//Education: The Research Context

Question 1

How might the researcher’s own personal characteristics affect the research?

Answer 1

Their own experience of education may be different to what the education system is like today.

Question 2

State the ethical problems with labratory experiments.

Answer 2

Laboratory experiments that do not involve real pupils have fewer ethical problems than those that do.

Question 3

State why a narrow focus is an issue with laboratory experiments.

Answer 3

Lab experiments usually only examine one specific aspect of teacher expectations, such as body language for example. This can be useful because it allows the researcher to isolate and examine this variable more thoroughly.

Question 4

State the practical problems with laboratory experiments.

Answer 4

There are many practical problems in conducting experiments on teachers’ expectations in schools. Schools are large, complex institutions in which many variables may affect teacher expectations.

Question 5

State why artificiality is an issue when studying laboratory experiments.

Answer 5

The artificiality of lab experiments may mean that they tell us little about the real world of education. For example:
Charkin used university students rather than teachers.
Harvey and Slatin used photographs of pupils rather than real pupils.

Question 6

List some of the practical issues when using interviews to research young people in education.

Answer 6

Young people’s linguistic and intellectual skills are less developed than those of adults and this may pose practical problems for interviewers. Young interviewees may:
Be less articulate or more reluctant to talk.
Not understand long, complex questions or some abstract concepts.
Read body language differently from adults.

Question 7

What practical problems might a sociologist face when trying to interview teachers?

Answer 7

Hawthorne Effect

Teachers may fear their colleagues or head teachers overhearing.

Question 8

What practical problems might a sociologist face when trying to interview parents?

Answer 8

They ay not be able to cooperate with lengthy interviews due to their scheduling unless they see some benefit to their child’s education.

Question 9

Why are structured interviews likely to produce reliable data?

Answer 9

Because they are standardised: each interview is conducted in precisely the same way, with the same questions, in the same order, tone of voice and so on.

Question 10

Why are structured interviews less likely to produce valid data?

Answer 10

Young people are unlikely to respond favourably to such a formal style - perhaps because it makes the interviewer appear too much like a teacher.

Question 11

List some of the problems of gaining access to pupils and teachers.

Answer 11

Schools may reject the chosen topic, or not like the disruptions it causes.

Question 12

How might the researcher overcome issues of access?

Answer 12

By becoming a ‘teacher in disguise’.

Question 13

What might be the effects on the interviews if pupils see the researcher as a ‘teacher in disguise’?

Answer 13

It can affect the research’s validity. For example, pupils may seek to win the ‘teacher’s’ approval by giving untrue by socially acceptable answers that show them in a favourable light.

Question 14

List the five ways in which Greene and Hogan say interviews with pupils might be improved.

Answer 14

Use open-ended rather than close-ended questions.
Nit interrupt children’s answers.
Tolerate any long pauses to allow children to think about what they want to say.
Recognise that children are more suggestible and so it is particularly important to avoid asking leading questions.
Avoid repeating questions, since this makes children change their first answer because they think it is wrong.

Question 15

Give two reasons why positivists favour structured observation when studying education.

Answer 15

It produces quantitative data and is reliable.

Question 16

Give one reason why interpretivists criticise structured observation as a means of studying
education.

Answer 16

Because it is low in validity.

Question 17

Summarise the

strengths and limitations of using unstructured observation to study education: Practical issues

Answer 17

It may take a while for the sociologist to familiarise themselves with the school.
Some things may be easier than others, such as researchers may be more likely to be allowed to observe lessons than interview teachers and pupils.
Personal characteristics such as age gender and ethnicity may be an issue.
Access to schools are an issue.
Schools are busy public places, so the observer may find it difficult to find the privacy need

Question 18

Summarise the

strengths and limitations of using unstructured observation to study education: Ethical Issues

Answer 18

The additional ethical issues to the observation of young people usually mean that a covert approach. Their greater vulnerability and limited ability to give informed consent means that observation normally has to be overt.

Question 19

Summarise the

strengths and limitations of using unstructured observation to study education: Validity

Answer 19

For interpretivists, the main strength of observation, and especially participant observation, is its validity - it gives us an authentic understanding of the world views of social actors. This understanding is particularly important when researching issues such as classroom interaction or labelling in schools.

Question 20

Summarise the

strengths and limitations of using unstructured observation to study education: The Hawthorne Effect

Answer 20

It is very difficult to carry out covert observation of educational settings, especially classrooms. This is because there are few ‘cover’ roles the researcher can adopt and because he or she stands out as being much older than the pupils. This means that most classroom observation has to be overt. However, this makes it very difficult to avoid the Hawthorne Effect, where the presence of the researcher influences the behaviour of those being observed.

Question 21

Summarise the

strengths and limitations of using unstructured observation to study education: Representativeness

Answer 21

The scale of the education system as vast. There are around 4,000 secondary and over 30,000 primary schools in England and Wales, as well as over 350 colleges. The average secondary schools has around 70 classes taking place at any one time. The result is a huge amount of educational activity.
However, in most studies, researchers focus on a small number of pupils from a single school.

