Sessions

This session provides teachers with ready to go worksheets, with reference to data collection, analysis and presentation. It focuses on how to collect quantitative and some qualitative data and how to analyse and present it. This is a hands on workshop, where participants can take part in group work for the majority of the session.

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Critical thinking is one of the ‘essential and employability’ skills of the Advanced Welsh Baccalaureate. Students need to demonstrate critical evaluation in their academic work and, more generally, critical thinking is a valuable life skill for everyone to develop. During their research for the Individual Project, students will need to critically assess multiple sources of information, determining to what extent the sources are current, valid and reliable. Equally importantly, students will need to cite and reference these sources consistently and accurately in their written report.

This workshop session incorporates two exercises. The first exercise demonstrates how resources such as newspaper articles can be used to develop students’ critical thinking skills, and the second focuses on how to reference sources of information. Both exercises can be adapted for use in the classroom.

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Critically engaging with information is vital for successful research, particularly in the current context of Fake News. One has to develop techniques for determining which claims ‘out there’ are most plausible, and what it means to look for the ‘facts’. This workshop provides some basic pointers for helping your students gain confidence and experience in asking questions about what they read. A knock on effect is that they will become more discerning about the quality of their own arguments when they write.

In the field of development there are three particularly prevalent accounts of underdevelopment, which draw on elements of both political science and economics. We will seek to understand the basics of these ‘geographical’, ‘institutional’ and ‘integrationist’ narratives and evaluate how they may be used – or possibly abused – by those wishing to make strong arguments recommending particular courses of actions to address global poverty.

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This workshop aims to cover some key research skills necessary for students undertaking their individual project. The first half of this workshop provides a basic introduction to the research process and offers some guidance on how to plan a research project. Following this, the workshop explores different sampling techniques and specifically the advantages and disadvantages of probability and non-probability samples. This workshop includes resources and activities that may be beneficial for teachers delivering lessons on the individual investigation.

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Social Science research is increasingly turning towards arts-based methods to understand and address social problems. Almost any art form can be used, across qualitative and quantitative paradigms and at any point in the research process.

However, what makes these research methods ‘creative’ is when uncertainty and curiosity is folded into the mix. Getting creative with research troubles how we come to ‘know’ what matters (ie how students come up with their research questions) and how‘what matters’ is explored, communicated and transformed (ie how they gather data to answer their research questions and what they do with their findings).

Drawing on case-studies from the interactive tool-kit, AGENDA: A young People’s Guide to Making Positive Relationships Matter, this session outlines the benefits of a creative approach to research; how arts-based methods (e.g. visual and performative arts, creative writing, music and sound, digital and textile arts) can be used in a creative research design; and how an arts-based, creative research project is especially effective for young people researching sensitive issues.

This workshop explores how to ask good questions, both in terms of framing research projects by moving from an area of interest to a research question and hypotheses, and in regard to designing data collection questions for surveys.

Students often struggle when trying to adapt a topic that they are interested in for independent empirical study, so we will look at what makes a good research question and some of the common pitfalls they should avoid (including some fun exercises you can run with them).

We then move on to designing survey items, focusing on the importance of clearly defining the concept that is to be measured and recognising that often such things cannot be measured perfectly – a survey is often a compromise, but that’s no excuse for it being ‘bad’.

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This session will be given through the medium of Welsh.

This workshop focuses on research skills – skills which are essential in order to succeed in the Individual Project. This workshop explores the process of doing a research project and discusses different aspects of research such as developing research questions, choosing research methods and analysing data.

This workshop provides you with the opportunity to ask any questions related to conducting a research project.

Download this workshop here.

This session explores how university and classroom research can be used to improve practices and train pupils and students in the art and craft of research.

We explain the relevance of impact and engagement, discuss the significance of the position of the enquirer, whether researcher, teacher or pupil, and give some examples from both university and school-based research to support your teaching of research methods for pupils and students.

Download this workshop here.