Learning to Design Research - Students’ Agency and Experiences in a Master of Education Program in Hong Kong

Oct 15, 2026

Purpose: Learning to do research has been understudied in professional development within postgraduate programs. This exploratory study examined the agency and experiences of five Chinese students learning to design a research project in a Master of Education program at an English-medium university in Hong Kong SAR. Design/Approach/Methods: Semi-structured interviews and documents were used to triangulate data. Findings: Agency in research design related to personal and professional backgrounds, English proficiency, supervisory feedback, and support resources, while ineffective supervision and inadequate learning resources hindered development. Originality/Value: The study adds empirical evidence through learner agency.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages19

Reading Time48 min

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Abstract

Purpose

Design/Approach/Methods

Findings

Originality/Value

Introduction

University teachers and research supervision

Postgraduate students’ need for support as novice researchers

Learning to Design Research: Students’ Agency and Experiences in a Master of Education Program in Hong Kong Weipeng Yang Singapore University of Social Sciences Yongyan Li University of Hong Kong Wumei Zhou University of Hong Kong Hui Li Macquarie University ECNU Review of Education 2020, Vol. 3(2) 291–309 ª The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[DOI: 10.1177/2096531120917163](DOI: 10.1177/2096531120917163)[ ](DOI: 10.1177/2096531120917163)[journals.sagepub.com/home/roe](journals.sagepub.com/home/roe) Abstract Purpose: Learning to do research has been understudied in the context of professional development in postgraduate programs. This exploratory study investigated the agency and experiences of five Chinese students who learned to design their research project in a Master of Education program at an English-medium university in Hong Kong SAR. Design/Approach/Methods: We obtained the data from semi-structured interviews and documents to establish data triangulation. Findings: The findings revealed that (1) the students’ agency in research design and proposal writing was associated with their personal/professional backgrounds,(2) their English proficiency Corresponding author: Weipeng Yang, S R Nathan School of Human Development, Singapore University of Social Sciences, 463 Clementi Road 599494, Singapore. [Email: weipengyang@suss.edu.sg](Email: weipengyang@suss.edu.sg) Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ([https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages ([https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage](https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage)). affected their agency in the proposal writing, (3) the supervisors’ feedback would stimulate students’ agency in changing/refining their research design, and (4) ineffective supervision and learning resources would impede students’ achievement of agency on their way to creating a robust research design. Originality/Value: This study adds empirical evidence to the field of research training through the lens of learner agency. It demonstrates the applicability of using the ecological framework of agency in theoretically interpreting the contextual facilitators and constraints in making postgraduate students active agents. Keywords Educational research, English as a foreign language, Master of Education, research design, student agency Date received: 23 September 2019; accepted: 14 March 2020 Introduction University teachers worldwide teach research skills and supervise student projects in master’s programs. English is often used as “lingua franca” when they support students’ skill development in designing research, writing research proposals, and conducting empirical studies. Learning to design research can thus be particularly challenging for English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) students (Singh, 2019) . Very little research has been conducted to explore the difficulties of EFL master’s students in the process of research design and the possible causes. In this article, we report a study that addressed this gap in the literature, by focusing on understanding the experiences of five Chinese students pursuing a coursework-based Master of Education (MEd) degree in an English-medium university in Hong Kong SAR, as they constructed their research design for their graduation project, in a process marked with challenges and shaped by various influences. Given the rapid growth of coursework master’s programs around the world in recent decades (Clarke & Lunt, 2014), and the larg

FAQs

What is the purpose of this exploratory study?

To investigate how postgraduate students’ agency and experiences develop when they learn to design a research project in a Master of Education program in Hong Kong SAR.

How were the study data collected and analyzed?

Data came from semi-structured interviews and documents, enabling triangulation of the evidence.

What factors were found to influence students’ agency in research design and proposal writing?

Students’ agency was associated with personal/professional backgrounds and English proficiency, and it was stimulated by supervisors’ feedback; ineffective supervision and limited learning resources impeded agency and progress.

Oct 15, 2026

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