The goal of the course is for you to understand major research and evaluation methods that can be used to answer questions of interest in education and social science. You will learn criteria (e.g., magnitude, articulation, generalisability, interest, credibility) by which quantitative and qualitative research can be evaluated. The emphasis will be on identifying a clear research problem, selection of appropriate methods to investigate theories concerning the problem, and evaluation of research relative to competing hypotheses. Students will gain experiential understanding by analysing ‘toy’ data sets using appropriate tools.