Methods in context

Question 1

What are the issues in researching schools?

Answer 1

The many different school types in the UK (comprehensives, academies, free, grammar and private schools) may undermine the representativeness of any sociological sample. Schools are data-rich environments – they have a legal obligation to produce statistics on a range of processes in which sociologists are interested.

Finding similar schools to compare may be
difficult – no one catchment area is the same. Some school data may be unavailable due to confidentiality, e.g. relating to ‘students at risk’ or with special needs or to personal problems the student and/or parents are experiencing.

Sociologists may be excluded from some
school settings, e.g. management meetings. Some schools, for example, prestigious private schools – have more power to say no to sociological research.

Governors and heads may deny permission for
sociological research if they suspect that the
findings may result in criticism or bad publicity.

Question 2

What are the issues in researching parents ?

Answer 2

Practical: Access to parents is more difficult because they are not concentrated in one place.
Theoretical: Parental response to a questionnaire about parental support and interest may be uneven – thus undermining its representativeness.
Practical: Parental addresses may be supplied
by the school; the sample selected may be unrepresentative because such lists are
unlikely to identify their social class,
ethnicity etc.
Theoretical: Some groups of parents may enthusiastically over-respond because they are involved with the PTA; others may fail to respond because they feel the research is implicitly critical of their efforts.
Ethical: Some parents may only give informed
consent for themselves if they can see the
benefits of the research.
Theoretical: Some parents may attempt to manage the impression the researchers have of them by exaggerating their support or interest.

Question 3

What are the issues with researching classrooms ?

Answer 3

Practical: The closed setting means the researcher can exercise more control over observing particular interactions and relationships. Theoretical: Teachers may associate observations with inspection of their ability and may attempt to manage the researcher’s impression of them by constructing an unrepresentative lesson, so their observed behaviour may not be high in validity.

Practical: The teacher’s awareness of the observation may mean their interaction with students becomes less natural.
Theoretical: Student behaviour may be unrepresentative as some may be subdued by the presence of a stranger, while others may be tempted to ‘play up’ to the researcher’s presence (Hawthorne Effect).

Practical/Ethical: There may be some scope for covert PO if the sociologists takes on the roles of a supply teacher or teaching assistant (although there are ethical issues with this).

Question 4

What are the issues with researching students?

Answer 4

Students are relatively easy to access because they have to legally attend school.
Questionnaire design and wording needs to consider the age and ability of the child.
Representative samples can be taken from school sampling frames in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, ability etc. Researchers can use children who are claiming FSMs as samples of children from poorer families.

Some children may not be in school because they persistently truant or have been suspended or excluded. Children may be reluctant to admit to behaviour (e.g. bullying or racist language) because they associate the researchers with authority.

Children who have had a ‘difficult’ time at school and/or are members of anti-school subcultures are less likely to cooperate with researchers. Researching children can be time-consuming and therefore potentially expensive.

Question 5

What are the ethical issues in researching students?

Answer 5

Children are generally regarded as a vulnerable group that need to be treated very sensitively. Research must not damage or undermine a child’s educational progress.

Some groups of children (special needs or at risk) may be less available for research because they need more protection.

Although confidentiality is important, a researcher must report any evidence of abuse to the authorities.

Researchers, especially interviewers, will need to be vetted by officials to ensure that they are suitable to have close contact with children.

Children lack power and may find it difficult to turn down a request from an adult researcher, therefore undermining informed consent.

Researchers should obtain informed consent from children, but a young child is less likely to understand the aims of the research.

Researchers must ensure children suffer no emotional or psychological harm or distress because of their research.

Question 6

What are the theoretical issues in researching students?

Answer 6

Interpretivists have suggested that power differences between children and adult researchers can undermine the validity of data.

If interviewing is being used, children may respond in a limited and less valid fashion if they interpret the interviewer as ‘threatening’ or teacher-like.

Children may act unnaturally when observed in the classroom.

In group interviews, some students may undermine validity by insisting on hogging the limelight.

If questionnaires are being completed as a group, peer pressure may undermine the validity of the responses.

Children may feel less threatened by research based on group interviews because the presence of their friends makes them feel ‘safer’.

Question 7

What is most sociological research based on?

