Research Methods Teaching Community

Who this Community is for

This Community is for past, current, and aspiring research methods instructors, as well as scholars and pedagogy enthusiasts interested in the teaching and learning of research methods across disciplines and methodological traditions. It welcomes those involved in undergraduate, graduate, professional, online, field-based, and classroom-based research methods education.

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Community focus and ethos

The Research Methods Teaching Community of Practice provides a collaborative space for asking and addressing practical teaching-related questions and for critically reflecting on how research methods are taught and learned. It brings together educators interested in programme-level strategies, curriculum design, supervision, assessment, and pedagogical innovation, as well as in sustained reflection on the future of research methods teaching—how students should be taught to do research and why this matters.

The Community plays a central role in shaping and coordinating the Community-led Research Methods Teaching track at the MethodsNET Conference. The track invites researchers and pedagogues to engage with a wide range of pedagogical questions, including emerging challenges and creative strategies in classrooms and programmes; ways of meaningfully engaging students with methodological complexity; approaches to fostering ethical and reflexive research practice; adapting teaching to diverse student goals, backgrounds, disciplinary expectations, and changing research landscapes; engaging with AI in research methods teaching; and equipping students to contribute meaningfully to community-engaged and collaborative research projects that span methodological, theoretical, disciplinary, and professional boundaries.

Beyond the conference, the Community sustains engagement through online discussions, webinars, and summer school activities. It supports the exchange of teaching resources (e.g. software, textbooks, syllabi, evaluation instructions, and lesson plans), the development of methods-related Scholarship of Teaching and Learning projects, and peer feedback on teaching practices. Across its activities, the Community aims to strengthen research methods pedagogy and support educators in equipping students to engage meaningfully in research, including community-engaged and collaborative projects that take methodological complexity seriously.

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Topics relevant for submissions

• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning research projects on teaching research methods. 
• AI in the research methods classroom.
• Strategies and innovative examples of evaluations, experiential learning and ungrading in research methods courses, including online, field-based and classroom courses.
• Emerging challenges and opportunities in teaching research methods at the course and curriculum levels (e.g., distrust of science, changing student interests and profiles, institutional constraints).
• Teaching research methods through supervising students’ research projects.
• What “invisible” aspects of conducting research need to be taught in research methods courses?
• Decolonising and Indigenising research methods courses within the university as a colonial institution. 
• Author meets critics of a recently published research methods book. Proposals should include a description listing the title of the published volume, its relevance for teaching, and a list of participants including the author, a chair, and up to three ‘critics.’

Co-convenors