Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996
Objectives Upon successful completion of this subject, students should have become aware of a wide variety of approaches to undertaking research in education, including historical, descriptive, correlational, causal-comparative and experimental; have become familiar with the nature of a research report: be able to construct research plans; have presented a review of literature dealing with an area of research in education of interest to the student; have presented a research proposal in the area of interest.
Synopsis This subject aims to familiarise students with a variety of approaches to undertaking research in education. To assist students to apply at least one of the approaches covered in the subject in a small-scale piece of school-based or classroom-based educational research. Topics covered include (1) purposes of research (basic or applied research, evaluation research, research and development, action research); (2) methods of research (historical research, discipline research, correlational research, casual-comparative and experimental research); (3) selecting research problems; (4) drawing up research plans; (5) collection, analysis and interpretation of data; (6) writing a research report; (7) evaluating research reports.
Assessment Review of research literature (2000 words): 40% + Research proposal: 60%