Answer 7

· Causes of achievement and underachievement (social class, gender and ethnicity)

· External and internal influences on success and failure

· Classroom relationships

· Student behaviour and misbehaviour

· Gendered subject choice

· The effect of educational policies on schools

Question 8

What is most educational research based on?

Answer 8

· Schools (organisation, discipline and marketing)

· Students (conformity, deviancy, subcultures and identity)

· Teachers (attitudes towards sets and streams, social class, gender and ethnicity)

· Parents (attitudes and support)

· Classrooms (teacher-student interaction)

Question 9

What are the access issues in educational research?

Answer 9

Access issues:

Gaining access to a school to conduct research is not straightforward. Permission and informed consent need to be obtained from:

· LEAs

· Governors and Head teacher

· Parents (particularly if pupils are very young)

· Students themselves

· By law, the researcher will have to undergo a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) to check their suitability if the research involves spending one-to-one time with students.

Question 10

What sampling frames can be find in schools (for sociological research) ?

Answer 10

· Lists or registers of present-day students divided into year groups, subjects and exam entry

· Lists of past students and last-known addresses

· Student lists that can be sub-divided by gender and ethnicity

· Names and addresses of parents (past and present) (these details are confidential, but a school may support sociological research by contacting parents for their cooperation)

· Lists of staff and responsibilities

· Lists of PTA members

Question 11

How are lab experiments used to investigate teacher lab experiments?

Answer 11

Harvey and Slatin (1976) examined teachers’ preconceived ideas about pupils of different social classes. A sample of 96 teachers were shown 18 photos of children from different social classes and were asked to rate them on their performance, aspirations etc. They found that teachers, particularly the more experienced ones rated WC children less favourably and based their ratings on the similarities they perceived between the children in the photos and the pupils they taught. This illustrates that teachers label pupils from different social classes and use these labels to pre-judge pupils’ potential. Further research by Mason (1973) studied the impact of positive and negative expectations. Teachers were given positive, negative or neutral reports on a pupil, they then observed video footage of the pupil taking a test and were then asked to predict the pupil’s end of year attainment. He found that the negative reports had a much greater impact than the positive ones on teachers’ expectation

Question 12

What are the concerns with using lab experiments to research within the field of education?

Answer 12

· Ethical concerns: They play a limited role in educational research due to the ethical concerns raised with working with young pupils. Most do not involve real pupils so have fewer ethical implications. Neither of used real pupils, so no child suffered any negative effects.

· Narrow focus: They usually only examine one specific aspect of behaviour, such as teacher expectations. This can be useful as it allows the researcher to isolate and examine the variable more thoroughly, but it often results in too narrow a focus.

· Practical problems: There are problems in conducting experiments on issues such as teachers’ expectations. In practice it is impossible to identify, let alone control all the variables that might exert an influence on teachers’ expectations. Some educational issues could not be studied in small scale lab settings.

· Artificiality: Their artificiality means that they tell us little about the real world.

Question 13

What are the practical advantages of using questionnaires in education?

Answer 13

Questionnaires are very useful for gathering large quantities of basic information quickly and cheaply from large samples of pupils, teachers or educational settings. They can be used to correlate factors such as achievement, attendance and behaviour with variables such as type of school, school size, class size, class, gender etc.

Question 14

Sampling frames in education for questionnaires:

Answer 14

Schools are a good source of ready-made sampling frames. They keep lists of pupils and staff and these can provide accurate sampling frames from which to draw a representative sample. Schools also have ready-made opportunity samples of pupils and teachers, e.g. year, class and form lists.

Question 15

What is the response rate of questionnaires in education?

Answer 15

Response rates for questionnaires are generally low. However, when conducted in schools they are usually higher, because once a head teacher has put their authority behind the research, teachers and pupils may be obliged to cooperate. Also, pupils, teachers and parents are accustomed to completing school questionnaires, such as evaluation surveys.

Question 15

What is the response rate of questionnaires in education?

Answer 15

Response rates for questionnaires are generally low. However, when conducted in schools they are usually higher, because once a head teacher has put their authority behind the research, teachers and pupils may be obliged to cooperate. Also, pupils, teachers and parents are accustomed to completing school questionnaires, such as evaluation surveys.

Question 16

What are the issues with researching pupils in questionnaires?

Answer 16

Children have a often attention span than adults and so a short questionnaire can be more effective than interviews. However, this limits the amount of information that can be gathered. Pupils with poor literacy skills may be unable or unwilling to complete them.

