A Beginner′s Guide to Doing Your Education Research Project

Mike Lambert

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781446289556
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Ricerca nella didattica

?Mike Lambert?s book is a useful source of information, helping to create and shape your research methods project. The book contains detailed chapters with easy to follow guidelines, tips and suggestions ensuring help at every step of the way from start to finish?
Alexander Miesen, student, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

In this basic guide, step-by-step advice is presented in a clear way and chapters take the reader through the entire process, from planning and doing research, to writing it up. Each stage is covered, with detailed help on choosing a topic, drawing up research questions, doing the literature review, choosing and designing research methods, the ethics of doing research, analyzing data, and collating and presenting findings.

Features in the text include:

- explanations of key research terms

- activities (with answers)

- progress sheets

- case studies

This is an ideal text for undergraduate students undertaking their first ever research project, postgraduates pursuing Masters awards and teachers carrying out action research.

SECTION ONE

Learning about Research

1 Research, ‘paradigms’ and ethics

What will you learn from this chapter?

This first chapter examines what research is and describes some different types. It guides you towards choosing an appropriate kind of research for your own project. We also consider ‘paradigms’ – the different kinds of thinking which underlie research activity – and ‘ethics’, a very important theme which we will regularly discuss in this book. Finally, I encourage you to feel positive about the challenge of doing your investigation, and highlight what you will gain from it.

What is research?

Research is all around us – we do it in our daily lives all the time:

• Before we go shopping, we look in cupboards to find out what we need to buy.
• When we want to give someone a present, we ask friends or family what that person might like to receive.
• When we want to study on a course, we examine possibilities on the Internet before deciding which one to apply for.

We rely on more formal research for organizing and improving human activity:

• We rely on medical research to make sure that medicines are safe and effective.
• We rely on consumer research so that what we want to buy is available in the shops.
• We rely on social research for planning the growth of our institutions and services.

With this range of types of research, the notion of research itself is not easy to pin down. Sharp (2009: 3) defined it simply as ‘finding things out’ and Mukherji and Albon (2010: 10) as ‘seeking information to answer the questions that we pose’. Here is my definition:

Key Points

Research is purposeful investigation, aimed at finding out things we did not know before.

Rather than one single definition, however, it is more informative to draw up a series of statements which describe research at various levels:

1	At its simplest:
	•	research is a planned investigation, carried out in an organized and systematic way
	•	it produces information (called ‘data’) which, when analysed, tells us things we did not know or were unsure about before
	•	when applied to practice, this new understanding may influence what we do.
2	Thinking further, research involves:
	•	asking questions at the start of the investigation
	•	collecting data, then using these data to answer the questions.
3	At a third level, research also involves:
	•	connecting the investigation to what is already known about its topic
	•	looking carefully and critically at how we collect information, to see if we can trust what it tells us
	•	presenting what we find out in clear, precise and persuasive ways, so that others can learn more or gain better understanding of the topic we have investigated.

We can continue constructing levels to describe what research is about. The more we have, the closer we are to the kind of academic research which you should be aiming for in your project. Blaxter et al. (2001: 5) summarized it well more than a decade ago: ‘[All types of research] are, or aim to be, planned, cautious, systematic, and reliable ways of finding out or deepening understanding’.

Research is also often seen as a formal aspect of educators’ ‘reflective practice’. Being ‘reflective’ means thinking hard about what you do, assessing its value and working out how things might be done better. It is helped by ‘competence in methods of evidence-based classroom enquiry’ (Pollard, 2008: 14), that is, an understanding of how to do research. This allows practitioners to adopt more structured approaches to appraisal of practice, to take into account what other investigations have found out, and to think more rigorously, relying more on evidence and less on impression and anecdote.

Activity 1.1 Understanding ‘research’

Bring up a thesaurus on your computer:

• In Microsoft Word, press Shift + F7
• With Apple, press ctrl + alt + cmd + R
• Or use http://thesaurus.com

Type the word ‘research’ in the Search box, and press Enter. See what other words come up. Click on these words to find further associated terms. What do all these words tell you about the meaning and features of ‘research’?

Categorizing research

We can categorize research in many different ways. For instance, it is carried out at different levels: undergraduate, practitioner, Masters, doctoral and post-doctoral. It may be funded by an external body, including government, or not have any allocated financial support at all. It can also relate to a wide range of themes, including (of course) education.

Educational research investigates learning, curriculum and educational practice. It can be carried out by practitioners or by ‘outsiders’ (and even by children and school students themselves). It may achieve many things – your project may achieve these too. For example, it can:

• strengthen understanding of how centres, schools or colleges function and how they might function better
• deepen understanding of educational practice, in the classroom and elsewhere
• explore the feelings (‘perspectives’) of those in education about curriculum, styles of teaching and about learning itself.

It also comes in different forms. Here are some common approaches, together with examples of each:

Theoretical research

Theoretical research scrutinizes concepts and ideas (such as equality and justice), rather than their practical application.

Example: Starting his discussion with: ‘Teachers often shut their students up’, Callan (2011) examined the tensions between the silencing of students’ derogatory comments and the ideals of free speech.

Action or practitioner research

Action research investigates everyday actions, in work or in our social lives, with a view to improving systems and practice. It is often carried out by practitioners, such as teachers. Participants themselves may also have direct input into design and monitoring of the investigation (sometimes known as ‘participatory’ research).

Example: Rule and Modipa (2011) explored the educational experiences of adults with disabilities in South Africa. The study’s participatory, action-research approach involved people with disabilities designing and conducting the investigation. The study was also an example of ‘emancipatory research’ which challenges social oppression of marginalized groups.

Evaluative

Evaluative research assesses the usefulness or effectiveness of an organization or activity, possibly to indicate whether this should be continued.

Example: Blenkinsop et al. (2007) evaluated the School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme, which provided fruit to young children in English schools every morning. They found that children’s fruit consumption increased, but saw no wider or sustained impact on their diet.

Experimental

This involves a structured experiment. Situations are carefully organized, so that different scenarios can be investigated. For instance, two student groups (one ‘experimental’, the other ‘control’) are taught the same thing in different ways. The researcher then tries to determine which approach is more beneficial. To adopt this approach, it must be possible to measure clearly the issue in question.

Example: Finnish research by Iivonen, Sääkslahti and Nissinen (2011) used two groups of young children to study the effects of an eight-month, pre-school, physical-education curriculum.

‘Cause and effect’ research

Experimental research is usually associated with what I call ‘cause and effect’ research – trying to find out if and how one thing causes or affects another. For instance, does a particular teaching approach, initiative or resource improve students’ learning and achievement?

Example: Blatchford et al. (2011) studied over 8000 students to examine the effects of work by education support staff. Uncomfortably for educators, it found that the students getting most support tended to make less academic progress than similar students with less support.

Case study

Case-study research involves in-depth investigation of an individual, group, event or system, usually within its real-life context and sometimes over a period of time (called a ‘longitudinal’ study).

Example: Forrester (2010) used a longitudinal case-study approach to document the musical development of one child between the ages of 1 and 4 years.

Systematic review

Systematic reviews critically appraise a range of research evidence or literature (or both) on a particular topic. From the analysis, it identifies key messages and cont...