Understanding the knowledge base

The humanities pay very close attention to the distinction between primary and secondary sources, the former being seen as the most significant type of resource for advanced study. Thus, the researcher is intent on studying the primary documents themselves, analyzing them, and coming to an understanding of their meaning or significance. The researcher then produces secondary literature which, in turn, becomes a resource for the second role of the researcher – argumentation among the various interpretations of primary literature, all of them claiming to have understood that literature critically (and more accurately?). This may be an oversimplification, but it forms a good starting point for teaching research processes.

Initially, students who are seeking to be on the inside of the disciplinary research process need to experience the ways in which scholars analyze primary literature and debate with one another about it. In order to ensure that students are learning content as well as process, a good way to introduce the knowledge base is to take students directly to foundational pieces of primary literature in the discipline, and then to guide them through key secondary interpretations.

Students actually need to read the resources involved, but they will have little sense of the significance of this data unless professors do a close reading of significant passages with them, pointing out the ways in which the foundational literature of the discipline has developed through analysis, theory, counter-theory, rejoinder, and so on. The key element here is that you can teach content by walking students through key works and helping them understand the processes at play. The more hands-on experience students have with the literature of the discipline, under professorial guidance, the better grasp they will have of the nature of the discipline’s literature.

To understand the literature of a discipline in the humanities, students also need to understand the role of peer review, the significance of scholar-to-scholar recognition of key players and key ideas (rarely done by citation counts), and the emerging roles of non-traditional publications (blogs, wikis, and so on). Overall, students need to grasp what is a valid resource for research and what is not. Inevitably, many students will not, by looking at a citation, understand the difference between a journal article and an essay in a book or even a book itself, so the teaching of distinctions in citation may well be a means to help students to make sense of the nature of the literature.

Understanding the disciplinary metanarrative

Metanarrative in the humanities is inherently rationalistic, something that burdens at least some of its proponents who live within a Postmodern worldview. The humanities are governed by the idea that human reason, guided by agreed-upon interpretive principles, can analyze the primary resources at their disposal, and come to an understanding of them. In turn, it is expected that others, using the same interpretive principles, may take varying positions, and that the scholars in the various schools of thought will use agreedupon principles and conventions to debate with one another, with the hope of finding a resolution.

While the goal of study in the humanities was at one time discovery of the “truth,” metanarrative, in these postmodern times, now seeks the less lofty goal of achieving the best explanation. Thus, there is no sense of “proof” of ideas, nor of closure of a debate, so you will rarely find all sides agreeing that they have now concluded the matter and have settled on one interpretation. Thus, whether it is a historian debating the causes of the Second Gulf War, a philosopher studying the views of Nietzsche on human beings, or an art critic seeking to understand Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” the scholar in the humanities can expect steady work from the fact that few views remain unchallenged for long. The key to the metanarrative is the quest, the seeking for a better way of seeing.

For students, the literature itself can provide a good model for the nature of the discipline’s quest, as long as students are introduced to the ways in which scholars interact on an interpretation. Students, as well, can be given their first assignment here. Gather examples of four or five key arguments on a significant element of the discipline’s subject matter and have students analyze each argument, then declare, with reasons, why one is favored over the others. This can be accomplished as an in-class group effort or an individual take-home project. Whatever is done, the professor must then follow up the assignment with a vigorous analysis of the types of responses made by students, pointing out where method or thinking is flawed and helping students understand the sorts of questions they should have asked, as well as the ways in which they should have handled the evidence. Having done this, you have already begun introducing students to the method of the discipline, to which we now turn.

Developing skill in disciplinary method

The development of student skills in research processes is accomplished by a combination of instruction and a good deal of practice. Students in the humanities need to understand from the beginning that they will be expected to perform a lot of exercises in order to become insiders in the discipline. There may be resistance, but a creative professor can use a more process-orientated classroom to advantage in engaging students in the same sort of quest that has long fascinated their teacher.

Method is a complex combination of subject knowledge and ability to work with the conventions that built the knowledge base of the discipline from the beginning. Here, enlisting the aid of academic librarians can work wonders. Librarians can help students appreciate the importance, for example, of formulating a clear and narrowly focused goal for a research project, something that the majority of students in higher education do not seem to grasp from the assignment requirements stated by their professors.

