Critical debates in teaching research methods in the social sciences

Why social science students need research methods education

A useful starting point to frame a discussion on the relevance of research method education is the distinction between producers and consumers of research (Earley, 2014: 242–243). Consumers of research are those who do not usually conduct their own research after their university course. However, they may pursue careers requiring a fundamental knowledge about research to understand the information they handle in the course of their professional work. They may also need to be able to understand research results as part of their work. A methods course designed for consumers of research may therefore seek to develop skills to enhance graduate employability.

Alternatively, producers of research are those who will undertake their own research beyond their methods classes. They may be planning on entering, or already in, a graduate school and intending to embark on a research career in academia, government or industry. Although students intending to be producers of research will need a deeper understanding of the research process, all students require the same foundation level skills and knowledge about research. For this reason, introductory and undergraduate courses should, as Earley (2014) argues, “address both types equally with the same content and assessment”. This illustrates how research methods are of importance for both potential producers and consumers of research. Moreover, all students need basic research methods to help grasp the academic content of their social science subject.

Evidence of the relevance of research methods to PA programmes can be found in various studies. For example, van de Meer and Marks contend having an academic degree implies the competence to do research in that particular field of study. They argue that:

Although most PA graduates will not become ‘‘researchers’’ as such, they still are supposed to be able to do research, but as public administration professionals, they also have to be prepared to formulate relevant knowledge needs, to commission research, to evaluate research, and interpret its results. This requires thorough methodological knowledge and reflection as well as practical experience with research methods and techniques. Hence, knowledge of and practicing research skills should be part of academic PA programs (van de Meer and Marks, 2016: 111).

Another reason research methods are valuable is the need for research skills, and quantitative skills in particular. Naylor et al. (2014) undertook a study of the cognitive styles of Master of Public Administration (MPA) students; where cognitive refers to the processing habits and reflects the learner’s mode of perceiving, thinking and problem solving. The research concluded “that a stronger concentration in quantitative skills is essential in bolstering core competencies and student marketability in the global economy” (Naylor et al., 2014: 68). This highlights the importance of quantitative skills both for improving learning and understanding within the taught programme and ensuring students are competitive in the graduate recruitment market.

Engbers (2016) argues that given the increasing emphasis on data driven decision-making, greater insight is needed into the best practices for teaching PA research methods. The growth of the ‘evidence based policy’ agenda means graduates – and particularly PA graduates – need to be able interact with the outputs of research in various ways to turn evidence into changes in policy and practice (Head, 2008). For example, in the United Kingdom (UK) the What Works Network (Cabinet Office, 2014) aims to improve the way government organisations generate, transmit and adopt evidence for decision-making to improve public services. Initiatives such as this generate evidence to be used in policy-making using a wide range of methods. For example, Pearce and Raman (2014) analyse the growth of the randomised controlled trials movement in public policy and the challenges of epistemic governance. This reinforces the need for new graduates to be familiar with a range of research approaches.

These arguments highlight the value of research methods as a feature of a PA taught course. The underlying ideas within these arguments also apply to all social science programmes. Many students of PA may not work in government. Conversely, graduates from across the social sciences may work in roles involving policy analysis, decision-making and research in a public management setting. Public administrators may undertake action research in their own organisation and move between consumers and producers throughout their careers.

The challenge of teaching research methods

Earley (2014) distilled from the content of 51 studies the characteristics of students taking a research methods course. They found students typically: fail to see the relevance of the course to the rest of their studies or their lives; are anxious about the course and its challenges; are uninterested and therefore unmotivated to learn the material; and they frequently approach the course with poor attitudes toward research methods and misconceptions about research. Moreover, a study by Murtonen found “students hold a problematic conception of research” and “some students have problems with understanding the very basic and central concept” of empirical research (Murtonen, 2015: 684).

The problems outlined above have been widely documented (Benson and Blackman, 2003; Edwards and Thatcher, 2004; Papanastasiou and Zembylas, 2008) and are particularly acute for quantitative methods, which are often singled out as being particularly problematic (Murtonen and Lehtinen, 2003; Scott Jones and Goldring, 2015). A dearth of quantitative skills among students has ramifications within and outside the academy. This includes only a minority of students using quantitative methods in the dissertations they complete as part of their studies, many students having an incomplete understanding of their social science subject, and a shortage of graduates with strong statistical literacy entering the labour market.