Question 22

Summarise the

strengths and limitations of using unstructured observation to study education: Reliability

Answer 22

Participant studies of education tend to lack reliability. This is because data recording is often unsystematic and hard to replicate.
Also, the personal characteristics of each observer may evoke different responses. For example, Wright found that, as a black female, she was met with some hostility from white teachers, but was readily accepted by black pupils.

Question 23

Give two advantages and two disadvantages of longitudinal studies.

Answer 23

.

Question 24

Summarise the strengths and limitations of using official statistics to
investigate education: Practical Issues

Answer 24

It would cost too much to research every single school in England and Wales.
Statistics allow sociologists to make comparisons between the achievements of different social groups based on ethnicity, gender and social class.
Because statistics are gathered over time, sociologists can make comparisons over time.
However, governments collect data for their own purposes, so sociologists may not have access to the data they need.

Question 25

Summarise the strengths and limitations of using official statistics to
investigate education: Representativeness

Answer 25

All state schools have to complete a school census three times a year. This collects information of the pupils’ attendance, ethnicity and gender, the number receiving free school meals and so on. Because these statistics cover virtually every pupil in the country, they are highly representative.

Question 26

Summarise the strengths and limitations of using official statistics to
investigate education: Validity

Answer 26

Interpretivists question the validity of educational statistics. They argue that such statistics are socially constructed.
For example, schools can manipulate their attendance by saying that poor attenders are on study leave or additional work experience. They may be tempted to do so because, in the education market, there is pressure on schools to present themselves in the best possible light.

Question 27

Summarise the strengths and limitations of using documents to
investigate education: Practical Issues

Answer 27

Some documents can be easy to access. However, personal documents can be more difficult to access.
Some educational documents are strictly confidential.

Question 28

Summarise the strengths and limitations of using documents to
investigate education: Ethical Issues

Answer 28

There are few ethical concerns with using public documents produced by schools. Having been placed in the public domain by the organisation that produced them, permission for their use is not required.
However, in Hey’s study, some girls freely handed them the notes that they had passed around class. But in other cases, the teacher had collected them from a wastepaper bin at the end of the class. Therefore, informed consent to read the notes had not been obtained.

Question 29

Summarise the strengths and limitations of using documents to
investigate education: Representativeness

Answer 29

Some official documents are legally required of all schools and colleges, such as records of racist incidents. This makes it more likely that we can form a representative picture of racism in schools across the whole country. However, not all racist incidents may be documented.

Question 30

Summarise the strengths and limitations of using documents to
investigate education: Reliability

Answer 30

Many public documents, for example, attendance registers, are produced in a systematic format. This enables researchers to make direct comparisons of the absence rates of pupils in different schools.
However, deliberate falsifications of accidents made when filling in registers reduce their reliability because teachers are not applying the measure of attendance consistently.

Question 31

Summarise the strengths and limitations of using documents to
investigate education: Validity

Answer 31

Documents can provide important insights into the meanings held by teachers and pupils and can therefore be high in validity.
However, all documents are open to different interpretations. For example, we cannot be sure that Hey’s interpretation of the meaning of the notes was the same as that of the girls.

Question 32

Give one example of when lab experiments were used to study education.

Answer 32

Charkin et al used a sample of 48 university students who each taught a lesson to a ten-year-old boy.
One third were told that the boy was highly motivated and intelligent.
One third were told that he was poorly motivated with a low IQ.
One third were given no information.
Charkin et al videoed the lessons and found that those in the high expectancy group made more eye contact and gave out more encouraging body language than the low expectancy group.

Question 33

State the ethical problems with using field experiments.

Answer 33

Field experiments in educational settings pose major ethical problems. The potential impact of the Oak School experiment on pupils is substantial. For example, while the spurturs benefitted from the study, the remaining 80% of pupils did not. Some may have even been held back educationally received less attention and encouragement from teachers.

Question 34

State why reliability is an issue when using field experiments.

Answer 34

Rosenthal and Jacobson’s research design was relatively simple and therefore easy to repeat. Within 5 years of the original study, it has been repeated no less that 242 times.

Question 35

State why validity is an issue when using field experiments.

Answer 35

Rosenthal and Jacobson claimed that teachers’ expectations were passed on through differences in the way they interacted with pupils. However, the researchers did not carry out any observation of classroom interaction, so they had no data to support this claim.

Question 36

State why broader focus is an issue when using field experiments.

Answer 36

Rosenthal and Jacobson did look at the whole labelling process from teacher expectations through to their effect on pupils, rather than just examining single elements in isolation.

Question 37

Summarise the strengths and limitations of using official statistics to
investigate education: Reliability

Answer 37

Positivists favour official statistics because their reliability means that they can be used to test and re-test hypotheses and thus discover cause-and-effect relationships. For example, statistics on exam results showing social class differences in educational achievement may correlate with statistics on parental income.