Students learn to do research by being guided through research projects, getting both instruction and detailed feedback as they go. Having two or more research projects for students is a good start, but students need specific guidance in process at each step. This is best done by breaking such projects down into separate modules, something that is common practice these days. Each module, however, should do more than lead to a piece of content. It should be a means to teach process. If possible, students should submit each module in turn, have it critiqued, and then students who have not reached a required threshold should re-submit the module for further critique. This may appear laborious, but any skill develops only by practice, feedback and another try.

Have your students in the first module suggest research questions or thesis statements that will guide their research projects. In concert with an academic librarian, critique those research statements. What sorts of challenges can you as the professor expect to see? The most common errors are research questions or theses that are too broad, that view research as the gathering of existing information rather than the solving of a problem, that are vague or multiple in their goals, that are open-ended and thus open to multiple answers, and so on. In my student textbook on research processes (Badke, 2011b: Appendix One), I have provided numerous examples of these sorts of errors and ways to correct them. Within the humanities, lack of a clear, problem- orientated goal expressed in a single question or statement will inevitably result in a broad-based, rambling product that shows no sense of purpose. Careful attention to critiquing student research statements and having them rewrite such statements will pay off mightily in the ongoing research.

Thus, students will learn to avoid the following sorts of research questions in favor of better formulations:

The second module should involve an academic librarian in several sessions to help students work with databases and determine the sorts of information needed, the tools that will help find that information, the means to optimize the tools, and the skills to determine the nature of the found results. Once again, these module assignments can be critiqued, and students falling below your identified threshold can be given guided practice or an opportunity to resubmit, based on feedback. Be sure with this module that students state their research questions or theses so that the searches done and the results generated can be evaluated for relevance to the problem at hand.

The third module could be a preliminary annotated bibliography in which students would assess the quality and contribution of each of the resources found. Look for resources that are tightly focused on the research question. Warning flags are too many resources that are much broader in scope than the research question or widely diverse resources, each of which only attacks only one aspect of the research question.

Even the final project submission can be assessed for process. How well is the final research statement formulated? Does the student stay on course in addressing the research question? Are counter-arguments included and addressed or is the development one-sided? Does the student present evidence well and according to the conventions of the discipline? Is the bibliography actually used in the paper or is there too much reliance on only one or two resources? Overall, to what extent does the project look like published work in the discipline?

Understanding the knowledge base

The social sciences are strongly theory-based. The scholar, through research and experience, develops theories of how people function as individuals and in groups. Those theories are tested through further research and seem inevitably to be challenged by counter-theories. Thus the knowledge base of the social sciences, to an even greater extent than the humanities, is characterized by flux.

The study of people is a frustrating one, due to their inherent tendency neither to be categorized easily nor to behave the same way consistently. There are inherent dissonances between what people say they believe and how they act. At times they cannot even explain their own actions, which may be altruistic or selfish depending on a multitude of possible causative factors.

Thus the social sciences are ever seeking to enhance the rigor of their research so that at least something can be said for certain, or nearly for certain (Lilienfeld, 2011). They have come a long way in this regard, finding means, for example, to be convincing about cause and effect relationships, and to be able to identify major tendencies in the ways people or groups may be expected to act within particular circumstances. Social scientists thus place a high value upon method and proper use of evidence in order to construct a knowledge base, which, though constantly evolving, they hope will be considered valid, not just among social scientists but within the larger academic community.

Students need to understand that the most highly valued information within the social sciences is the well-tested theory that can serve as a valid predictor of behavior. Peerreviewed research is the foundation of good theory, and the challenging of theories with solid empirical evidence is a hallmark of rigor in the social sciences.

Understanding the disciplinary metanarrative

Within social scientific disciplines, the quests for explanation and the ability to predict behaviors drive all research. Humans, whether individually or in groups, are complicated beings. It is a hard task to understand how and why they function as they do within particular situations. Whether it is the bipolar individual who operates from a worldview that has unusual ideation, the motorcycle gang that justifies its actions in the midst of an aberrant subculture, the political party that works the system to its own ends, or the business that needs to improve its internal communication systems, the social sciences seek to theorize and support with evidence the processes that exist. What is more, those theories then serve as better predictors of future behavior for the same subject(s) and circumstances.

