Joy at Wanderings of a Student Librarian wrote a great post on what’s wrong with so many Research Methods classes. Research Methods classes often seem to be taught because they’re a requirement and not to actually inspire in library students a passion for research and scholarly literature. For me, the passion for research came from writing my undergraduate thesis, because I could actually see the practical applications of using proper research methodology and could put them to use. Joy has some good ideas for redesigning the Research Methods classes:
If I were queen of a library school, here’s what I would do. I would have a required course called Library Literature. In that class, we would read tons of journal articles–mostly good, a few bad to teach that healthy skepticism. The final project would be to come up with the initial idea for a research project and to do the literature review for it.
Then, I would have another class where library students actually do a small, possibly publishable if it works well, research project. All academic librarian wannabes would be encouraged, or required, to take the course, as would future LIS Ph.Ds. I would also encourage any student who came up with a good research project and literature review to take this class as well–we need more school librarians and public librarians doing research.
For the second class, I would have a basic knowledge of statistics as a prerequisite. I would probably be flexible on how this was met, but the ideal would be to take a college-level statistics course from a really great math teacher within a year or two of going to library school–that’s what I wish I had done and, given the opportunity, I may yet.
I agree with her that there is no better way to learn research methods than to actually read research studies and do practical research projects. How much does anyone retain when they read a research methods textbook versus what they retain when they are forced to actually use the skills? I have taken three research methods courses — one for History in college, one for my masters in social work, and one in library school. The history one was good in the sense that we read books that showed different sides of the same events to gain a healthy skepticism about what we read. The second one was good in that we did literature reviews and designed a research proposal on the same topic as our lit review (statistics was a prerequisite for entering the MSW program). The third one — the library school one — was taught entirely from a dry textbook. The only assignments we had were a tiny article critique, a critique of an instrument, and some work with SPSS. I know it’s good to know all that “nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio” stuff and to be able to use statistical software, but I didn’t really learn anything about doing a literature review or how to do a research study. Luckily I’d learned this stuff prior to taking the class, but many of my classmates came out of that class just as perplexed about research as they were when they started. And I wouldn’t doubt that the experience soured many of them on doing research and writing for publication.
Have any of you taken good research classes? What was it that made the class useful? If you do research studies or write for publication, where did your passion for writing and research come from? This field needs more voices of dissent — more passionate and talented librarian-writers who write what they think and can do so in a credible way. We need people who realize that research is a great way to convince people that change is needed. People like Sherri Vokey with her IM study or Rachel Holt & Adrienne L. Strock (who wrote The Entry Level Gap article for Library Journal). And library schools need to realize the power they have to develop librarians who can make a difference through their research and writing.
I have the unique history of having taken three research classes in three completely different fields. I went to law school for a year and had to take a legal research course, which taught me thoroughness in finding EVERYTHING on a subject that can be found. I did a stint in counseling school for an MA I never earned and had to take that research class, where I learned that preparing a research plan is very important–in fact, I use some of the scientific method now. My third class was a grad student in history (I did earn that M.A.) and I learned absolutely nothing from that course. In fact, I discovered early on that I knew more about research than did my instructor, who herself had only earned and M.A.
I plan to go to library school beginning in January and I guess I’ll make myself suffer through another stats class; I got a C in the first one and remember nothing from it. Thanks for the advice on that.
As an archivist, I have actually taught research methods in the archives setting to individual and groups of high school, college, and graduate students, and other people too (historians, genealogists). I find that most people know nothing about research, even those with history PhDs–they just dont’ get it. Patience is necessary from the viewpoint of the teacher and the student. If patience is there, and a willingness of both to learn, then research methods can be taught.
But I am not yet convinced that research methods can be taught in a classroom setting.
Research and library school. . .one of my pet peeves so to speak because it is never taught right or enough. At least for those planning on becoming an academic track. What I learned about research came from my other M.A. in English, and from being a graduate of the National Writing Project, where the teacher as researcher model is nurtured. I had research requirements in library school, but they were within classes; I did not take anything like statistics. Did not have to, and to be honest, I would not want to any time soon, in large measure because I don’t want to be taught out of a textbook. I think this definitely something that needs to be discussed and looked into, because it is a great disservice to many future librarians going into an academic setting requiring tenure that have no idea how to write for publication or do research (sounds like my next research project). In my case, I knew this before going in, but my English program was very good about getting students to produce works for publication or at least conference presentation. It is not only teaching the methods of research. You have to show others how to enter the culture of research and scholarly conversation. This can be done through practice. No dry textbook will do it. Anyways, just an idea.
[…] Meredith asks why librarians research, prompted by a post at Wanderings of a Student Librarian. Have any of you taken good research classes? […]
I took a great policy analysis course which I found more useful to me than the Research Methods course. And Angel: research methods is not even close to stats, so don’t worry too much about your marks.
But I think the research methods course problem is not so much a course specific problem, but the broader “buffet-style” approach to librarianship learning. Just about every course in library school is a “here are the major categories of [insert one of “research methodology,” “information resources,” “management techniques,” “information-related theories,” “metadata methods,” “software languages” etc.]. With the exception of one-or-two main methods (eg. AACR2), you do not have to actually know anything about these — just make sure you are aware that these exists. And if you do want to know about one of these, well, that can be your major paper due in November along with the gazillion other useless assignments I’ve assigned.
I think the lit review stuff should be moved right out of research methods and put into a different course. Instead, the focus should be on the hands-on field work. Send the students out to do some non-participant observation of students in a university hall-way. Get them to count cars on a busy street or take random samples of weeds found in a field. Less theory and more action. That’s what I think. Get them to write a brief ethnography of being in a pub. That would be cool.
I won’t be taking my research class until next spring. After reading about every one’s experiences here I will certainly be interested in finding out how my program has structured our course.
I also agree that there isn’t enough research done for school and public libraries. Since it’s the setting I plan to work in, my papers often focus on public libraries and I often have trouble finding good material for my research. Hopefully my research class will teach me what I need to know to help contribute to the field in some way.
Well, my research methods class in library school was taught by a madwoman. She sent us e-mails from her cats (as in, the cats were supposedly writing to us) and she changed her syllabus two weeks into the class to make one project count 70% of our grade. Needless to say, I learned very little in this class. Unfortunately for me, this was reflective of my overall library school experience. Of the 12 classes (36 hours) that I had to take to obtain my degree, I’d say that I actually learned something useful in about 3 of them.