Question 17

Operationalising concepts of education for questionnaires:

Answer 17

Turning abstract ideas such as ‘deferred gratification’ into a measurable form is particularly difficult when researching pupils. Young people have a poorer grasp of abstract ideas, so they are less likely to understand some of the questions.

Question 18

What are the problems with the samples in education for questionnaires?

Answer 18

Schools may not keep lists that reflect the researcher’s interests, e.g. the researcher may wish to investigate ethnicity or social class, but the school may not keep lists of pupils sorted by their ethnic origin or socio-economic background.

Question 19

How does questionnaires in education lack validity?

Answer 19

The life experiences of children (especially primary age children) are narrower, so they may not actually know the answers to questions. Consequently, questionnaires may be of little value.

Question 20

What is the response rate of structured interviews in education?

Answer 20

SIs have practical advantages, namely they usually take less time than UIs and so they are less disruptive to schools’ activities. Therefore, researchers are more likely to receive official support for the research. The hierarchical nature of the school may then work in their favour and this may increase the response rate.

Question 21

How reliable are structured interviews in education?

Answer 21

SIs are easy to replicate. Therefore, large-scale patterns in educational behaviour can be identified, e.g. in gender and subject choice.

Question 22

How valid are structured interviews in eduation?

Answer 22

As young people tend to have better verbal than literacy skills, interviews may be more successful than questionnaires to gather valid data. However, the formal nature of SIs (similar to exams, lessons and other controlled situations) means pupils are unlikely to feel at ease and therefore may be less forthcoming.

Question 23

what problems could appear with the question design of structured interviews in education?

Answer 23

It is more difficult to create questions for use with young people because their linguistic and intellectual skills are not fully developed. As a result, they may not understand long, complex sentences or some abstract concepts. In answers, they may have a more limited vocabulary and use words incorrectly. They therefore need more help and clarification – neither of which happens in SIs.

Question 24

what are the ethical issues of structured interviews in education?

Answer 24

Parental permission may be required to interview children. Whether or not this is given depends partly on the sensitivity of the research topic, e.g. sex education.

Question 25

what are the problems with the power dynamics of structured interviews in schools?

Answer 25

Pupils and teachers are not equal in power and status and this affects their behaviour. Pupils often alter their responses to seek adult approval by giving untrue but socially acceptable answers. Children see adults as authority figures, so the researcher may come across as a ‘teacher in disguise’. This is particularly true in formal interview situations. This will reduce the validity of the interview data.

Question 26

How can unstructured interviews prevent power and status inequalities in sociologists research taken in schools?

Answer 26

UIs may overcome barriers of power and status inequalities. Their informality can establish rapport more easily. Labov’s research shows that UIs can encourage interviewees to open up and respond more fully. This produces more valid data, which is particularly useful when dealing with sensitive topics, e.g. bullying.

Question 27

What are the practical issues with unstructured interview in education?

Answer 27

Pupils may be inarticulate or reluctant to talk, so UIs give them space, time and encouragement to work out their responses. However, younger pupils have a shorter attention span, so may find long UIs too demanding.

Question 28

How valid are unstructured interviews in education ?

Answer 28

The difficulties in communicating with young people mean that UIs may be suitable, because the interviewer can clarify misunderstandings by explaining questions. However, children may also have more difficulty in keeping to the point and may present contradictory or irrelevant responses.

Question 29

why could unstructured interviews in education be unreliable?

Answer 29

To put young people at ease, some interviewers try to maintain a relaxed atmosphere by nodding, smiling and making eye contact. However, this cannot be standardised, so different interviewers may obtain very different results, and this would reduce the reliability of their findings.

Question 30

WHY or how might pupils/ teachers try to be socially desirable?

Answer 30

Pupils are accustomed to adults ‘knowing better’ and so may defer to them in interviews. Children are more likely than adults to change their original answer when the question is repeated because they think it must have been wrong. Teachers may seek to protect their professional self-image and so are likely to represent themselves in the most positive light. However, an UI allows researchers to probe behind this image.

Question 31

Why is interview training required for unstructured interviews in schools?

Answer 31

Unstructured interviewing of young people requires more training than interviewing adults. Interviews need to be trained not to interrupt children’s answers, to tolerate long pauses and to avoid repeating questions, since this may make children change their original answer for fear that it was wrong.