wagner and her colleagues have pointed out,
‘The choice of teachers for a research methods course tends to reflect the perception of
methodology within a department or even the institution as a whole’ (Wagner et. al. 2011:
83). In some institutions methods training is regarded as the transmission of basic
information and skills and junior staff members or postgraduate students are asked to teach
the course. In others, where it is viewed as an ‘esoteric interest’, it is left to faculty members
with a ‘methodological cast of mind’ (Wagner et. al. 2011: 83). A recent development,
fostered by Vitae and the Researcher Development Framework is the shift from the idea of
methods training and ‘transferrable skills’ to the idea of reflective professional development
of researchers throughout their career. On this model research methods provision is part of
the development of the individual researcher into a rounded professional who may continue
in an academic career or find themselves engaged in commercial research. Mosely and
Wiles analysed the content of job vacancies for research posts in social sciences and found
that ‘skills in both qualitative and quantitative methods are sought and, in each of these
approaches, skills in data analysis in particular’ (Mosely & Wiles 2011: 53). Their analysis
also showed that of employers are seeking researchers with skills across a range of


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methods, suggesting a growing need for social researchers to have generalist research
skills. Research students, however, tend to be focused on their primary research project,
which they see as the route to an academic career and, as a result they are not necessarily
aware of the requirements of employers.

Elizabeth Frazer conducted focus groups with students in Sociology, Anthropology and
Politics Departments at the University of Oxford in 2003 to explore students' views about
research methods training. It emerged from the focus groups that ‘there was no uniform
conception of what research training should consist of, and in general the conceptions that
were articulated were vague’ (Frazer 2003: vii). Nevertheless, Frazer reported general
discontent with methods programmes that did not meet students' expectations. Sociology
students were disappointed by the lack of theory in their methods courses and by a
perceived bias towards quantitative methods. They were unhappy with the assessment of
methods courses and some reported feeling ‘insulted’ by them. (Frazer 2003: vii).

The anthropology students in Frazer’s study were extremely negative about their research
methods training ‘they were not only in disagreement with the faculty as to what training
should comprise, but […] the scope for communicating this disenchantment was virtually
non-existent.’ (Frazer 2003:xii) Some students expressed the view that the theoretical
grounding that they received was their real training. They were most positive about
opportunities to hear about other students or researchers’ experiences. ‘There was strong
disagreement over the issue of whether teaching the methodology of a technique (such as
interviewing) should be subservient to a critical awareness of the social relations involved in
that technique’ (Frazer 2003: xiv). For these students there is some scope for teaching and
learning insofar as it aids critical thinking and self- reflection on fieldwork, but on the whole to
attempt to teach in any systematic way ‘field research methodology’ provokes resentment’
(Frazer 2003 xv) Many students did, however express the belief that there is a basic set of
anthropological tools which can be taught to all students and applied more or less universally
in the field’ (Frazer 2003: xiv). There was also a suggestion that training could be overly
theoretical and lacking in ‘practical training in specific techniques relevant to particular
students’ areas of research’ (Frazer 2003: xiv) Interestingly there was considerable
scepticism about lecturers ability to teach practical skills.


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Politics and International relations students felt that the research training courses were too
generalized, and did not have enough specific reference to their own research projects. The
teachers of the courses did not understand their specific research requirements and their
supervisors tended to ‘strongly recommend’ all courses, rather than taking account of their
individual needs either. Students said that political science did not have unique
methodologies, but encompassed the methods of other social sciences. They felt that
political scientists were trained to be theoretical (Frazer 2003: vxii). As for other disciplines
the connections made between methods training and employment were tenuous. ‘A general
perception was that professional political science work, in particular, is often
methodologically basic’ (Frazer 2003: vxi). Training in basic software packages was
considered more important for professional work than any specialist political science skills.

In all disciplines there was little clarity about what “skills” social scientists develop. Frazer
reports that ‘The word “skills” met with laughter from some students while for others “Skills
has a very manual labour-type connotation”’(Frazer 2003: ix) At the same time, Frazer’s
research found that ‘students did not have clear knowledge of employment opportunities
outside academia. In fact, the majority of students seemed happy and even to wish to limit
the acquisition of skills to those directly required for their own research projects’ (Frazer
2003: vii). There is a strong suggestion here that students’ ambivalence or even antipathy
towards generic methods courses is connected to a lack of understanding about what
becoming a professional researcher entails and how generic research skills might relate to
that. Learning ‘practical’ skills is useful only if students understand when and why it would be
useful to apply for what purposes. (Frazer 2003: xxiii). Another issue was timing and some
students reported frustration that courses that would have been helpful in developing their
research were delivered too late to be of any use. This suggests a need for greater flexibility
so that students could take courses at times appropriate to their needs.

