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Changing Teaching Practice in a Research Methods Course Utilizing a Student-Centered Approach
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Shingles, Becerra & Pencek Virginia Tech
February, 2006
APSA Teaching & Learning Conference
5
Recognition That One Size Does Not Fit Most
How many political science majors will actually do original quantitative empirical research beyond the baccalaureate, either in graduate school or on the job? Should training them to conduct this type of research be the primary purpose of required undergraduate methods courses? How might these courses be made more appealing by addressing the immediate needs of students to succeed in college and beyond? The answers, we believe, are that first, methods courses can and should better serve today’s students, the information age generation, who arrive on campus with considerable experience and self-confidence (albeit not fully justified) in researching questions, primarily via the Internet. Second, we think that this can be accomplished by appealing to students’ sense of self-empowerment, helping them to be more self-conscious and self-critical of the act of knowing, by honing their existing skills (in particular the identification and evaluation of reliable sources of information), and acquiring new skills. This can be done while continuing to pursue many of the goals of conventional methods courses: guiding students to appreciate, understand and evaluate quantitative and qualitative scientific data, acquiring a firm grasp of scientific method as well as the
scientist vocabulary necessary to understand and discuss it, and becoming familiar with prominent types of data collection and analyses.
The Political Science Department at Virginia Tech conducts periodic alumni surveys to assess our program. The open-ended questionnaire asks for remembrances about most and lease useful courses taken in the major. A cursory reading of successive alumni survey indicates that as low as ten percent of our past students report that they have utilized skills taught in our conventional research methods courses. A far larger number of alumni claim it was one of the least useful courses, with not a few crowing (as they did during the original teaching evaluations) that they “did not learn a damned thing.” Observing that significant numbers of alumni still felt the “pain” of being required to learn quantitative research methods led the authors to question the purpose and format
of our methods course. Why do we require 18- to 20-year-olds to become proto-quantitative researchers? Are the faculty who are adequately trained and volunteer to teach these courses, mostly methodologists, attempting to clone themselves? If so, is this an act of self-indulgence and self-importance, rationalized in terms of the “goals of the discipline?” Are we solely trying to prepare students for graduate school? Are we right in imposing a rather narrow definition of methodology on all students? Are there other methods of knowing that are equally important and perhaps more relevant to students immediate needs as majors that should be taught in required undergraduate methods courses?
Some insightful answers to these questions have come from two sources. First, both authors introduce their methods courses by asking students on the first day of the semester “How do you know?” The original purpose of this question was to introduce students to scientific method and espouse its superiority over “common ways of
knowing.” Students are encouraged to think of every manner of “knowing,” while the
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| | Authors: Shingles, Richard., Becerra, Raquel. and Pencek, Bruce. |
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Shingles, Becerra & Pencek
Virginia Tech
February, 2006
APSA Teaching & Learning Conference
5
Recognition That One Size Does Not Fit Most
How many political science majors will actually do original quantitative empirical
research beyond the baccalaureate, either in graduate school or on the job? Should
training them to conduct this type of research be the primary purpose of required
undergraduate methods courses? How might these courses be made more appealing by
addressing the immediate needs of students to succeed in college and beyond? The
answers, we believe, are that first, methods courses can and should better serve today’s
students, the information age generation, who arrive on campus with considerable
experience and self-confidence (albeit not fully justified) in researching questions,
primarily via the Internet. Second, we think that this can be accomplished by appealing
to students’ sense of self-empowerment, helping them to be more self-conscious and
self-critical of the act of knowing, by honing their existing skills (in particular the
identification and evaluation of reliable sources of information), and acquiring new
skills. This can be done while continuing to pursue many of the goals of conventional
methods courses: guiding students to appreciate, understand and evaluate quantitative
and qualitative scientific data, acquiring a firm grasp of scientific method as well as the
scientist vocabulary necessary to understand and discuss it, and becoming familiar with
prominent types of data collection and analyses.
The Political Science Department at Virginia Tech conducts periodic alumni surveys to
assess our program. The open-ended questionnaire asks for remembrances about most
and lease useful courses taken in the major. A cursory reading of successive alumni
survey indicates that as low as ten percent of our past students report that they have
utilized skills taught in our conventional research methods courses. A far larger number
of alumni claim it was one of the least useful courses, with not a few crowing (as they did
during the original teaching evaluations) that they “did not learn a damned thing.”
Observing that significant numbers of alumni still felt the “pain” of being required to
learn quantitative research methods led the authors to question the purpose and format
of our methods course. Why do we require 18- to 20-year-olds to become proto-
quantitative researchers? Are the faculty who are adequately trained and volunteer to
teach these courses, mostly methodologists, attempting to clone themselves? If so, is
this an act of self-indulgence and self-importance, rationalized in terms of the “goals of
the discipline?” Are we solely trying to prepare students for graduate school? Are we
right in imposing a rather narrow definition of methodology on all students? Are there
other methods of knowing that are equally important and perhaps more relevant to
students immediate needs as majors that should be taught in required undergraduate
methods courses?
Some insightful answers to these questions have come from two sources. First, both
authors introduce their methods courses by asking students on the first day of the
semester “How do you know?” The original purpose of this question was to introduce
students to scientific method and espouse its superiority over “common ways of
knowing.” Students are encouraged to think of every manner of “knowing,” while the
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