Lecture 4 hours/week
- Lecture
- Seminar
- Group work
- Student presentations
- Guest speaker
The following global ideas guide the design and delivery of this course:
- Research is the foundation of all child and youth care knowledge, informing how child and youth care pracititoners understand and engage with the world.
- Knowledge creation is a political practice with material implications for children, youth, families, and communities.
- Knowledge creation has been dominated by privileged groups; de-centering white-Western theories and research encourages a more diverse understanding of CYC and our role as practitioners.
- Child and youth care practitioners need to be critical consumers of research to determine if they can trust research to guide their practice.
- Being a critical consumer of research requires an understanding of the relationships between worldview, positionality, research design, ethical considerations, and the strength of research findings.
- Quantitative and qualitative approaches contribute to our knowledge of child and youth care.
- Practitioners experience tensions and practice problems in the field that can become significant research questions.
- Being a practice-informed researcher means contextualizing the research question in existing scholarship, determining appropriate research designs to explore the question, and ensuring an ethical approach to finding solutions.
Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Assess, use, and evaluate scholarly research as critical research consumers.
- Recognize and articulate positionality and ethical research requirements.
- Demonstrate understanding of the research process, including the connection of qualitative and quantitative methods to research questions.
- Generate and shape research problems in existing scholarship, and determine appropriate research designs to explore these problems.
Assessment will be based on course objectives and will be carried out in accordance with the Douglas College Evaluation Policy. An evaluation schedule is present at the beginning of the course.
This is a letter-graded course.
Instructors may use a student’s record of attendance and/or level of active participation as part of the student’s graded performance. Expectations and grade calculations regarding class attendance and participation will be clearly defined in the instructor's course outline.
Textbooks and materials are to be purchased by students. A list of required textbooks and materials will be provided for students at the beginning of the semester.
None
None