These challenges are not confined to undergraduate courses and are also present in postgraduate and executive education programmes. For example, Harris and Nikitenko (2014) identify the ‘special challenge’ of teaching PA graduate students using an intensive adult-learning format to improve quantitative analytical competencies. These instructors found students often lack the necessary background, skills and motivation to deal with quantitative-skill-based course work.

Many of these issues also extend to mixed methods teaching, as Hesse-Biber observes from a United States (US) perspective:

Instructors of mixed methods are often self-taught, lacking adequate training in both qualitative and quantitative approaches to research. Students are not often trained in both research approaches. These dual training gaps can result in deep pedagogical issues compromising students’ ability to fully understand mixed methods research praxis and leaving teachers feeling ill equipped to address students’ learning concerns (Hesse-Biber, 2015: 463).

Policy and funding

The problems outlined in the previous section raised the profile of research methods in the UK. In 2011, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), in conjunction with the British Academy, funded twenty projects focused on curriculum innovation or staff training to improve quantitative methods provision at the undergraduate level. In 2013 the Nuffield Foundation, the ESRC and the Higher Education Funding Council for England invested £20 million in the creation of 15 Q-Step centres based in universities across the UK. Q-Step has a ‘life-course approach’ to building quantitative methods skills and ensuring a future supply of quantitative–literate graduates and postgraduates. The ESRC has also funded the National Centre for Research Methods, the Advanced Training Initiative and Scotland’s Applied Quantitative Methods Network which all contributed to enhance the use of advanced methodological approaches in UK social science. Other funding streams include the Higher Education Academy’s Teaching Research Methods in the Social Sciences funding scheme. These funding streams have been complemented by the activities of professional societies including the British Academy’s ‘Society Counts’ and the Royal Statistical Society’s ‘Getstats’ initiatives.

Kilburn et al. (2014) note that concerns about methods training, and the implications of deficiencies in research capacity are not confined to the UK. For example, there has been an increased emphasis on methods training in the US. This has been driven by the idea quantitative skills are needed to respond to the challenges of big data and ensure graduates can contribute to the research-led knowledge economy. Hesse-Biber (2015) observes another change over the last five years in the US: the growth in mixed methods research courses that are primarily offered at the graduate and upper-division undergraduate level.

This identifies another driver of change in the provision of research methods teaching as being the ‘Third Methodological Movement’ which advocates mixed method research. This is where an investigator combines and draws inferences from both quantitative and qualitative techniques in a single study. The growing popularity of the ideas within this movement in the research community has infiltrated research method training. This has triggered new approaches to teaching research methods (see Onwuegbuzie et al., 2010 for example). Frels et al. (2012) cite this movement as a driver in the recent transformation in the content of taught research methods courses worldwide. In sum, we can see a new landscape characterised by the elevation of the importance of research methods in the social sciences, particularly quantitative methods.

This creates a set of new pedagogical challenges. The solution is not just more funding and policy but changes to practice and pedagogy. This involves two dimensions: first better connections between subject knowledge and research methods teaching; and second the need to embrace a wider range of pedagogical approaches.

Education issue one: Embedding

The process of ‘embedding’ research methods within teaching of substantive subject knowledge has gained prevalence as a solution to several of the problems presented above. Embedding is regarded as being particularly applicable for quantitative methods education. Returning to the example of the UK, Q-Step was designed to promote a ‘step-change’ in quantitative social science training. This programme “is based on the empirically-informed premise that addressing this shortage of social science researchers will not be met by developing additional ‘stand-alone’ modules of statistical training”. Moreover, it identifies the need for “new approaches that will deliver excellent and exciting training, producing undergraduates with a deeper and more secure grasp of the quantitative skills needed to address substantive questions, and excitement in using them” including “techniques embedded within the theories, research design and problems of particular substantive fields” (Nuffield Foundation, 2013: 3). The British Academy report Society Counts: Quantitative Skills in the Social Sciences and Humanities echoes these sentiments:

Quantitative methods are taught more effectively when embedded within the wider undergraduate degree course, allowing students to understand the context for, and application of, the methodology. International best practice on the teaching of quantitative methods integrates methods training and hands-on research into the mainstream of academic subjects (British Academy, 2012: 4).

