EDUC9908 Researching Higher Education from a Global Perspective

2019

4.5

1 x 20-hour on-line exercises per semester
10 x 1-hour on-line tutorials per semester
2 x 20-hour project works per semester

Admission into GCHE-Graduate Certificate in Higher Education

Assignment(s), Project, Online presentation & critiques

This topic will provide a broad introduction to the vast and diverse fields of research into Higher Education. Research of the enterprise of Higher Education generally attends to Leadership and Management, Policy Development, Educational Pedagogies, Social and Political Commentary and Social Justice, Educational Technologies as well as disciplinary interests. This topic is intended to be an introduction for the development of students’ capacity to engage in further research into higher education. As such, it is intended students will further develop their personal capacity to formulate researchable questions, identify potential ontological stances as well as epistemologies and research paradigms within which to locate their research. They will also conduct a critical review of research within their field of interest and identify potential methods and ethical considerations. Having done so they will deliver and present a draft proposal for their research focus and provide critical feedback to proposals presented by other students.

The aims of this topic are for students:

• To expose students to the diversity found in the fields of research that focus on the purpose, leadership, management, and educational practices of higher education.
• To provide opportunities for students to enhance their approach to being critical consumers of higher education research outputs.
• To enable students to further their understanding of how to adopt a systematic, theoretically defensible, and ethical approach to the design of a research proposal.
• To enable students to engage in self defence and peer review of research designs.

For successful completion of this topic students will:

• Select from the scope of higher education research an area of personal interest to investigate, considering the diverse underpinning, assumptions, interests and audiences.
• Conduct and report on a brief critical review of key research in the area of interest.
• Critique at least two other students’ critical reviews.
• Formulate defensible research question(s) in their area of research interest.
• Provide feedback to other students on their research questions.
• Produce a research proposal, which includes a defence, a research design and addresses questions of epistemology, timing, resourcing and ethical concerns.
• Undertake a critical review of at least two other students’ research proposals.