‘I’m not a quants person’; key strategies in building competence and confidence in staff who teach quantitative research methods’

Abstract

Initiatives, like the UK ESRC’s RDI/CI programmes and the Q-Step Centres, have a long-term aim of addressing the well-documented decline in the pool of academics able and willing to teach quantitative methods (QM). However, these initiatives will take time to make an impact; therefore, the upskilling of current staff is a vital strategy if we want to maintain QM in curricula. This paper draws on findings from the ESRC RDI project, ‘No More Pointy Clicky, numbers stuff; building staff quantitative skills’. This project focussed on upskilling staff in a large Sociology department. The project was committed to delivering training to develop staff competence in QM; however, it became clear that this alone would not be sufficient to build staff confidence. Therefore, the project rolled-out a more complex strategy that addressed a range of central issues, including, pedagogy, infrastructure, Departmental resourcing and strategy, and staff worldviews, which this article explores.