Education issue one: Pedagogical approaches

To enhance methods teaching, new pedagogic strategies have been employed. This has included returning to first principles, drawing on our understanding of how people learn. For example, Kolb (1984) developed the theory of experiential learning where people learn by reflecting and conceptualising from the experience of doing. The Kolb Model describes a learning cycle (concrete experience, experimentation, conceptualization, and reflection) through which the learner progresses (Kolb and Kolb, 2005). Experiential learning is related to, but not synonymous with, a wide range of other concepts, including active learning and inquiry-based learning.

Active learning involves students explicitly participating in their own attainment of knowledge (Bonwell and Eison, 1991). Inquiry-based learning has been defined as “instructional practices designed to promote the development of high order intellectual and academic skills through student-driven and instructor-guided investigations of student generated questions” (Justice et al., 2009: 843).

The antecedents of these approaches to learning can be found in the constructivist literature in the philosophy of education. This includes the work of John Dewey (1916, 1938) who argued that education should be driven by the curiosity of the learner. Dewey developed a pragmatist philosophy which promoted progressive and experiential education. This involved advocating ‘learning by doing’, such as learning by experimentation and practice (Dewey, 1938). Constructivist pedagogies are, therefore, those where students are empowered to construct their own learning experiences (Alt, 2015).

What unites all these approaches is how they differ from ‘didactic learning’ where the learner plays a more passive role (Petress, 2008). This includes one-way monologue lectures, where the lecturer talks and the students listen. Constructivist learning environments are therefore ‘student-centred’ rather than ‘teacher-centred’ where the learner is ‘active’, not ‘passive’. They are sometimes defined as ‘discovery learning’ or ‘minimal guidance during instruction’ approaches, as they enable learners to ‘discover’ things for themselves. Implementation of these pedagogies require learners to be willing to actively participate in their learning, and teachers to design ‘active’ or ‘interactive’ learning experiences that enable this to happen.

Constructivist pedagogies are based on the assumption that having learners construct their own solutions leads to the most effective learning experience (Kirschner et al., 2006: 76). These pedagogies are advocated on the grounds of both the limitations of didactic approaches as well as the benefits it purports to confer, such as improved knowledge retention, the development of new skills, and higher student motivation (Armbruster et al., 2009).

There are several arguments in support of these constructivist approaches. For example, research by Justice et al. (2007, 2009) indicates the efficacy of inquiry-based learning. In the context of PA, Peters argues that given the “increasing importance of creativity in a globalized economy and rapidly changing environment, encouraging discovery and creativity by empowering students to assume a greater share of the responsibility for learning enhances the effectiveness of MPA courses” (Peters, 2014: 53). Moreover, in considering the ‘big questions of public administration education’, Denhardt claims learning is most effective when it involves “a process of mutual sharing, one in which the student and the instructor enter into a relationship that creates the conditions under which appropriate learning and personal development can flourish, both for the student and the teacher” (Denhardt, 2001: 533).

Examples of embedding and student-centred learning

A growing number of studies have emerged developing new approaches to teaching research methods; and many of these initiatives embed research methods into the core curriculum with several focusing on teaching quantitative methods which are a high priority area.

For example, a project by Clark and Foster (2017) discussed in this volume, involved developing and using a series of inquiry-based learning workbooks to provide undergraduate sociology and social policy students with a ‘student-led and ‘hands on’ experience of working with quantitative data. Evaluation of the workbooks highlights the benefits of using inquiry-based learning approaches to teaching introductory quantitative methods.

Engbers (2016) develops a novel approach to the teaching of undergraduate research methods within a department of political science and PA. This approach is grounded in both inquiry-based learning and developmental psychology. It integrates comparison into experiential-based learning through classes involving comparative research projects where different student groups use different methods to tackle the same problem. These student-led projects seek to encourage students to consider the relative advantages and disadvantages of different research methods and to think comparatively.

Peters (2014) revised a quantitative analysis course to promote the use of ‘higher-level cognitive processes’ using active learning pedagogies to foster self-directed learning. This involved replacing a series of traditional ‘problem sets’ with the requirement that students work in groups to develop new research questions that can be analysed with the statistical tests discussed in class. The course was part of a MPA programme and the research questions developed were work-related. This approach enhanced not only student understanding of various quantitative techniques, but also how they can be used at their place of employment.

Vandiver and Walsh (2010) incorporate active learning teaching strategies with autonomous student learning in the design of a social science research methodology course. The justification for this approach was the belief that the inherently complex material in the course was not conducive to passive teaching and learning strategies. The criminal justice students enrolled on the course participated in a semester-long research project where they were actively engaged in the research process and developed quantitative analysis and autonomous-learning skills.

