The Journal Club: A Pedagogy for Postgraduate Research and Education

Developing  deep  approaches  to  learning  can  enhance  students'  engagement  with academic material and result in improved analytical and conceptual thinking skills.   A deep  approach  to  learning  occurs  when students  engage  meaningfully  with  key concepts to gain meaningful knowledge and skills.  Understanding how students learn can provide a firm basis for the most effective means of teaching and assessment.  Consistent with calls for improvements to the pedagogy for higher research degrees, this study introduces changes to the learning environment for postgraduate research students in an interdisciplinary journal club and reports on the observed effects of the changes. We consider postgraduate students’ views and experiences of learning in an interdisciplinary  journal  club  and  the  outcomes  of  the  new  taught  component introduced.Pre-to-post  intervention  data  were  analysed  to  determine  students’  self-assessed knowledge regarding study design and interpretation. In addition,the revised Study Process Questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F) was used to assess changes in students’ deep and surface  approaches  to  learning  across  the  course  of  the  intervention.    Qualitative descriptive text data were also analysed using observations from the journal club and appraisals of research papers.The  findings  point  to  greater  awareness  of  knowledge  gaps,  actual  research knowledge,  an increase in deep  approach  and  a  decrease in surface  approach to learning for some students. It is concluded that the journal club provides an authentic learning environment suitable for postgraduate students from different disciplines to collaborate, co-operate and generate new ideas.