Explaining and predicting human behavior have a high value for social scientists, but so does credibility, found in research that is rigorously structured and carefully done, so that the results are accepted both within and outside of the scientific community. The disastrously inaccurate predictions of some economists over the past decade have, for example, had those economists rethinking their theories and methods in the face of a great deal of skepticism about the value of economists to society. At the same time, to do them justice, many of the past dire warnings of the best of the economists have fallen on deaf ears in society, so the problem may be more one of a failure in listeners than of faulty research. Still, this example demonstrates how important it is to social scientists to get it right and have others accept their findings. To this end, a ringing element of the metanarrative of social science is doing research that stands up to both the tests of explanation and of predictability.

To reinforce the metanarratives of the social sciences, professors should tailor their autobiographies to show their own quests for explanation and predictability. What is more, they should use examples (like the economic crisis of 2008 and following) to demonstrate the social scientific search for evidence-based theory that can foster accurate predictability.

Developing skill in disciplinary method

Research within the social sciences varies in nature from reviews of previous research to qualitative and quantitative studies. Each has its own conventions and ground rules. Foundational for information research at the student level is the often misunderstood “literature review.” Students often do not grasp the point of literature reviews in general, seeing them as simply a description of previous studies on a topic, a sort of extended annotated bibliography.

Here, the simple exercise of doing close readings with students of some key literature reviews can meet both the goals of content assimilation and of helping to clarify the nature of literature review method. In essence, this is what students need to understand about literature reviews.

The goal of a literature review is to explain what has been done within a certain subject area, including the types of studies published, the key players in this field, and then to provide a direction for what still needs to be done. I like to think of literature reviews as narratives, starting with earlier research and coming down to the most recent. But they must never be simply a list of studies (books, articles) with a bit of commentary. Instead, they need to revolve around themes or emphases. You might indicate what people were thinking about the subject at the beginning, then how the emphasis changed. You might spell out various schools of thought that developed around the topic and explain significant examples of the studies of the major scholars supporting those schools of thought. Overall you want the reader to have a strong sense of the best work that has been done on the topic or issue. Then, near the end of the review, you need to point to something that still needs to be done. This could be a gap that remains in our knowledge, previous studies that need to be replicated with larger or different subject pools, or some flaw in the research to date that needs to be corrected. That gap, need or flaw then becomes a launching pad for further research.

Another form of literature review is an assessment of existing studies to determine whether they confirm a certain hypothesis, are complete enough to form a theory, or have some basic flaw that needs correction. This type places a fairly high-level demand upon students, but such papers can stand on their own as full research projects.

How do social science professors enhance the skills of their students in handling the literature of their disciplines? Once again, modular approaches to student assignments can work wonders. The first module needs to establish the basic research statement (question, hypothesis, etc.) so that students have a clear mental picture of the goal they are seeking. The research statement will commonly need to identify at least the gap or problem in the existing research that needs to be filled with further research. Student submissions that fail to meet the criteria for a good research statement need to be critiqued and returned for a second try and resubmission.

When it comes to the second module – identification of the literature to be reviewed and the actual acquisition of it – the role of academic librarians in assisting students is crucial unless you as their professor are fully up to date on all the nuances of databases. There is a dual challenge with researching for literature reviews. First, students must use complex databases to identify studies on their topics. Second, students must cull out of all those studies the ones that are the most essential. Librarians can help with both issues, guiding students in optimizing advanced database features, and using tools like citation counting databases (Web of Science, Google Scholar) as well as citation chaining, to determine who are the major players and what are the most significant studies. Working with a librarian from the point of student identification of research problems through the identification and location of the right studies can make the difference between students understanding the process well and simply muddling through it.

It is best, for the third assignment module, simply to have students present a bibliography, hopefully briefly annotated, of the most significant studies on the topic. Critiquing it is intended merely to make sure that the list adequately represents significant studies, that extraneous material is removed and that what is left is the core of the best research.

The fourth module will have the students build their bibliographies into literature review narratives that conclude with identification of the gaps discovered, inadequacies that need to be corrected, and so on. Or, in the case of a larger review article, the narrative may end by assessing the degree to which the case has been made for a particular theory. Whatever the goal, your assessment of student work is going to need to consider whether the narrative is coherent, all relevant schools of thought are represented, and if the analysis that concludes the literature review is rigorous and valid. Librarians, well used to the process of literature reviews, will be helpful in your assessment of this module as well.

Method in the social sciences is not something that can be taught in a single assignment. If your class is structured to study literature reviews, the discourse patterns of various types of research, and the assessment of research, you will help students begin to get it. What they are “getting” is a grasp of the way things are done in your discipline. Along the way, they need a lot of practice in doing their own literature reviews and hopefully in participating in human research, if your research ethics people will allow that. A constant focus on process can go far toward meeting both the content needs (as they assess the literature with a view to understanding both content and method) and the needs of research skill development.