Technology enhanced learning has also been used by some instructors. For example, Harris and Nikitenko (2014) compare the differences in learning outcomes for graduate students taking a quantitative-methods course in a PA program. One cohort of students was taught online, while two student cohorts were taught face-to-face in a traditional classroom setting. These differences illustrate both course design and modality features for a comparison between online and traditional brick-and-mortar learning environments.

It is also worth noting the wide range of fields that make use of social science research methods. These include medical education. In this volume, Forrest (2017) explains that in recent years, additional emphasis has been placed on the expectation that medical students in the UK require an understanding of how social science is relevant to medicine and health, including how these bodies of knowledge are generated through the use of social science research methods. An investigation by Forrest (2017) involving UK Medical Schools explores the pedagogical challenges and opportunities presented by this.

Two interesting themes flow from this section. First is the importance of individual disciplines when embedding research methods. The policy and funding debates, the research methods and the student-centred pedagogies for the learning of research are all generic across the social sciences. However, juxtaposed to this, there must be an appreciation of disciplinary differences. This enables research methods to be embedded with clear connections to subject knowledge.

Second the studies reviewed illustrate a broader trend where the lack of a ‘pedagogical culture’ for research methods teaching is being addressed. The examples above represent what Kilburn et al. describe as an ‘emerging pedagogical dialogue’. As Kilburn et al. argue:

The potential limitations of past orthodoxies in research methods teaching are being aired and, in response to learners’ demands, methods teachers are innovating and experimenting with alternative approaches. Methods teachers are also developing conceptually or theoretically useful frames of reference when reflecting on their teaching practice (Kilburn et al., 2014: 204).

Critiques of active learning and the need for balance

In pedagogic research taking place in a range of fields – opposed to research within the discipline of education – there is a tendency to discuss student-centred learning without acknowledging its critics or its alternatives. Constructivist approaches are often regarded as a panacea and as being ‘simply superior’ to didactic approaches. They are then wholeheartedly embraced without acknowledging their limitations or thinking critically about how they should be used. Practice is often then revised on the basis of this unquestioned belief in the benefits of student-centred learning.

To gain a more comprehensive appreciation of learning and teaching, it is essential to acknowledge the case against approaches to education such as these; for instance, those which are based on the assumptions it is the learner who knows best, and that they should be the controlling force in their own learning. Kirschner and van Merriënboer (2013) argue these assumptions are the basis for several ‘pervasive urban legends’ in education concerning the nature of learners, learning and teaching. The authors use educational and psychological research to question the basis of these ‘legends’. One such legend says that learners ought to be regarded as self-educators who need be given maximum control over what they are learning and their learning trajectory. Another legend argues that the old media and methods used in teaching are now obsolete and that learners are now ‘digital natives’ who naturally know how to e-learn from new media. A final legend is the widespread belief that learners have specific learning styles and that education needs be personalised to the extent that pedagogy is matched to the preferred style of the learner. The authors address and refute each of these urban legends, but acknowledge they have attracted a significant following and therefore will be difficult to eradicate.

The first pervasive urban legend is particularly relevant to this paper, as it involves challenging contemporary ideas on constructivist education, as introduced above. Kirschner et al. argue that methods of instruction involving minimal guidance, such as experiential or inquiry-based learning, simply ‘do not work’ and that constructivist approaches ‘have failed’. The authors assert that:

based on our current knowledge of human cognitive architecture, minimally guided instruction is likely to be ineffective. The past half-century of empirical research on this issue has provided overwhelming and unambiguous evidence that minimal guidance during instruction is significantly less effective and efficient than guidance specifically designed to support the cognitive processing necessary for learning (Kirschner et al., 2006: 76).

Kirschner et al. (2006: 84) also argue constructivist approaches may have negative results as students may “acquire misconceptions or incomplete or disorganised knowledge”. Moreover, Sweller et al. (2007) make a case for rejecting the idea that the direct, explicit instruction of relevant information should be relegated in favour of teaching learners how to find information.

These authors are not alone in providing a robust critique of constructivist approaches. Giles et al. argue there is limited evidence for the philosophy that student-centred teaching results in better learning, because “the supporting research is frequently limited to observational studies or limited in experimental design”. The research concluded the “reason this study’s results are important is that it demonstrates the need for balance between teacher-centred and student-centred activities within a class” (Giles et al., 2006: 221).

