The Teaching Research Methods track at the 2011 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference built upon many of the themes from past years and brought to fruition some of the recommendations made at previous meetings. The group touched on numerous topics, but there were a few main themes that informed each conversation. First, the papers and commentary focused on determining the best way to give our students, especially our majors, a solid research methods background. Because faculty from many types of colleges and universities were present and offered varying accounts of the particular needs and career goals of their school's students, the group did not reach a consensus as to a uniform course of study that would be appropriate for every institution. Although participants had different ideas about how to implement a methods course of study, many presentations highlighted the necessity to forefront methods training and further integrate it into the political science curriculum.
A second main theme dealt with the way that political scientists should characterize research methods. While there was some disagreement over how broadly the term should be understood (i.e., should logic, legal studies or political theory be included in methods training? Is the emphasis on the construction of a thesis statement on par with the formulation of a hypothesis?), track members strongly agreed that a robust methods course should feature various quantitative and qualitative approaches.
The track's papers and the comments that followed connected these two themes to discussion of the best ways to approach methods instruction in our classes, curricula, and discipline. In terms of individual courses, many of the papers made suggestions about how to make methods courses more engaging for students to promote significant learning experiences. One paper (David H. Sacko, “Teaching Multimodal Methods to Undergraduates” discussed a multimodal method in which students used logic and qualitative and quantitative approaches to arrive at the same conclusion. Two of the papers outlined how instructors could use problem-based learning to guide students through the formation, execution, and interpretation of a survey assignment (Charles R. Boehmer, “Learning Research Methods through Practical Learning”; Daniel Mulcare, “Collaborative Surveys as Problem-Based Learning Assignments”). From these papers, the group discussion moved to tackle issue of how to effectively implement these projects. Discussion points included students' difficulties in successfully completing a literature review and their problems articulating and analyzing scholarly work. The track members noted other challenges, such as the need for students to practice using methodological tools in a way that is scientifically valid, the difference between individual student work and group work, and the potential benefits and dangers of having students become more self-directed (e.g., would they embark on more activist projects at the expense of a more scholarly approach?).
Many papers touched on institutional support for research methods. Most of these presentations focused on what departments are doing to integrate methods more systematically into their curriculum. One paper (Christi Siver, “Taking the Next Step: Assessing Different Strategies for Methods Instruction in Political Science Undergraduate Curricula”) explored a department's syllabi to see if the particular methods course influenced the skills that students developed. Another paper (Aaron P. Boesenecker and Elizabeth Cohn, “A Collaborative Teaching Strategy in Undergraduate Research Methods Courses”) offered a university-wide approach to the creation of a research methods program. Using a model similar to the faculty learning community approach, the university's numerous methods instructors joined together to build a core course with multiple sections. This bottom-up approach enabled the faculty to join together, share ideas, and find common objectives that they could bring to their own methods course. Yet another paper (Salvatore Lombardo, “The Evolution of Student Knowledge and Perceptions in an Undergraduate Research Methods Course”) examined the methods instruction at the author's college and recommended that students undergo a two-semester methods training course with a lab component for each section. From these discussions, the track participants suggested that a methods component should ideally be included in as many courses as possible but should definitely be part of the capstone experience. For such an aim to be met, departmental buy-in is necessary. Indeed, further innovations in methods training are directly connected to the willingness of department faculty and chairs to lead on this issue.
Although technically not part of the Teaching Research Methods Track, the OPOSSEM workshop (http://opossem.org) displayed what members of the political science discipline are doing to advance methods instruction. In the spirit of open-source programming and social networking, this online portal enables methods (at this point, only statistical methods) faculty to share ideas, use posted lectures and datasets, and upload their own material to build the expanding resource database.
The track participants put forth the following recommendations. First, departments should try to incorporate methods into the capstone class, and consequently, at future teaching and learning conferences, a capstone track may be useful to direct discussions on how to accomplish this task. Since institutional and departmental buy-in are necessary to make methods an integral part of a curriculum, the participants encouraged departments and faculty to consider how to further integrate methods training into their curricula and courses. Last, it is essential to continue to explore the innovative ways that political scientists can present methods to students and to assess the success of particular pedagogical approaches.
