Observations (methods in context)

• Observational techniques in the study of education

  • Main use is to investigate classroom interaction and the behaviour, attitudes and values of teachers and pupils
• Sociologists are interested in a range of possible classroom interaction issues

  • Gender and classroom behaviour
  • Teacher expectations and labelling
  • Speech codes in the classroom
  • Pupil subcultures
  • Teacher and pupil racism
  • The hidden curriculum
• Structured observation


  Highly structured methods using pre-categorised observational schedules
• Structured observational schedules


  • Flanders system of interaction analysis categories (FIAC)
• Flanders system of interaction analysis categories (FIAC)

  Observer uses a standard chart to record interactions at three-second intervals, placing each observation in one of ten pre-defined behaviour categories
• Flanders (1970) found that in the typical American classroom, 68 per cent of the time is taken up by teacher talk, 20 per cent by pupil talk and 12 per cent lost in silence or confusion
• Structured observational techniques

  • They are quicker, cheaper and require less training than less structured methods
  • They are likely to be easily replicated
• Structured observational techniques generate quantitative data, which makes the findings easy to compare with those of other studies
• Unstructured observation


  • Interpretivists favour the use of less structured, more flexible qualitative observational methods
  • They allow researchers to gain access to the meanings that teachers and pupils attach to situations by immersing themselves in those situations
• Sociologists use unstructured observational methods more often than structured ones
• Classroom observation can be structured or unstructured
• Practical issues with observing education

  • Education settings are complex places and more time-consuming to observe than many other settings
  • It may be easier to gain permission to observe lessons than to interview pupils and teachers
  • Personal characteristics of the observer can affect the process of observation
  • Observation is limited by the restrictions of the school timetable, holidays, control over access, health and safety legislation and so on
  • Observers may find it difficult to find the privacy needed to record observations
• Ethical issues relating to the observation of young people usually mean that a covert approach to studying pupils is not appropriate
• Validity of observation


  • For interpretivists, the main strength is its validity - it gives an authentic understanding of the world-views of social actors
  • The power difference between young people and adults is a major barrier to uncovering the real attitudes and behaviour of pupils
  • Teachers may be quite skilled at disguising their feelings and altering their behaviour when being observed
  • The language of the pupil may be very different from that of the researcher, making it difficult to be certain of understanding pupils' meanings
• Hawthorne Effect


  The presence of the researcher influences the behaviour of those being observed
• It is very difficult to carry out covert observation of educational settings, especially classrooms
• Representativeness of observational studies

  • The scale of the education system is vast, but most observational studies focus on a small number of pupils in just a single school
  • The limited scale of the typical observation study combined with the sheer size of the education system mean that observing school interaction is unlikely to produce representative data
• Reliability of participant observation studies

  • Data recording is often unsystematic and hard to replicate
  • The personal characteristics of different observers may evoke differing responses
• Longitudinal studies have advantages and disadvantages compared to one-off observational studies