The Academic and Research Skills module draws on decolonial, postcolonial and feminist epistemologies of the Global South among others and uses interactive teaching methods. The module strongly encourages students to undertake empirical research for their dissertation which brings alive questions of reflexivity, positionality and ethics, allowing them to draw on their own experiences and contextual knowledge.

Teaching area

Academic and research skills lectures and seminars

Course

Academic and research skills for 3 MA programmes in the School of Education and Social Work: Master’s in International Education and Development, Master’s in Education and Master’s in Childhood and Youth. Core module over two semesters to support the final MA dissertation in the third semester. Teaching sessions are 90-minute lectures followed by 90-minute seminars.

Around 50 mostly international students of colour and a few UK students, with many students from countries of the Global South, including Palestine, Mali, Sudan, Jordan, Japan, South Korea, India, Ghana, Uganda and Nigeria.

Description

I’ve been teaching this module for the past two years. The purpose of the module is to support students in preparation for writing their dissertation. In the first semester, I introduce concepts, methodology and epistemology, interrogating Positivism and going beyond the established approaches. We examine decolonial and postcolonial epistemologies of the Global South, as well as feminist and other epistemologies. In the second semester, we discuss specific research methods, such as observations, interviews, focus groups and case studies. We invite other faculty members from Education and Social Work as experts to contribute to lectures when we discuss specific methods including interviews, observations, case studies and discourse analysis. This exposes the students to a variety of research and methods. The content reflects the students’ context and helps them to prepare for their dissertation – most go on to undertake empirical research in their country or a country where they have worked in a professional capacity, further strengthening their research skills.

Lectures

I have the 3 MA cohorts for the lectures and we’re in a lecture theatre, but I include lots of seminar-style activities. Student interaction informs the structure of the module. I ask them to sit with people from other courses to assist their learning, and the interaction between them is amazing. I use what we call the ‘Sussex Buzz’: I ask them to turn to the person next to them and provide prompts for them to talk for a few minutes.

I always start with a five-minute buzz. I ask them to recap: ‘What did we do last week?’ I end the session with a five-minute buzz too, asking them ‘What is the main message you got from this session?’ This is a practice I learnt from the previous module convenor, Professor Máiréad Dunne, with whom I worked very closely and who helped design the current iteration of this module.

During the lectures, I provide other prompts, such as ‘What it means to do research in a place you’re familiar/not familiar with?’ They talk reflexively about what research is and draw on their positionalities. I go around the lecture theatre getting feedback from the students. I listen in, take notes, bring them back and sometimes add the feedback from the group to my slides.

Seminars

In seminars, students are assigned to mixed ethnicity and gender groups so that they can share experiences. They do lots of group work. For example, if they’ve just had a lecture on research design, in the seminar I ask them to design a research project on a topic such as teacher absenteeism in Ghana, with additional prompts. In their group, they need to consider:

• What are the research questions?
• What would be the methodology?
• Who would be the participants?

They prepare a short presentation. Then, each group comes to the front of the class to present. In this way, students actively participate in leading the seminar, developing not just presentational capacities, but learning and unlearning through discomfort. This approach relates to the pedagogical processes of ‘democratic persuasion as crucial to the goal of enabling all students and not just the assertive few in the classroom’ (Rege, 2010, p. 96; hooks, 1994).

Outcomes

Decolonisation of the curriculum and anti-racist pedagogy

The Master’s in International Education and Development students have always tended to undertake empirical research for their dissertations rather than secondary research such as literature reviews or archival research. Over the past two years, this module, with content that reflects the students’ context, has encouraged students doing the other two Master’s courses to also conduct empirical research.

Students who undertake empirical research generally achieve higher grades than for secondary research because they can reflect on their own experiences and bring this into their writing. Drawing on positionality is a key learning outcome against which their dissertation is assessed.

Every year, the top 12–15 dissertations are published in a journal, Global Research Insights, organised by the Centre for International Education. Having their work published is a great bonus for the students, develops their academic writing and editorial skills, and meets the institutional demands to further embed employability into our curricula.

Academic skills and student support

The students learn reflexive writing, which is embedded in our learning outcomes, and consider their own positionality. This method of teaching has greatly improved the standard of dissertations over the past two years, with an increase in the number of dissertations being published and awarded Distinction.

Comments

Our students do research in incredibly diverse and complex contexts. For example, there’s a student looking at the struggles related to education in Palestine and others researching the context in Mali, Jordan and Lebanon. Substantively, our teaching is focused on conflict, displacement, refugees and migration, schooling and higher education, curriculum and pedagogies and gender, identities and citizenship. I am proud of this exceptional module given its links with students’ backgrounds, contextual knowledge and experiences and how it supports their empirical research.

Student feedback

Gunjan runs the most inclusive classes I have attended. She exhibits great patience in listening to students. Every voice matters in her class and she addresses issues relating to race and gender. She set up the class so we worked collaboratively and encouraged us to critique and engage and always treated each student equally and with respect.

(Masters in International Education and Development student from the cohort of 2023-24)

Links

Global Research Insights