Paper Keywords: quantitative research qualitative research methods of higher education

This paper takes 7 1 master's degree dissertations of Lanzhou University School of Education as the research object, and makes a statistical analysis on the research methods and properties of the dissertations. It is found that there are some problems in the application of research methods, such as lack of standardization of research methods, prevalence of speculative research, lack of empirical research and single and backward research methods. In view of these problems, this paper puts forward some suggestions, such as strengthening the theoretical understanding of research methods, combining qualitative research with quantitative research, and diversifying and integrating research methods, so as to make Lanzhou University and other education colleges develop better and cultivate more high-quality talents.

I. Origin, purpose and significance of the research

1. Research origin

Since its establishment in 2002, the College of Education of Lanzhou University (hereinafter referred to as "our college") has set up 1 higher education master's degree authorization point. In recent years, the college has a good teaching and scientific research foundation and has achieved fruitful results. However, as a developing college, there is still a certain gap between our college and other colleges in the choice and application of research methods. In order to further consolidate the study of graduate students' related knowledge and cultivate more high-quality talents, it is necessary to guide students to choose and apply research methods scientifically, lay a good foundation for scientific research, and point out and correct students' problems in this respect in time, so as to better guide practice. In addition, from the theoretical point of view, method is an indispensable tool to deeply understand a subject. Some scholars have pointed out that a history of scientific development is a history in which scientific methods are constantly updated and used, and theoretical exploration is ultimately the exploration of methods. As an independent discipline, higher education has made great progress for more than 20 years since the birth of 1984. The discipline system has been gradually established and improved, and the level of theoretical exploration has been continuously improved. However, its research methods, from "no unique research methods" to "multidisciplinary research methods", have always been controversial, and its immature development also reflects the immaturity of higher education disciplines to some extent. Zhou Chuan, an educational scholar, once wrote that one of the manifestations of the relatively backward development of China's higher education theory is that "research methods have not yet been formed and research norms have not yet been established. There is neither strict scientific empirical research nor serious theoretical speculative research. "

The immature development of higher education methods has greatly affected the application of research methods in higher education. College students, especially graduate students in higher education, are unfamiliar with the research field and the application of methods is not very handy. Based on the higher education major of Lanzhou University, this paper studies the application of research methods in the master's degree thesis of higher education major in our college, reveals its existing problems, and tries to find solutions to these problems.

2. The purpose and significance of the research.

The main purpose of this study is to clarify the standard degree of research methods used by graduate students in our college, analyze the master students' mastery of research methods and the shortcomings of graduate students in our college of education, and then find a way out for the shortcomings, and at the same time try to provide guidance and help for the teaching of educational research methods in the future, and provide some reasonable suggestions for the application of research methods for master's dissertations in our college.

The significance of this study, on the one hand, has certain theoretical value: taking the method as the research object, exploring and thinking about the method is conducive to the continuous improvement of the theory of the method itself; The in-depth exploration of methods will help to promote the development of higher education discipline construction and the perfection of theory; On the other hand, it also has certain practical value: further exploration of research methods will help guide students to master and use methods, provide reference for curriculum setting in teaching, and provide reference for improving the overall level of research methods in colleges and universities.

Second, the research design

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This study takes the literature as a sample, and on the basis of sorting out and analyzing the selected literature, understands the shortcomings of graduate students in our college in the process of using research methods. In order to achieve this research goal, this study intends to adopt the method of bibliometrics. Bibliometrics (also known as literature survey) is a research method that information science, mathematics and statistics intersect and combine with each other. The bibliometrics method was first widely used in scientific and technological literature, but in recent years, its theories and methods have been gradually applied in the field of educational research, such as the updating of educational research methods and the cultivation of modern educators, the bibliometrics research on the development of educational science in China, and the development of China's educational theory, educational theory and practice through citation analysis. They all try to make statistics on the development and research status of educational science by bibliometrics.

2. Sampling method

Due to historical reasons, our hospital was established late and the total number of samples available was small, so the research object was selected in the form of complete sampling. From the dissertation database of Lanzhou University, 7 1 master's dissertations of higher education from 2007 to 2009 were collected.

3. Research framework

(1) Description of the research methods in the sample population, and list all the description methods to observe the standardization of the description of the research methods.

(2) The overall frequency distribution of research methods: Use tables to visually show the use of research methods in the paper and find out the application characteristics of research methods.

(3) Statistic the distribution of papers from both quantitative and qualitative aspects (speculative and empirical): intuitively display the research quantity of qualitative and quantitative papers with tables, and find problems and laws according to the data.

4. The results of the study

Through the analysis of 7 1 theses in the dissertation database, * * found 22 kinds of research methods, namely: literature method, comparative method, historical method, investigation method, case analysis method, quantitative and qualitative method, interview method, interdisciplinary analysis method, empirical analysis method, inductive deduction method, data analysis method and statistical analysis method.

Overall distribution of research methods: due to the mixed use and vague description of research methods in the research object, this paper mainly counts several commonly used research methods, among which "commonly used" refers to the method of literature, comparison, history, case analysis and investigation. (See table 1)

Comparison between quantitative and speculative, quantitative and empirical classification: See Table 2 for its quantity and composition. Of the 7/kloc-0 dissertations, 65 are qualitative and speculative, accounting for 9 1.5%. This research result shows that speculative research is the main research method of educational science research in our college. There are 6 quantitative and empirical papers, accounting for 8.5% of the total number of dissertations. To some extent, this result shows that our hospital is lacking in the application of quantitative and empirical research methods.

Third, problems and shortcomings?

Through the investigation and statistics of the research methods used by the author in each dissertation, we find that many graduates lack standardization and logic when expressing their research methods, and there is a certain randomness. For example, the research on the present situation and countermeasures of graduate students' large-scale development under the popularization, and the research method is expressed as chart method; Another example is "Research on Discipline Construction of High-level Universities in China", in which the research method is expressed as normative analysis method. There are still many such confusing expressions. In addition, there are some logical confusion and repeated expressions. For example, when introducing the research methods used by oneself, there is a phenomenon of juxtaposing the survey method and the questionnaire method.

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