The idea of ‘teaching’ or ‘learning’ many of the skills necessary for good social science
research can be problematic in itself. Often the assumption is that they are best acquired
through practical research experience (for anthropologists this is connected to the idea of
fieldwork as a rite of passage). For this reason the supervisor and peer group are of crucial
importance in student’s decisions about their development partly in providing guidance about
what training opportunities to pursue, so any strategy for promoting engagement with OER’s
must target supervisors as well as students themselves. A key problem with methods


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courses (which came up for Frazer’s focus groups) relates to employability. Many students
are focused upon obtaining academic posts through teaching and publication and acquiring
skills that may be important in professional/non-academic careers is not their main concern.
Students accept that methods training may be useful in employment, but as most research
students intend to pursue academic careers, it is significant that ‘students overwhelmingly
think that “research training” is irrelevant to an academic career except in so far as it aids
their research (Frazer 2003: xviii)

Mosely and Wiles found that researchers do appreciate the importance of gaining a wide
ranging skill set. Staff with responsibility for training social scientists in particular emphasised
a
need to promote training in what might be viewed as the ‘fundamental’ skills of
social science research methods, as well as the need to support training in
transferable skills, many of which are IT related (Mosely and Wiles 2011: 53)

However, as Wagner has identified, textbooks on research methods tend to address
the ‘how to’ of research methods, rather than the pedagogy of teaching methods
(Wagner et. al. 2011: 75). Their survey of articles published between 1997 and 2007
identified seven themes in the discussion of, research methods teaching. The first
referred to general issues or aspects of teaching research methods and was often
theoretical in approach. The second concerned data analysis and data analysis
software particularly in teaching qualitative research methods. Theme three focused
on teaching quantitative research methods and theme four on teaching mixed
quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Theme five described specific techniques
for teaching research methods and theme six concerned the way in which research
methods pedagogy is conducted within a specific disciplines. Finally, theme seven
concerned teaching ethics in research (Wagner et. al. 2011: 78).

Literature providing an introduction to research methods in the social sciences has tended to
go over much of the same ground, focusing on how knowledge of the social world is gained
including, for example, surveys, interviewing, participant observation, and documentary and
comparative research (eg Bryman 2008, Gilbert 2008, Silverman 2005). Methods are have
to be delivered as a set of techniques that are generic enough to be adopted by diverse
researchers in order to equip them with a toolkit of procedures for collecting data that fits
their research template. Despite considerable investment in the development of research
methods, such as the ESRC’s research methods programme, the National Centre for

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Research Methods and the Researcher Development Framework, recent publications aimed
at teaching research methods to students often eschew an abstract or ‘how to’ approach in
favour of focusing on specific examples (eg Devine and Heath 2009 or O'Donoghue, and
Punch,2003) Some contemporary research methods literature concerns itself with the
relationships that are held to exist between theory and practice, and the place of values and
ethics in the process of carrying out research (eg Sayer 1984, Churton and Brown 1999).

Tom O'Donoghue, and Keith Punch (2003) discuss a series of examples of research
conducted by postgraduate students in order to demonstrate the interplay between the
application and the context of the research problem revealing the way in which the
application is moulded by and to that context (O’Donaghue and Punch 2003:1). The
methods covered are common to other methods texts, including grounded theory, life
stories, phenomenology discourse analysis, social semiotics and participant observation. But
the approach of presenting actual research projects allows students to see how an
interesting question was tackled in terms of both strategy and technique, or to identify what
other research methods might have been appropriate. Students can see how others have
explored the principles that underpin a method and how they argue the case for using that
method in their research. This provides an opportunity to discuss themes of good practice in
research (O’Donaghue and Punch 2003:1).

Kim Etherington concentrates on developing reflexivity in research, offering an insight into
the processes of doing research through the personal stories of researchers. In her view,
‘many research books are difficult to read and seem to have little relationship to the reader’s
own lived experiences of undertaking research’ (Etherington 2004) The narrative approach
she adopts to discussing research projects brings to the fore the theoretical ideas of
postmodernism and social constructionism that are present in her own thinking and her
struggles to make sense of these ideas in her practice of narrative therapy. In this way the
problematic relationship between methods and theory is highlighted in a core research
methods text.

