Methods Of Studying Education

Question 1

Disadvantages of Structured observation to study education?

Answer 1

• Counting behaviour and classifying it into pre-determined categories ignores the meanings that pupils and teachers account to it= Low validity.
• Presence of a stranger likely to affect behaviour and reduce validity.

Question 2

Advantages of Participant observation to study education?

Answer 2

• Overcomes problem of statuses, researcher gains pupils acceptance= Higher validity.
• Observe lessons easier than interviews.

Question 3

Disadvantages of participant observation to study education?

Answer 3

• Pupils and teachers can alter behaviour when being observed.
• Not much privacy so recording observations can be problematic.
• Children more vulnerable may not be able to give consent.
• Hawthorne effect
• Carried out small-scale mask representativeness virtually impossible.

Question 4

Advantages of structured interviews to study education?

Answer 4

• Takes less time and less disruptive so school more likely to say yes.
• Easy to replicate =Large-scale patterns can be identified.
• Young people tend to have better verbal than literacy skills.

Question 5

Disadvantages of structured interviews to study education?

Answer 5

• Parents permission required.
• pupils responses will seek adult approval= Reduce validity of data.
• Pupils unlikely to feel at ease.
• May not understand complex questions will need to ask for help but this does not happen in structured interviews.

Question 6

Advantages of unstructured interviews to study education?

Answer 6

• Encourages interviewees to open up more= Higher validity

- Gives reluctant to talk pupils time to work out response

Question 7

Disadvantages of unstructured interviews to study education?

Answer 7

• Younger pupils might find long interviews too demanding.
• Pupils may struggle with keeping to the point = Less validity
• Some interviewers will try maintain a relaxed atmosphere but this cannot be standardised so results will be different = Reduces reliability

Question 8

Advantages of experiments to study education?

Answer 8

• Can use field experiments to study aspects of classroom life. Classroom makes it easier for researcher to achieve degree of control
• Although experiments in educational settings may not be exactly replicable, schools have broadly similar features so can be repeated in broadly similar ways.

Question 9

Disadvantages of experiments to study education?

Answer 9

• Ethical issues with carrying out experiments on young people.
• Less able to give informed consent
• Larger-scale topics in education, e.g. Social class and achievement cannot be easily studied using experiments.

Question 10

Advantages of questionnaires to study education?

Answer 10

• Gather large amounts of data.
• Quick and cheap.
• Schools are a source of ready made sampling frames, lists of pupils can draw representative sample.
• Head teacher authority behind research= Pressure to complete.

Question 11

Disadvantages of questionnaires to study education?

Answer 11

• Children shorter attention span =Shorter questionnaires but less info
• Poor Literacy skills
• Some questions hard to understand
• Life experiences of children are narrower, so may not know answers

Question 12

Advantages of Structured Observation to study education?

Answer 12

• Classroom well suited to structured observation.
• Easy for observer to sit back and record behaviour into set categories.
• Quicker, cheaper and requires less training.
• Range of classroom behaviours limited so limited number of categories can be easily established, so easy to replicate.