1. What is research? Marie Hobson,
We are about to spend the next 2 days talking about research but what do we mean by the term research? Is my definition the same as yours?
In this session, we are going to explore the ways in which we, as a group, define research based on the questions I asked the participants in my doctorate study which looks at how museum practitioners conceptualise (or define) research.
At the end of the session, I will present the initial findings from my study and discuss why knowing how people define research is important. I can’t talk about this at the start because I don’t want to bias your answers but hopefully it will become clear as we go.
What is research?
Marie Hobson,
EdD Candidate, Department of Education and Professional Studies

2. What is Research?
What comes to mind when I say the term research to you?
What words / thoughts / feelings?
Can you come up with a definition?
In 4 groups of 5?

3. What is Evaluation?
What comes to mind when I say the term evaluation to you?
What words / thoughts / feelings?
Can you come up with a definition?

4. Scenarios
For each scenario, please decide whether you think it is a piece of research or evaluation
There are no right or wrong answers, I am just interested in your opinions

5. Scenario A

6. Scenario B

7. Scenario C

8. Scenario D

9. Scenario E

10. Scenario F

11. Method
Sample
Population
Sample as a % of the total population
Strategist 2 3
66%
Developer 5
40%
Deliverer 24 8%
Manager
100%
Total 8 34
24%
As part of my study, I interviewed 8 members of staff in the public engagement part of the museum.
2 strategists – who are responsible for saying “I want the museum to develop a workshop for year olds on evolution”
2 developers – who would design that workshop
2 delivers – essentially science educators – who would run the workshop
2 managers – who line manage either the developers or the delivers
I asked them the questions that I asked you and presented them with the scenarios you have just seen.
In addition I asked them for some background information about their career and educational history. I also asked them to give an example of a time when they had done a piece of research and a piece of evaluation and why they felt it was research or evaluation?
From that I could build up a detailed understanding of how they conceptualise research and evaluation.

12. Findings
1. Evaluation is a kind of research – Strategists, Managers, Programme Developers 2. Evaluation is part of the research process – Science Educators
There were 2 main findings relating to research and evaluation
For most participants, evaluation is a kind of research. Participants really struggled and in some cases objected to separating the two as they see evaluation as a type of research.
The science educators had a different conception – they didn’t think of evaluation as a type of research – it is an essential PART of the research.

13. Findings
Evaluation is part of the research process: process assessment – Science Educators
The evaluation component is about making a judgement about both the outcomes of a research study (outcomes assessment) as well as the process (process assessment).
Evaluation as process assessment is about making a judgement about the quality of the research. Thinking about whether or not the research was robust and rigorous / comparing it to other studies and thinking about if you were to repeat the research, what would you do differently.

14. Findings
Evaluation is part of the research process: outcomes assessment – Science Educators
As outcomes assessment, for the Sci Eds, evaluation is about deciding what the implications of the findings are, for example, deciding whether the findings mean the workshop has been successful or not. In this conception, research refers to the process of finding out what works and what doesn’t whereas evaluation is about deciding whether something works or not.
They felt scenario F encapsulated what they saw as the whole research process with evaluation taking place at the end.

15. Findings Research Evaluation More than one site / product
Open ended question
Variety of methods
Disseminated
Fits within wider body of knowledge / literature / theory
Focused on one thing
Has a specific aim
Internal dissemination only
Quicker than research
Value judgement or assessment not broader learning
Evaluation

16. Findings BUT practitioners want it to have a practical application.
Saturday

17. Findings
At the moment, practitioners struggle to apply academic research to their practice because academics are not rooted in practice which means:
Research language is inaccessible
There is not always a clear practical purpose – because it has not been done with this in mind and/or because the academic is not rooted in practice
There are no clear recommendations for practitioners to act upon
They feel that academic research needs to be translated for practitioners and name a couple of academics (e.g. Justin Dillon, Marianne Achiam) and some organisations (e.g. CAISE) who have started to do this.

18. How does this relate to you?
Self-reflection and impact that might have
Be clearer in communication
Check what definitions people have
Think more carefully about do you really want research or evaluation – what is most useful?
Think about how you could turn a piece of evaluation into a piece of research to create a body of knowledge

19. Why is this research important?
“Although science centres have long asserted that … visits play a critical role in supporting the science learning of the public, robust and unequivocal evidence is limited” (Matterson and Holman, 2012)

20. “There is a paradox at the heart of museum learning research” (Knutson and Crowley, 2005)

21. Davies and Heath (2013)
Lack of theoretical framework
Project-specific findings
Site-specific methods
No standardisation

22. Research to Practice Academic partnerships for collaborative research,
e.g. NEMO and University of Amsterdam, Netherlands; Enterprising Science, UK (Dawson and DeWitt, 2013); Naturalis
Developing learning research agendas,
e.g. ESRC natural history seminar (Watson and Werb, 2013)
Reflective practice,
e.g. Expand, Norway
Reading groups,
e.g. VSC, Netherlands
Changing roles and remits,
e.g. Tate, UK

23. Marie Hobson +44 7941230252 mchobson84@gmail.com
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