10
Dr Jane Rand, York St John University
This post is about talk in the undergraduate classroom; specifically it’s about how talk can support undergraduate social science students to develop their understanding of research and their understanding of themselves as researchers.
Compared to students of the natural sciences or science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), undergraduate social science research students might be considered to be at a disadvantage. STEM students typically experience an apprenticing pedagogy; in the natural sciences, for example, laboratory-based activities are common through each year of undergraduate study. These learning environments provide both structure and community, from which beginning researchers are able to develop their identities as research community members (Balster et al., 2010: 177). These communities include (Thiry & Laursen, 2011):
- the students,
- more experienced students as research mentors, and
- academic staff as research supervisors.
After progressive development from a mode of close supervision at the beginning of their undergraduate experience, through enquiry that is guided (both by supervisors and also mentors), to modes of near-independence (Spronken-Smith et al., 2008; Sabatini, 1997), the pedagogical approach is designed to enable students to adopt the ‘traits, habits and temperament of scientific researchers’ (Thiry & Laursen, 2011: 771). But this type of apprenticing is less common in the social sciences. One reason is cost – lab-based testing and experimentation lends itself to scale – the same cannot be said for approaches common to the social sciences such as detailed field research (Todd, Bannister & Clegg, 2004; Ishiyama, 2002).
Laboratories enable a community of practice-based pedagogy.
COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE |
In his seminal work on communities of practice, Wenger identifies practice as ‘doing in a historical and social context that gives structure and meaning to what we do’ (1998: 47; emphasis added). He argues that practice depends on the interaction between doing and reifying: ‘making, designing, representing…encoding and describing as well as perceiving, interpreting…decoding and recasting’ (59).So how can we create a community of practice-based pedagogy in social science, where approaches can be diverse and, in isolation, positions can appear to be opposed? |
Introducing TALK
Social science research practices can include theory-testing (deductive) approaches and also theory-building (inductive) approaches, as well as both of these in combination; they can be considered on a continuum. Practices in the natural sciences are similarly multiple and varied; so what does “the laboratory” actually offer? The natural science laboratory is a space in which tests and experiments are conducted and practised, and from which theories are developed; it is a vehicle for developing knowledge and understanding. The conduct and practice of social science research is conceptualisation: “