Starting Your Pedagogic Research
Maribel Canto Lopez
As far as I can remember I always have been fascinated about learning and teaching. When I started my teaching in academia as a PhD, my contact with students was reduced to small group teaching in tutorials. I remember facing the class with little more than the tutorial questions, some bullet points about the answers and lots of enthusiasm. At the time, I genuinely was curious about how students learnt as I was convinced that answering that question was going to improve my teaching and, more importantly, their learning and overall experience in my classes. At that time, the idea of pedagogical research seemed quite alien to me; moreover, the overwhelming career advice I was given at the time was one that recommended that my publications should concentrate on my specialised subject. It seemed at the time that pedagogical research was considered the ‘Cinderella of academia’ (Kotton et al 2017).
Fortunately, there were also voices in the legal sphere, that recognised the importance of pedagogical research. Authors like Fiona Cownie, understood and stated the need and importance for pedagogical research and ranked it at the same level as any other legal subject research. She recommended that as academics we should read ‘legal education research’ as we would read any other literature in our subjects’ specialisms (i.e. be it ‘torts or contracts’), in order to keep up with the changes on legal pedagogy as we tend to keep pace with the changes in any other law subjects. (Cownie 2016 , p.170). With this in mind, comes my first recommendation for anyone wanting to publish pedagogical research, it would be to start reading pedagogical research. Familiarising ourselves with those journals and articles, and even blogs or books, which we find helpful and inspiring. Those that one day can carry your name together with your ideas, projects, literature review and vision to improve the experience for our students and in our institutions.
Then, I would think about the what you want to talk about in your pedagogical research. I would not rush and give myself the time to start observing and thinking carefully about what I want to write about, hold that idea that is forming in your mind and think about its possibilities and reach to others. In your teaching what is it that worries or inspires you? Is it something general about higher education challenges we are all facing? Is there something that in your view is hindering the students’ experience or your own while learning and teaching? Is it a particular struggle that you observe to do with neurodiversity or race, for example? Is it changes you are noticing with technology and AI rapidly moving in? As a law teacher there will be many ideas that can conform the start of your research question/s. Always chose to research something you feel very passionate about.
The next step would be the how to start the research once you have your research idea. I had the help of a fantastic mentor when I started on my journey of pedagogical research. Hence, I would advise to reach inside your institution for mentoring. You can find out who is interested on pedagogical research in your department or institution and you can ask them if they could support or guide you. You could also reach out and ask associations like the ALT (Association of Law Teachers) for help. In any case, it is your research and it is important that you have an understanding about the design of your research. Maybe your research is going to be looking at a general pedagogical issue, in which you can answer your research question by doing a really exhaustive literature review on that issue. Or possibly your intent is to look at a topic using a comparative lens between different jurisdictions or different areas of study (using interdisciplinary approaches), with information already available. Remember the importance of doing a robust literature review, which will help you also later on with pinpointing where to home your research. You will soon start familiarising yourself with different theories of teaching and learning and authors experts on their field in pedagogy in general, and in legal pedagogy, in particular. On the other hand, you may favour some empirical research involving the voice of students or colleagues, who will answer your research questions. A word of caution if you do this. If like me, your research in your subject area was mainly done through researching cases and legislation, you need to do things differently. It is a bit trial and error in the beginning but you will get used to it the more you research and write. I started attending some empirical research training that all higher education institutions tend to offer, I also read a bit about quantitative (using questionnaires) and qualitative research (using focus groups) (Braun and Clarke, 2006). As I said above it is a bit trial and error at the start, and one of my biggest mistakes while designing questionnaires, for the quantitative research, was to include too many close questions, which limited the information I could get if more open questions were included. Another beginner’s error, this time when conducting qualitative research using focus groups, was not to wait for the answers of the interviewees; there is no need to fill in silences, usually after long silences you will get the best quotes for your research. You can use quantitative or qualitative research. Personally, I like to use them both, as a mixed method approach.
A word of advice before starting any empirical research, would be to obtain the ethical approval of your institution. I would recommend to start this process quite early on, there is a lot of time and bureaucracy involved in this process. Admittedly, the more you do it the better you become at it. However, even now, I have never submitted an ethical form to my institution, which has not come back with some changes required. Please be patient, it usually takes a few months of drafting, submitting, making changes and re-drafting before the approval is granted. You can look at the ethical guidance for education research (BERA, 2024). Also remember that you will have to send the ethical committee your questionnaires and focus groups questions and the consent forms you would have designed for your pedagogical research. If you are not sure, you can always look at previous studies’ questions that inspire you and that you could adapt. I tend to look at the limitations section in this kind of empirical studies, you always learn from the mistakes of others. For guidance in your ethical approval journey, you can ask for help inside your institution, maybe a mentor, or people that have already been successful with ethical approval in their project or ask the ethics officer in your department, if you have one.
Another important phase is the where are you disseminating your research and your written outcome. Undoubtedly, presenting the findings at conferences and getting feedback, always helps. Also, you can use your mentor and colleagues to have a read before you send it out for review. Unfortunately, Conference attendance is not free and funding is scarce, maybe we can state the importance of our pedagogical research as a way to benefit the students’ experience in our institutions. You can publish as a blog, or in WonkHE. When thinking about publishing in journals like the Law Teacher, or more general ones like Studies on Higher Education, as with any research, remember to present a good argumentation and analysis, backed up with sound theories and evidence. Then, follow, carefully, the format and guidelines of the journal you want to publish in.
Finally, I will say the why you want to publish is very important. Firstly, it is something you are passionate about, you want to help others’ learning and teaching, and that is commendable. Apart from the obvious importance of reaching a wider audience that will be interested on the same topic you are, and can maybe even replicate your study, giving you the chance of showing off your impact outside your own teaching and learning in your own institution. Definitely, you also have to think about your promotion; not only will you have a publication, but you can state how you will probably help with retention and students’ satisfaction, maybe even with TEF in your institution, which, in turn may improve students’ recruitment.
Where Next?
As you develop your pedagogic research, you might find yourself collaborating with others as part of Small Projects and Co-Creation with students around legal education.
Or
The time management and organisational skills which you develop through pedagogic research might mean that you are asked to take on course Administrative Roles alongside your teaching and research responsibilities.
Where After?
Ensure that you refer to relevant ethical guidance when planning your research, such as British Educational Research Association [BERA], Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research (5th edn, 2024) www.bera.ac.uk/publication/ethicalguidelines-for-educational-research-2024
Sources:
Braun, V and Clarke, V. ‘Using Thematic analysis in Psychology’ (2006) 3(2) Qualitative Research in Psychology77-101. Available at https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa
Cownie, F. ‘Legal Education Research’ in C. Ashford and J. Guth (eds) The Legal Academics Handbook (Palgrave 2016) 170-172
Cotton, D. R. E., Miller, W., and Kneale, P. ‘The Cinderella of academia: Is higher education pedagogic research undervalued in UK research assessment?’ (2017) 43(9) Studies in Higher Education 1625–1636. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2016.1276549
Further Reading:
Dawson, P. and Dawson, S. L. ‘Sharing successes and hiding failures: ‘‘reporting bias’’ in learning and teaching research’ (2016) 43(8) Studies in Higher Education 1405–1416. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2016.1258052
Carol E., Camille K. H., Alex F. and Corony E. What constitutes high quality higher education pedagogical research? (2021) 46(4) Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 525-546 https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2020,1790500
