The need to build social research capacity, and with this to build competence in research methods, is felt across Europe (Kottmann, 2011) in response to the challenges of the global knowledge economy. Only recently, however, has interest grown in the pedagogical aspects surrounding research methods. This reflects the realisation that simply delivering courses may not be enough (Strayhorn 2009) and that educationalists can make a critical contribution to capacity building strategies (Nind, 2015). If our attentions are turned to the pedagogical dimension, then pedagogy needs to be understood in context - social, cultural, historical and political (Williams, 2009) and questions about the inclusiveness of the pedagogy arise.

 The research discussed in this paper is part of an overall package of research with the aims of: (i) advancing an emerging pedagogical culture and content knowledge for social science research methods teaching; (ii) creating a typology of pedagogical approaches for social research methods; and (iii) developing a coherent theoretical framework for methods teaching to inform national practice. The broad questions include: How is the subject matter of advanced and innovative research methods taught and learned? When, and how, does methods learning produce practical benefits? How can methods teachers’ methodological and pedagogical craft be most powerfully articulated? In this paper the aim and research question relate to the above, but the questions are more specifically focused in the agenda of inclusion. Thus, what do methods teachers know about the barriers to developing methods/methodological competence? What inclusive practices have they adopted? Is it helpful to bring in theories of inclusive pedagogy when theorising methods pedagogy?

 Values, according to Alexander (2009, 18) ‘spill out untidily at every point in the analysis of pedagogy’. Applying a lens of critical or inclusive pedagogy to a consideration of the teaching and learning of research methods means that such values are made explicit. For Alexander, pedagogy is ‘the act of teaching together with its attendant discourse’ (p.11), and the discourse of inclusive pedagogy is not often associated with adult learning of research methods, where the pedagogical discourse generally is under-developed (Kilburn et al., 2014). Research indicates that learning research methods is hard (e.g. Howard & Brady, 2015). For teachers, challenges are exacerbated by the lack of pedagogic culture and curriculum (Earley, 2014) with added complexities of international differences in preparation and priority. Of the challenges associated with research methods pedagogy, the question of the perceived fear of methods (and statistics) (e.g. Baloglu and Zelhart, 2003) has led to a deficit discourse in which ill-prepared, fearful learners are blamed for making teaching them difficult. An inclusive pedagogical lens is helpful ‘for shifting from deficit to asset perspectives’ (Hattam et al., 2009, 306).

 The stance adopted in this paper is that pedagogy is more than technique or method (Sellar, 2009) and ‘the coming together of the teacher and learner and the production of knowledge is a political process with inherent implications for teaching practice’ (Nind, Curtin & Hall, in press). The way the study is being conducted involves bringing together a community of stakeholders to understand pedagogical practice as reliant on community knowledge, the development of which they contribute to through collaborative theory building and praxis. Embodying an inclusive pedagogical perspective has led to our concern within the wider project with pedagogies that connect across the diversity of learners and to some extent echoing Florian and Black-Hawkins (2011, 814) by exploring teachers’ craft knowledge ‘in terms of what they do, why and how’ including what they ‘know and believe’, especially when this takes an inclusive turn.

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