The benefits of a balance between different approaches to learning are evident in a study by Barraket, who introduced student-centred teaching methods in a masters-level social research methods course. Although the study found this re-orientation of the curriculum had a positive effect on student performance, “the analysis also found that students continued to place value on more formal teaching methods, and that the value of student-centred techniques in this case rested in the way in which they were integrated with more didactic teaching practice” (Barraket, 2005: 64).

To conclude this argument, we can see it would be an overreaction to completely reject, or uncritically accept, either constructivist or didactic approaches. In the context of teaching research methods in the social sciences we can identify two key issues. First, we can identify a rationale for striking a balance between, or even combining, different types of pedagogies, as are appropriate to the specific context (see Gunn (2017) in this volume as an example of this in the context of teaching social science research methods). As Hmelo-Silver et al. (2007) and Schmidt et al. (2007) point out, not all teaching underpinned by constructivist learning theory is the same, and there are various ways of supporting learning to mitigate the criticisms made by authors such as Kirschner. This involves, for example, the level of prior knowledge and skills of students being taught being considered. More importantly, active learning pedagogies need to be appropriately deployed with intelligent care, which places the onus on the instructor. Returning to the work of John Dewey, the educator has a duty to foster an “environment which will interact with the existing capacities and needs of those taught to create a worth-while experience” (Dewey, 1938).

A common misinterpretation in pedagogic research of Dewey’s work is the idea that learning by experience is always optimal and effective. An accurate reading of Dewey’s work reveals he argued the “belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative. Experience and education cannot be directly equated to each other. For some experiences are miseducative” and “attentive care must be devoted to the conditions which give each present experience a worthwhile meaning” (Dewey, 1938).

Second, there is a need for reflective teaching and evaluation as well as a role for further research. This aligns with the findings of Kilburn et al., who argue these “welcome discussions of largely student-centred pedagogies for research methods must now be accompanied by empirical research into how students conceive of, experience and apply their methodological learning in a range of contexts” (Kilburn et al., 2014: 204).

Curriculum design issues: Embedding and progression

One important feature when designing the curriculum is how to effectively integrate the substantive curriculum – containing the range of subject knowledge – with the appropriate research methods provision. This is essential to overcome the common disconnect between the two. The idea of ‘embedding’ is critical here and there are two broad ways to achieve this. Many studies, including Leston-Bandeira (2013) and Parker (2011), argue that research methods content should be dispersed across the substantive curriculum containing the subject knowledge. Alternatively, Howard and Brady suggest that integration can also occur through ‘reverse embedding’. Here, dedicated research methods classes, modules or courses continue. However, excerpts of subject knowledge are brought into them so methods are presented alongside larger disciplinary debates (Howard and Brady, 2015: 522). Embedding and reverse embedding are not mutually exclusive.

What also needs to be considered in the process of embedding research methods into teaching activities or particular classes is the need to situate this as part of a longer scheme of learning. This is particularly important for quantitative methods, which are often isolated from the rest of the curriculum. For example, the inquiry-based workbooks to teach quantitative methods developed by Clark and Foster (2017) were not implemented into the curriculum in isolation. Rather, they were a component part within a ‘whole curriculum approach’ that emphasised the constructive alignment along a ‘methods spine’. Buckley et al. provide a different example of “embedding quantitative data and research throughout the degree programme” (Buckley et al., 2015: 498). This was achieved by creating ‘teaching partnerships’ between academics teaching the substantive curriculum, and those responsible for teaching the methods. Within these partnerships, academics identified opportunities to embed quantitative methods across two academic years of the degree programme.

Both of these examples highlight the need for the curriculum to be designed in a way that enables learners to accumulate knowledge and develop skills throughout a degree programme. This is where new information is presented in a way to enable learners to make connections between their existing knowledge base. This process enables students to question and compare, critique and challenge, and accept or discard old ideas and interpretations in the process of their learning. A ‘strand’ or ‘spine’ running through a degree program can be used both in long courses of prescribed content or in a highly flexible modular structure. These practices of ‘constructive alignment’ and ‘holistic curriculum design’ can help provide coherence to modular programmes which can be fragmented (Biggs and Tang, 2011; Morrison, 1993; Rust, 2000).

