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Using Grounded Theory to Investigate Evidence Use by Course Leaders in Small-Specialist UK HEIs

The study of evidence-based course leadership in higher education focusses on twodifferent areas of practice: higher education course leadership, and evidence-basedpractice. Course leadership is an understudied area of research, with few publicationsdiscussing the role of the course leader in higher education. Although evidence-basedpractice is an area of ever evolving research in many disciplines, there is a distinct lackof research on whether course leaders in higher education apply evidence-based practicemethods in their professional practice. This lack of a pre-existing theory points theresearcher towards classic grounded theory to investigate and generate a new theory oncourse leaders’ experiences. Since leadership, and therefore course leadership, is aninherent complex social process, selection of classic grounded theory as a researchmethodology seems a logical choice. Classic grounded theory has been successfullyused to investigate phenomena in education and in evidence-based practice. Groundedtheory therefore is an appropriate selection for research in education and highereducation settings for areas of research where no theory currently exists. Moreover,grounded theories regarding experiences and perceptions of evidence-based practicehave been published in various contexts demonstrating that it is an appropriate methodfor investigating course leaders’ experiences with evidence-based practice.