This may seem like an attempt to bridge a formidable gap but some discussion of this is
problem is increasingly regarded as essential for courses in research methods training.
Devine and Heath, for instance highlight the crucial link between the choice of research
methods and research findings (Devine and Heath 2009: 3) and point to a growing distance


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between theoretical developments which are critical of past empirical research and
proponents of empirical methods who dismiss theory as irrelevant (Devine and Heath 2009:
4). Mike Savage and Roger Burrows have addressed the changing significance of empirical
research in sociology in a context where data gathering for non academic purposes has
become ubiquitous (Savage 2007). They identify a crisis of confidence in sociological
methods of data gathering both quantitative and qualitative associated with a ‘shift of
expertise away from the academy’ (Savage and Burrows 2007: 10) This crisis cannot be
addressed by more methods training but by reflection on how sociologists should relate to
the proliferation of social data gathered by others (Savage and Burrows 2007:12).

Tim May also attempts to address the relationships between theory and method in social
research through major philosophical and methodological debates touching on problems of
objectivity, positivism and realism through to postmodernism and feminism that have
impacted upon the way social scientists collect and interpret their data. (May 2001). May, for
example, draws a parallel between postmodernism and the problem, of establishing a
general explanation of beliefs beyond their social context in comparative research. Such
important methodological critiques associated with ‘the post modern turn in the social
sciences’ (Devine and Heath 2009:8) raise questions about the interpretation of empirical
data which cannot be addressed in isolation from theory. ‘The ways in which we collect
evidence and the methods by which we do so are, then dynamic issues in the social
sciences’ (Devine and Heath 2009: 10) The challenge for methods teaching here is to
explain complex topics in a succinct and straightforward manner whilst addressing practical
issues of concern to researchers planning fieldwork such as, conducting a survey, including
sampling, using questionnaires, or advice on coding and analysis. (May 2001). This literature
suggests that methods training cannot be restricted to such practical concerns but must
relate theory, methodology and method.

Other barriers to accessing methods training are lack of time and lack of funding, particularly
for contract researchers. (Mosely & Wiles 2011:9). There is a considerable demand for
locally-based training but the establishment of the ESRC Doctoral Training Centres will
concentrate research methods provision in fewer centres that may be more distant from
researchers’ home institution, making face-to-face short courses more difficult and online
research methods training will be expected to fill this gap.


15

One of the ways to overcome some of the problems identified as barriers to
training, such as time limitations and accessibility is to make use of internet-
based training. When asked whether they had ever used internet-based research
methods training resources only a third said ‘yes’. (Mosely & Wiles 2011:43)

Access to OERs could be a means of providing for the practical needs of researchers in a
timely fashion that is difficult to achieve in traditional methods courses, without researchers
having to travel, but the current level of use of these resources is very low. The NCRM
survey of 2011 found that their was a willingness among researchers to use such resources
but their was a lack of knowledge about their availability and a problem of ensuring quality
and appropriateness (Mosely & Wiles 2011:5) Researchers perceived a lack of suitable
training or resources in the topic areas in which they were interested and some expressed a
preference for face-to-face training (Mosely & Wiles 2011:43). ‘A lack of time to locate and
make use of on-line training or resources was frequently noted’ (Mosely & Wiles 2011:43).

It has been observed that the introduction of technological (e-learning) solutions do little to
change established pedagogical practices (see Oliver 2009) and it remains to be seen
whether access to good quality OERs for research methods in the social sciences will be an
agent of change. Schoenfeld argues that what is most important in preparing students to
become researchers is 'providing a supportive environment that lives and breathes research
issues, is open and reflective, allow people to pursue ideas that they really care about, and
provides them with many opportunities to learn, early on, from their mistakes they will
inevitably make.' (Schoenfeld 1999: 200) Flexible alternatives to compulsory research
methods programmes are most likely to overcome students' resistance by meeting their
differing needs (Collinson and Hockey, 1997) and access to good quality OER’s could
provide a means for students, in consultation with their supervisors, to assemble a
customised research training package. This entails examining not only social theory,
methodology and method, but also the relationships between them.

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