Mixing Decks: Frameworks for Master's Scholarship

Abstract

Postgraduate taught education in universities is under-researched compared to research on undergraduate learning and teaching. This results in two missed opportunities: making evidence-informed improvements to postgraduate taught education and integrating such improvements into thinking and practice. A commitment to evidence-informed improvement cycles at personal and local levels can generate knowledge, which can also inform practice in other settings. However, researchers who are new to learning and teaching research may not feel fully equipped, on the basis of their disciplinary knowledge, to undertake such inquiry. This paper considers and offers a case study of the use of frameworks that can support these practitioners in investigating students' understandings of what is expected in postgraduate study. With a flexible set of tools or frameworks on the mixing decks of postgraduate taught inquiry, such researchers are potentially better equipped to gain a good understanding of their students' learning.