Learning to do Research: Challenges for Students and Teachers

Learning to do Research opens a conversation about a very common learning activity—researching to find things out. It has been written for teachers and interested others who work with learners across all the school years.

It questions common assumptions about what research is and could be as a learning activity:

• What does researching look like?
• Do the activities that go with research change, from primary to secondary school, or from one curriculum area to another?
• Should the nature of students' research activities change as they get older?
• Should research be granted a special place in the curriculum?

This book addresses these questions. Its scope extends beyond learning curriculum content through research activities to encompass learning about research as a multifaceted and intellectually satisfying process. In a future-focused view of learning, knowledge becomes not so much an end in itself as the means by which knowing is built and conveyed in the world. This meta-level focus is an important cornerstone of educating today's students to be so-called "lifelong learners" in tomorrow’s uncertain world, and underpins the key competencies proposed for New Zealand's revised curriculum framework. Research is an important learning activity for all students, from primary school onward.