SW7P00 - Research Mindedness for Practice (2025/26)
| Module specification | Module approved to run in 2025/26 | ||||||||||||
| Module title | Research Mindedness for Practice | ||||||||||||
| Module level | Masters (07) | ||||||||||||
| Credit rating for module | 60 | ||||||||||||
| School | School of Social Sciences and Professions | ||||||||||||
| Total study hours | 600 | ||||||||||||
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| Assessment components |
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| Running in 2025/26(Please note that module timeslots are subject to change) |
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Module summary
To be research minded is to have the ability to use research to inform practice which counters unfair discrimination, racism, poverty, disadvantage and injustice - consistent with core social work values. This core module enables students to re-visit their teaching and learning on their course and will explore a range of different attributes to develop critical understandings of the application to social work research. This will include:
● An awareness of the value of research
● The ability to identify or generate appropriate sources of evidence
● An appreciation of different methods used to obtain and make sense of research knowledges
It requires students to complete a substantive student led piece of work. Students will have scope to develop their critical analytical skills, engage with research processes and explore relevant subjects of personal and professional interest with a view to consolidating transferable skills for future employment.
Syllabus
● What is ‘Knowledge’ and who legitimises it? The role of Western research in colonial knowledge production
● Developing ‘research mindedness’ for Social Work Practice and Social Justice
● Critical understanding of social research and evaluation processes
● Theoretical Frameworks and Ethics - anti-racist, anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive research approaches
● Skills for retrieving information from electronic and other academic sources and appraising sources
● Academic Skills for Research
● Effective research design: literature reviews & developing plans for small scale pilot study
● Practical issues of undertaking research
● Thematic analysis, and presentation of research knowledges
● Dealing with limitations, biases, reflection in research
Balance of independent study and scheduled teaching activity
Teaching is via 18 taught workshops reflecting the indicative syllabus, experiential Classroom off Campus activity, independent research study opportunities and 8 individual dissertation supervision tutorials.
All teaching and learning activities will be dialogical and encourage decolonial thinking and questioning.
Learning outcomes
On successful completion of the module students will be able to:
1. Demonstrate an advanced critical understanding of research processes
2. Formulate a research proposal and (where applicable) Ethics Approval Form identifying ethics and selected methodologies and methods.
3. Search and critically appraise academic literatures, organising data and evidence applying to
a. An extended literature Review
or
b. A small Pilot Study
4. Produce a fluent and coherent written or audio-visual piece of work that generates innovative and evidence-informed knowledges relevant to social work practice and reflecting critically on the process of learning.