Study title

These data comprise qualitative transcripts from semi-structured individual interviews with eight international experts in social science research methods teaching as part of expert panel research. These interviews took place via Skype, phone and face-to-face over the course of Spring-Summer 2015. In addition, there are transcripts of five focus groups with a total of 17 experienced teachers of social science research methods based in the UK, conducted in 2016.The pedagogy of methodological learning is a three-year research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council as part of a package of research by the National Centre for Research Methods. It is intended to promote pedagogical development for advanced social science research methods. Advanced research requires a unique combination of theoretical understanding, procedural knowledge and skills competence; nonetheless, there has been little research about pedagogy associated with this. In the UK, doctoral researchers have learned through an apprenticeship model of supervision, with taught courses and formal training becoming a more recent requirement. Subsequent capacity building has focused on the incorporation of core and advanced training tailored toward the professional and methodological development of researchers. The lack of ‘pedagogic culture’ i.e. lack of debate, investigation and evaluation regarding how research methods are taught and learned is problematic. Little is understood about how best to respond to the distinctive pedagogical challenges in this field. This research seeks to: • advance an emerging pedagogical culture and content knowledge for social science research methods teaching; • create a typology of pedagogical approaches for social research methods teaching to inform national policy and practice; • develop a coherent theoretical framework for methods teaching to inform national practice. To this end, the project deploys four complementary components: 1) expert panel...