Warwick based projects
Our Masters courses usually finish with a long project or dissertation.
The aim is to explore a topic in depth and in our innovation course to explore and often carry out a detailed innovation in your school or place of work. The write up is generally 20, 000 words and you are expected to show appropriate:
- comprehension of both research methods (in many cases action or more general practitioner research, but in some cases survey, case study, literature review etc) and your topic (eg IWBs, VLEs, creativity and so on)
- critique - in particular the ability to stand back and consider strengths and weaknesses in both the literature and in your research methods
- analysis - in particular how you draw data together and reach credible conclusions, in action research this may consider: what happened, why it happened, what were the consequences of it happening. You should also be able to consider your findings in the light of a wider literature.
- appropriate presentation
The assessment framework can be applied to a wide range of work. Action research projects have included:
- reporting on ways in which earlier findings have been disseminated within a wider setting, for example through working with individual colleagues or leading change within a department. This has broadened the research by considering what is involved in working with others and the opportunities for, and constraints on, change
- revisiting earlier work by going deeper into a topic of strong personal interest
- extended reconnaissance of context and wider literature, this is an approach which has much in common with a traditional dissertation but the exploration is very much rooted in one's professional context