Methods In Context (Educational Research) Flashcards
What is most sociological research in education focused on?
- Causes of achievement/underachievement
- External/internal influences on success/failure
- Classroom relationships
- Student behaviour/misbehaviour
- Gendered subject choice
- Effect of educational policies
What is most educational research on groups and settings focused on?
- Schools
- Students
- Teachers
- Parents
- Classrooms
What are ‘Access Issues’ with educational research?
- LEAs
- Governors + Head teacher
- Parents
- Students themselves
- Researcher has to undergo a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) to interact with pupils
What are the ‘Ready-made sampling frames’ in schools?
- List/register
- Lists of past pupils + last-known addresses
- Student lists
- Names + addresses of parents
- List of staff + responsibilities
- List of PTA member
What are the positives with researching schools?
- Variety of school types in UK E.g. Comprehensive, Academies, Free + Grammar schools
- Schools are data-rich environments
- Schools have legal obligation to produce statistics
What are the negatives researching schools?
- Finding similar schools is difficult
- Confidentiality protects school data
- Private schools can deny access
- Sociologists are excluded from settings
- Governors may deny permission for research
What are the ‘Practical Issues’ researching parents?
- Access to parents is more difficult
- Parental addresses don’t identify Social class/Ethnicity
What are the ‘Ethical Issues’ researching parents?
Some parents may provide informed consent if they can see the research benefits
What are the ‘Theoretical Issues’ researching parents?
- Parental response to a questionnaire may be dishonest
- Impression management to researcher
What are the ‘Practical Issues’ researching teachers?
- Teachers are easily accessible
- Teachers are constrained by timetables + less enthusiastic
What is the ‘Ethical Issue’ researching teachers?
Essential to assure teachers of confidentiality to ensure honesty
What are the ‘Theoretical Issues’ researching teachers?
- Impression management
- Teachers who volunteer/selected may be unrepresentative
What are the ‘Practical Issues’ researching classrooms?
- Closed setting allows for greater control
- Hawthorne effect
What is the ‘Ethical Issue’ researching classrooms?
Covert PO requires deception
What are the ‘Theoretical Issues’ researching classrooms?
- Impression management
- ‘Play’ up/down behaviours around researcher
What are the ‘Practical Issues’ researching students?
- Students are easy to access
- Easy access to sampling frames
- Not all children are consistently in school
- Anti-school subcultures are less co-operative
- Questionnaire wording must be simple
- Children may be reluctant to admit behaviour
- Time-consuming + expensive
What are the ‘Ethical Issues’ researching students?
- Children are a vulnerable group
- Researchers have to be vetted for suitability
- Informed consent isn’t a guarantee
- Research mustn’t damage child’s educational progress
- Researcher must report abuse
What are the ‘Theoretical Issues’ researching students?
- Power differences between researcher + children undermine validity
- Impression management
- Peer pressure may undermine responses
- Children’s responses are limited
- Group interviews may respond over positively/negatively to researcher
