A Scaffolded Approach to Teaching Research Skills to Postgraduate Students

A recent re-validation of Postgraduate Awards and a move from fifteen to twenty credit modules provided an opportunity to re-think and restructure modules. This research looks at one specific module titled Research and Professional Skills which was restructured to implement a scaffolded approach to delivering the module aimed at increasing the students’ confidence as well as their academic research skills. This research has shown that postgraduate students may have had little research experience during their undergraduate studies and that appropriate scaffolding is needed to support them developing research skills and has resulted in the formulation of a six step framework for developing postgraduate research skills.