Research Methods Education Flashcards
SURVEYS - The Longitudinal Study of Young People in England
The Longitudinal Study of Young People in England is a longitudinal survey that began in 2004 and will continue to track the sample throughout their education and onwards. In 2004, students in Year 9 (born in 1989/1990) were interviewed and completed a questionnaire regarding their views on education. In all, over 15,000 young people were interviewed. Since then, the interviews have been carried out annually. This information obtained is used to plan educational provision, among other things.
Longitudinal surveys suffer from a number of problems:
> Practical - time-consuming.
You cannot collect retrospective information, so you have to be sure you have the right questions and have identified potential issues from the start.
THEORETICAL - respondents may drop out of the survey. Too many dropping out may make the survey unrepresentative.
Hawthorne effect.
FIELD EXPERIMENT - Rosenthal and Jacobson 1968
Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) gave false information to primary school teachers in the USA about the IQ of pupils. They found that pupils who were believed to have a high IQ by teachers made greater progress than those who were believed to have a low IQ, regardless of what their actual IQ was. This suggested that the self-fulfilling prophecy can occur.
Field experiments, such as those by Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968), are more practical but it may be difficult to get permission from schools and teachers to conduct them.
The research by Rosenthal and Jacobson may have damaged the educational progress of some pupils labelled as having low ability, and informed consent wasn’t possible.
Attempts to reproduce the Rosenthal and Jacobson’s study have produced inconsistent results, suggesting that such research may not be very reliable.
LABORATORY EXPERIMENT - Harvey and Slatin 1976
Harvey and Slatin (1976) used photographs of children from different social classes and asked teachers to rate their likely performance in education. Pupils from higher classes were seen as more likely to be successful than pupils from lower social classes, suggesting that labelling on the basis of appearance does take place.
The research by Harvey and Slatin was a type of lab experiment but it was conducted on teachers rather than students.
OBSERVATION - Paul Willis’ Learning to Labour 1977
In his study ‘Learning to Labour’, Willis (1977) studied the resistance of working-class ‘lads’ in a secondary school. Willis showed that the resistance these ‘lads’ displayed to schooling came from their working-class culture which prized manual over mental labour. Despite the fact that these ‘lads’ enjoyed bunking off and making teachers’ lives difficult, their resistance was ultimately reproductive as they ended up in manual jobs as a result of the absence of qualifications.
OBSERVATION - Hargreaves 1967
David Hargreaves (1967), in a pioneering study, observed teachers and pupils in secondary school without using a formal structure.
Hargreaves noticed that some teachers appeared to change their lessons when he was present. Talking to some of the pupils, he was told that their teachers acted quite differently from normal when they were being observed.
ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY - Rist 1977
Ethnographic data is collected through observations and interviews.
In 1977, Rist conducted an ethnographic study of an elementary school in Missouri, USA. A teacher made children sit at tables according to her evaluations of their academic ability based on social class. Those whose parents were on welfare (clowns) sat at one table, the working-class (cardinals) at another, and the middle-class (tigers) at another. Rist followed these children through the first and second grades, and found that the initial labels had stuck, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
STATISTICS - Webber and Butler 2007
Large-scale statistical research by Webber and Butler (2007), involving more than a million pupils, found that the best predictor of achievement was the type of neighbourhood that pupils lived in. The more middle-class and affluent the area, the more successful the school tended to be. More than half of the school’s performance could be explained by the type of pupils who attended.
CONTENT ANALYSIS - Jerrim
Jerrim analysed government statistical data on class and test results. He found that even the most talented were being left behind in education if they came from a lower-class background. This suggests that, without class advantages, talent is often not enough to succeed.
QUESTIONNAIRE - Reay et al. 2005
According to a questionnaire by Reay et al. (2005) many working-class students intended to apply to their nearest university because they felt they could not afford the costs of travel and accommodation away from home.
OBSERVATIONS AND INTERVIEWS - Evans 2007
Qualitative research by Gillian Evans (2007) who carried out observations and interviews on a working-class council estate in London found that most working-class parents placed a very high value on education and did encourage their children to do well.
Research by Gillian Evans (2007) found that middle-class mothers were able to use their cultural capital to give their children a head start. The mothers tended to have high-level educational qualifications themselves and a good understanding of how children could be stimulated to learn in pre-school years. They used their own educational knowledge to incorporate more learning activities into their children’s play.
FOCUS GROUPS AND INTERVIEWS - Tehima Basit 2013
Research conducted by Tehima Basit (2013) found that cultural factors had an impact on educational achievement in British Asian communities.
Basit studied three generations: grandparents, parents and children. She collected data on attitudes to education among British Asians in the West Midlands. She used focus groups for her research with the children (aged 15-16) and in-depth interviews with the older generations. All the participants placed a high value on education and saw free state education as a ‘blessing’ because it generally offered more opportunities than were available in their countries of origin. They therefore tended to put considerable effort and resources into helping their children.
OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS - OFSTED reports
Official Documents are produced by organisations such as government departments and their agencies as well as businesses and charities and include OFSTED and other official government enquiries. These reports are a matter of public record and should be available for anyone who wishes to see them.
