Social research methodology ERASMUS>PED25

CONTENT OF THE COURSE LEARNING OUTCOME

Upon completion of the course and confirmation of achieving the intended learning outcomes, the student:
1. Knows and understands the philosophical, methodological, and cultural foundations of social and educational research; concepts of knowledge, the notion of science and the status of scientific knowledge, socio-cultural determinants of scientific research, philosophical trends, research paradigms and strategies, the significance and ways of building theory in scientific research; is able to analyze scientific texts.
2. Knows and understands the structure of the research process in the context of the adopted research strategy (quantitative, qualitative, and mixed strategies); the concept of a research project and its stages, criteria for choosing a research strategy, research goals, research problems and hypotheses, variables and relationships between them, conceptualization and operationalization of variables, principles of creating conceptual frameworks for research, strategies and techniques for sampling, defining a research case, specifics of research in preschool and early school pedagogy, types and forms of research: descriptive, diagnostic, explanatory, verification, and project-based.
3. Knows and understands the principles of data processing and critical analysis in the context of the adopted research strategy and data type; data verification and selection, coding, classification, quantification, and categorization; basics of statistical analysis (descriptive statistics, frequency distributions, measures of central tendency and dispersion, one- and two-factor analysis, correlations between variables, statistical inference and hypothesis testing, comparative analyses); selection and coding of qualitative data, identifying categories of analysis and analyzing relationships between them, creating vignettes, networks, matrices, and maps.
4. Knows and understands the principles of developing research results and preparing research reports; methods of presenting research findings, principles of preparing and composing different types of scientific texts; writing skills, styles and genres, language and narrative techniques.
5. Knows and understands the role of quality and reliability in scientific research, various criteria of research quality, including representativeness, validity, reliability, credibility, transparency, authenticity, triangulation of theoretical perspectives, research methods, and data sources, generalizability and transferability of research results.
6. Knows and understands the ways of applying scientific research results in social and pedagogical practice, research aims and types of research in the context of practical application possibilities, methods of practical application (situation analysis and diagnosis, analysis of social and pedagogical problems, identifying needs and planning intervention activities, evaluation of outcomes); the critical-emancipatory and transformative potential of scientific research.
7. Knows and understands the ethical aspects of conducting and using scientific research in the field of social sciences; basic principles of conducting research, ethical dilemmas and choices at different stages of the research process, involvement of research participants, the socio-political context of social research, methods of presenting research results in the public space; the concept of plagiarism in research work.
8. Is able to design a research process; skillfully select research tools.
9. Is able to collect data appropriate to the stated research problem.
10. Is able to properly analyze data.
11. Is able to develop a research results report.
12. Is able to critically analyze a research report.
13. Is able to select literature and source materials relevant to the topic of the thesis.
14. Is able to choose a form of presenting collected data and an argumentation style appropriate for presenting the research problem in the thesis.
15. Is prepared to reliably report the results of their research.

CURRICULUM CONTENT REFERENCED TO LEARNING OUTCOMES

Self-study:
1. Preparation for classes (reading the literature)
2. Preparation for course credit (presentation, essay)
3. Other

Laboratory:
1. Human research activity. Dialectics and ethics in social research. The scientific-research problem. Subject and aim of research, research questions, hypotheses. Principles of formulating research questions and hypotheses. The concept of variables in the research plan: distinguishing between dependent and independent variables. Specifics of research in preschool and early school pedagogy.
2. Methods and techniques of collecting quantitative data: categorized observation, questionnaire.
3. Methods and techniques of collecting qualitative data: ethnographic observation, unstructured interview, document review.
4. Descriptive statistics – using spreadsheets to calculate basic sample parameters (e.g., standard deviation, creating a histogram).
5. Methods of quantitative data analysis. Basic statistics: descriptive statistics, measures of association between variables. Significance tests.
6. Methods of data collection in the humanistic approach – illustrated with a selected method.
7. Social research project and its development (choosing a research problem and goal, developing a research tool, conducting the research, and performing analysis and drawing conclusions).