Learning Social Science Research Methods Lets Talk Pedagogy

Learning Social Science Research Methods: Let’s Talk Pedagogy Melanie Nind

What we have in store • Data and questions from the NCRM study of methods pedagogy and beyond • Input from methods teachers, learners, researchers, methodologists and you – in all our multiple identities! • Provocative questions and discussion • Probably not many answers! 2

What is pedagogy? • It is not: just teaching but it ‘incorporates theories, beliefs, policies and controversies that inform and shape it’ (Alexander 2000, 540) • It is not: just the traditionally more explicit dimensions such as the specified curriculum, the learning outcomes sought, the assessment approaches – it is also the tacit, the often hidden from view, the silences, the absences and the usually invisible (Nind, Curtin & Hall in press)

Defining it • ‘the act of teaching together with its attendant discourse’ (Alexander 2009, 11) • ‘A choice of pedagogy inevitably communicates a conception of the learning process and the learner. Pedagogy is never innocent. It is a medium that carries its own message. ’ (Bruner 1996: 63) 4

Thinking about pedagogy • • • pedagogy as specified pedagogy as enacted pedagogy as experienced pedagogy as hard to know multiple pedagogies

Key references • Alexander, R. 2000. Culture and Pedagogy: International Comparisons in Primary Education, Oxford: Blackwell. • Alexander, R. 2009. Pedagogy, Culture and the Power of Comparison, in H. Daniels, H. Lauder and J. Porter (eds), Educational Theories, Cultures and Learning: A Critical Perspective , 10 – 26, Abingdon: Routledge. • Bruner, J. 1996. The Culture of Education , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. • Nind, M. , Curtin, A. & Hall, K. in press, Research Methods for Pedagogy. London: Bloomsbury.