The complexity and confusion regarding the relationships between teaching and research

In contemporary higher education, it is fashionable to talk about the nexus between research and teaching as well as the practice of ‘research-led teaching’ (Schapper and Mayson, 2010). Within this debate, strengthening the connection between research and teaching is often presented as a desirable goal (Elsen et al., 2009). Several models have been proposed to describe the multiple ways in which research and teaching can be linked. The most sophisticated work in this area is put forward by Visser-Wijnveen (2015) who developed a ‘knowledge model of the research-teaching nexus’ consisting of two dimensions: knowledge transmission – knowledge production, as one dimension, and, research product – research process, as the second dimension. A middle position, knowledge reproduction, creates six variants by distinguishing teaching in which knowledge is reproduced from teaching where new knowledge is produced. This can be used to evaluate curricula that claim to strengthen the research–teaching nexus by mapping them onto the six variants which reveals where the emphasis lies in a programme (Visser-Wijnveen et al., 2016).

A popular model is the Healey Matrix, which identifies four different ways of engaging students in research and inquiry: (a) research-led, where students are the audience and they are predominantly lectured about the latest research of direct relevance to the topic being taught; (b) research-oriented, where students are the audience and are instructed about research methods and techniques to develop inquiry skills; (c) research-tutored, where students are participants, engaged in discussion about content of current research; and (d) research-based, where students as participants who undertake research/inquiry themselves (Healey, 2005).

In the first two approaches students learn about research and inquiry through passive experiences. Alternatively, in the third and fourth approaches students are engaged in research and inquiry as active participants; and it is these approaches that are aligned to constructivist pedagogies. For example, inquiry-based learning is regarded by Healey and Jenkins (2009) as a form of the fourth approach, research-based teaching. There are five debates on the nexus that are of relevance to an analysis of teaching research methods.

First, we can identify similarities between inquiry-based learning, as introduced in an earlier section of this paper, and research-based teaching in the Healey Matrix. For example, Justice et al. (2007) describe inquiry-based learning students as ‘compatriots’ in the research process. However, there are also other examples of ‘research-based teaching’, not involving inquiry-based learning. These include a project by Page (2015) which uses ‘an apprenticeship model’ which exposes students to ‘real’ research as a teaching technique, not just to teach social science research methods but as means to deliver the substantive curriculum.

Second, we can see how research-based teaching may be a highly suitable way to teach research methods. For example, Winn (1995) is an example of active learning pedagogies being used to teach research methods through student participation in a commissioned research project. Another example of research-based teaching being used to teach research methods is Vandiver and Walsh. This approach sought to develop research skills through emulating the process of peer review:

The teaching–learning issue addressed in this research involved incorporating active-learning strategies through the use of a student-driven research project; the project allowed the instructors to provide a structure in the classroom for students to replicate (on a smaller scale) the research process that appears in peer-reviewed research articles. Students, therefore, became more familiar with the research process and were able to ascertain the meaning of research findings and reports that are presented in the media or elsewhere (Vandiver and Walsh, 2010: 39).

A fourth argument concerns whether the method used to undertake research in a given discipline are the most suitable method to teach it. Here, we can return to the work of Kirschner (1992) who argues that it is an error to assume the pedagogic content of the learning experience is necessarily identical to the epistemology (i.e., the research skills and methods, and the procedures in which knowledge is generated and validated) of the discipline being studied. Aligned to their critique of constructivist education outlined above, Kirschner et al. emphasise the distinction between pedagogic methods and research methods:

Despite this clear distinction between learning a discipline and practicing a discipline, many curriculum developers, educational technologists, and educators seem to confuse the teaching of a discipline as inquiry (i.e., a curricular emphasis on the research processes within a science) with the teaching of the discipline by inquiry (i.e., using the research process of the discipline as a pedagogy or for learning) (Kirschner et al., 2006: 78).

Fifth, it is evident from these examples how exploring the research–teaching nexus is of relevance to developing new pedagogical approaches for social science research methods. However, attempting to construct relationships between teaching and research also adds enormous potential complexity and confusion to this process. This includes identifying where the pedagogical approaches selected are situated relative to, and interact with, the many relationships between teaching and research. The range of complex connections between teaching and research presents many pitfalls for instructors who may seek to link teaching and research in a way that is unnecessary or even detrimental. It is for reasons such as these that Gresty et al. argue research-informed teaching “comes with a number of risks that have received little pedagogic attention” (Gresty et al., 2013:570).