Methods in Context - Research in an education setting

Methods in Context - Research in an education setting

1. Positivists

   • Questionnaires
   • Secondary Documents
   • Experiments
   • Statistics
   • Structured Interviews
   • Representativeness, Reliability, Generalisiblitiy, Quantitative, Comparable to discover social trends

2. Interpretivists

   • Secondary Documents
   • Unstructured Interviews
   • Observations
   • Meanings, Verstehen, Validity, Qualititive

3. Practical

   • Where?
     • Class but changes every lesson
     • Parents evening but not everyone goes
     • Home Adresses
   • When?
     • Only in School time
   • Who?
     • Can't be detailed with small kids
     • Meeting with head teacher - busy and socially desirable
   • How?
     • Disrupt learning by being in classroom
     • Take out of lesson but doesn't study behaviour

4. Theoretical

   • Qualititve/Quantiative
   • Validity
   • Reliability
   • Representativeness
   • Generalisable

5. Ethical

   • Consent
     • CRB check
     • Permission from parents if under 16
   • Harm
     • Poverty
     • Parents don't care
   • Deception
     • Teachers pretend for Ofsted etc. so used to acting
     • Might produce Hawthorne effect if don't
   • Confidentiality
     • If child tells you something