Understanding the knowledge base

The knowledge base of the sciences has grown incrementally through structured observation, experiments and other types of studies that use the scientific method. This growth has not been steady, however, in that the findings of the past may well be refuted by research in the present or future, thus making scientific knowledge development less a steady accumulation than a set of fits and starts that add knowledge over time while occasionally removing past conclusions that are no longer accepted. In general, for knowledge to be recognized as such in the scientific knowledge base, it needs either to have behind it multiple replicated experiments or observations, or it needs to be based on a theory which explains phenomena better than does any other theory.

It is thus not easy to add to scientific knowledge. Rigorous patterns of peer review are there to ensure that quack science does not creep into the knowledge base, though peer review is not in itself foolproof. Overall, scientists are quite tough-minded about their knowledge, testing and retesting their findings and remaining skeptical of anything that cannot be supported by a strong theory or replicated experiment. For example, “cold fusion” is a phenomenon that has never been properly supported by research and thus has been generally refuted by the scientific community (Feder, 2005).

While the knowledge base is characterized by peer-reviewed journal articles, and, to a lesser extent, books that summarize the research and establish theories, increasingly scientists are discussing their work through Web 2.0 tools like wikis and social networks. Thus you may well find a pre-publication, pre-review paper on the Internet, where the authors are seeking evaluation from fellow scientists prior to going through a more rigorous peer review process. Such studies, as well as the multitude of quasi-scientific publications available through search engines, are complicating the previous notion of a pristine knowledge base.

Whatever scientists tell their students about the scientific knowledge base, they must reckon both with the rigor of traditional approaches to publication and with the newer forces that are innovative but tend to muddy the waters in which university students are immersed.

Understanding the disciplinary metanarrative

Scientific research is governed by a sense of quest that stresses discovery and explanation. With an agreed-upon scientific method, the metanarrative of the sciences is built on feeding the quest with data that has been rigorously obtained and can be replicated. Data eventually leads to theory (larger explanations) and very occasionally to laws (the most assured results of research).

Scientists are for the most part sold on the process that leads to their data and to theories and laws, so much so that any misuse of the scientific method is greeted with resounding condemnation. To say that the method of science has godlike status is scarcely an exaggeration. To be sure “scientific method” has been challenged on the grounds that the concept is too diverse in its interpretations to be constituted as a method (see, for example, Bouffard, 2001, and the rejoinder by Shephard, 2001), yet there is a time-honored traditional understanding of what we mean by science that has withstood all attempts to debunk or fragment it.

Those who teach research in the sciences must begin with philosophy of science, which both debunks false ideas about science (such as the possibility of proof) and frames scientific method as the way science must be done if it wants to continue to have respectability in academia and beyond. Science professors, as well, need to make strong use of autobiography to reveal the interests that led them into the field, the struggles they faced, the current work they are doing, and so on. We want students to enter our world with enthusiasm and skill. They will only do that if they catch the passion of those already in that world.

Developing skill in disciplinary method

While some students may well, in more senior years or at graduate level, be doing a few significant experiments of their own, the teaching of research processes will likely deal with two main areas – literature reviews and replication of earlier experiments. I will leave the latter to the science professors who generally already have sophisticated training in place. Literature reviews are another story. While many of the same sorts of challenges, procedures and teaching methods seen in social sciences can be followed in the sciences, there tends in the sciences to be less scope for varied interpretation of results or for schools of thought to develop, because processes in the physical world tend to be more precise than in the world of human beings. Still, the literature review in the sciences, like the social sciences, is a narrative intended to lead to a perceived gap that justifies yet one more experiment or study.

Science professors, like those in the social sciences, need to recognize that literature reviews are not intuitively simple but are mystifying and confusing to the average student. Close reading of good reviews can be a great way to teach method while helping students assimilate content. And critique of student-created literature reviews, with a request for revised versions when they are not done to expectation, will help students develop skill in structuring and writing review projects.

The sciences demand a lot of content learning, but a good amount of the content can be covered by going through the significant literature with students, helping them to understand method along with content. Have students evaluate experimental papers, identifying the various parts, summarizing them and determining the extent to which the experiments met the goals of the original hypotheses. Keep their minds on method even as you teach content, so that the metanarrative of the sciences – discovery by the scientific method – may become ingrained.

