Achieving the competencies of an educational researcher

Abstract

It is a long journey to become a competent educational researcher. The researcher requires both technical and non-technical competencies to become a skilled researcher (Baral, 2021). This editorial does not address the assessment and entrustment of these competencies. Rather it focuses on the competencies required to become an educational researcher. This includes conduct of research, research skills at the workplace, discipline-specific knowledge, professionalism, communication skills, critical thinking, leadership, management, and job market skills. The conduct of research is the practice of scientific investigation with integrity(Iqbal, 2021). It includes but is not limited to collaboration, managing conflicts of interests and commitments, data acquisition and its management, human research protection, mentoring, peer review, publication practices, and research misconduct whereas research skills at the workplace include searching for information, taking notes, time management, problem-solving and communicating results(Marks-Maran, 2015). Can we analyze and systematically develop these research skills? The answer is yes. The Research Skills Development framework developed by John and Kerry is a tool that can analyze and plan a curriculum for the systematic development of research skills (Hendriarto, Mursidi, Kalbuana, Aini, & Aslan, 2021). The framework is based on different facets of student research: curious, determined, discerning, harmonizing, creative, and constructive. These facets vary at different stages of students’ autonomy of researching skills: prescribed, scaffolding, open-ended, and unbounded researching (Willison & O’Regan, 2007).