The Bachelor of Leadership for Change is well-placed to connect with and benefit from an existing strong research culture at Otago Polytechnic. In the 2012 Performance Based Research Fund evaluation, Otago Polytechnic was ranked highly in the polytechnic sector for income, postgraduate degree completions and number of B rated researchers. Recent key performance indicators demonstrate that Otago Polytechnic continues to consolidate its capability and capacity in research. This is shown by the high number of research active staff and the exponential growth in quality assured outputs. Consequently, academic staff are actively engaged locally, nationally and internationally. Many of these staff will be engaged with Bachelor of Leadership for Change candidates in the mentoring processes.
As much of the Bachelor of Leadership for Change is self-directed learning and project-based it is possible to consider it all under an undergraduate project-research banner. Ensuring that students have the skills to start doing this is a critical part of the first year. Learners in the Bachelor of Leadership for Change will undertake research projects of a professional and applied nature; research activity that aligns with Otago Polytechnic’s current research culture of original investigations that are relevant and future focussed.
Traditionally, learners are expected to analyse prior literature and established views in a particular discipline. They might be asked to write, for example, a literature review based on results of prior studies. For the purposes of this proposal, we do not believe a singular focus on such methods of research are fully appropriate. As this degree is future focused and is not guided by a particular discipline’s extant body of knowledge, we require learners to create their own research and to do this, we employ an autoethnographic approach as an umbrella. Within that, research methods must suit the context. For the Bachelor of Leadership for Change there are different contexts and hence learners need skills in different research methods:
● Autoethnography (including reflective practice and case studies)
● Systems thinking framework (including design thinking)
● Project management (including agile methods)
● Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods
● Ethics, particularly of workplace practitioner research
● Research in relation to the Treaty of Waitangi
We view the entire process of undertaking the Bachelor of Leadership for Change as a research process itself, underpinned in the first instance by autoethnography. Autoethnography is an established research approach based on the researcher engaging in “autobiographies that self-consciously explore the interplay of the introspective, personally engaged self with cultural descriptions mediated through language, history, and ethnographic explanation” (Ellis & Bochner, 2000, p. 742).
Autoethnography is increasingly seen as a valuable learning and teaching tool (Golkowska 2015). Autoethnography allows learners to collect, analyse and interpret self-narratives and this approach “provides an accessible and engaging introduction to research, since it fuses the roles of the researcher and subject into one” (Golkowska 2015, p. 369). Students will also be made aware of the risks of such-like fusion and of ways to mitigate these.
Staff teaching on this programme are skilled and knowledgeable in such an approach to research, and will also be able to guide learners in other appropriate research tools in order to conduct their projects (see staff capability in section 8.1). We also combine and apply our extensive knowledge and experience of work-based research to this degree, and use to varying degrees other research methods such as action research in order to meet learners’ various goals for their Bachelor of Leadership for Change.
We are committed to undertaking ethical research, and all learners are guided in how to conduct ethical research. The interface between culturally responsible research and the Treaty of Waitangi is central to the degree in accordance with the Otago Polytechnic Māori Strategic Framework.