Databases devoted to scientific literature can be more complex than those in the social sciences and humanities. Many of these tools rely on the precision of scientific language and thus do not provide subject headings. Here, academic librarians can help students to learn how to narrow often enormous result sets to the most important studies, adding defining terminology and enlisting the aid of citation counts and citation chaining. Since these librarians well understand the requirements of literature reviews, they offer more than mere “library instruction” but can actually help students further the goals of their literature reviews.

It is helpful to modularize student projects, evaluate the various parts for the ability that students show in “doing” the discipline, provide clear feedback, and call for revised versions of work that is not at the required level. Once again, this is not a one-off procedure but something that needs to be practiced through many courses and, indeed, right through programs. Skills will develop, but they require both time and practice.

Understanding the knowledge base

The knowledge base in professional programs is in constant flux, factors of the fact that the human situations in which professionals do their practice are constantly changing and that any research intended primarily to improve praxis is bound to find new ways of doing things. Thus the business person, nurse, or member of the clergy of thirty years ago operated under different parameters than do corresponding practitioners today.

The professional knowledge base, as well, is shaped as much by the experience of its practitioners as it is by more “objective” research procedures. This works two ways: Experience tells practitioners what works and what doesn’t, and experience can also be an impetus to research that seeks newer and better ways to accomplish tasks that have changed over time.

“Method” for research in professional programs is characterized by a tendency to the eclectic, so much so that we must speak of “methods” rather than method. Helping students, therefore, to understand the nature of the knowledge base for the professions within our changing professional climates is a daunting task. What are the best sources for knowledge within our discipline? Can we speak of “knowledge” when what we know is constantly shifting? What sources do we trust, and why? These and other foundational questions must be addressed so that students understand how we can say that we know what we know. They must also grasp that the professions hold their “knowledge” with rather open hands, recognizing that the current version of reality may be overthrown in whole or part at any time.

Understanding the disciplinary metanarrative

For the professions, well-informed, up-to-date, and effective practice is of paramount importance. All professions share a measure of what could be called “professional pride,” which is based on a mixture of competency, service and ethics. Many are characterized by colleges or boards that regulate qualifications and practices of practitioners, thus elevating the profession as a whole. The research quest in professional programs is set upon constantly finding new ways to better accomplish the professional task.

The metanarratives of professions all go something like this: “I am a ____________________ who is intent on bringing the best knowledge and practices together to the accomplishment of the tasks of my profession. More efficient, effective, helpful, and ethical service to my clientele is my central motivation.”

Professional programs are better at communicating their metanarrative than most other university departments, most likely because the professions are the most closely aligned with the goals of actual practice of the discipline. You do not study to be a doctor, nurse, educator, lawyer or business person without being constantly reminded that, at the end of the education process, you will need to be certified and to carry out your profession with real people. Thus the values of better praxis, informed by sound research data, are part and parcel of most everything that students in the professions are learning.

Developing skill in disciplinary method

We should likely be discussing disciplinary “methods” rather than “method,” because they are so diverse, not just among the various professional disciplines but even within them. That said, the methodologies of the professions are much more front and center in university programs than, say, in the humanities. Research method, after all, is intended to inform praxis and thus must be central to all professional study.

I have discovered, and the research literature (see Chapter 2 in this volume) has confirmed, however, that students in professional programs are no more rigorously trained in research processes than are students in other professions. What seems to be happening is that, while students in professional study are given numerous research assignments, they are not receiving the guidance they need to carry out those assignments.

I recall interacting with a Master of Business Administration student tasked with researching a complex problem. She was using only Google Scholar, which did not have the ability to focus her search to find the information she needed. When I suggested that she use her institution’s subscription to EBSCO’s Business Source Complete, she confessed that she didn’t know what that was. This from a graduate student. Sending her out to do research without the requisite background had proven to be a recipe for frustration.

Academic librarians with knowledge in professions can be extremely useful in helping you to identify the education needs of your students in professional programs. Whether that is by helping students to clarify research goals and use the multitude of business databases to advantage, or advancing the cause of evidence-based medicine in a nursing program, academic librarians are highly skilled at putting a finger on the gaps that need to be filled before research assignments in your program actually serve to advance student skills.

For the professions, the problem is not that students have little opportunity to do research but that there is a lack of guidance in research processes that can make all that research practice profitable.