Topic 8 - Methods in Context

• Using experiments to study education


  • Application in the classroom
  • Reliability
  • Ethical problems
  • Limited application
  • Controlling all the variables
• Using questionnaires to study education


  • Practical issues
  • Sampling frames
  • Response rate
  • Researching pupils
  • Operationalising concepts
  • Samples
  • Validity
• Using structured interviews to study education


  • Response rate
  • Reliability
  • Validity
  • Question design
  • Ethical issues
  • Power and status differences
• Using unstructured interviews to study education


  • Power and status inequality
  • Practical issues
  • Validity
  • Reliability
  • Social desirability
  • Interviewer training
• Using structured observation to study education


  • Practical issues
  • Reliability
  • Validity
  • Observer presence
• Using participant observation to study education


  • Validity
  • Practical issues
  • Ethical issues
  • The Hawthorne effect
  • Representativeness
• Using official statistics to study education


  • Practical issues
  • Representativeness
  • Reliability
  • Validity
• Using documents to study education


  • Practical issues
  • Ethical issues
  • Reliability
  • Credibility
  • Representativeness
  • Validity
• Sociologists sometimes use field experiments to study aspects of the classroom life such as teacher expectations and pupils' self-concepts
• The classroom has clear boundaries in terms of both space and time
• Several researchers have also used laboratory experiments to investigate teacher expectations
• The original 'Pygmalion in the Classroom' study has been repeated hundreds of times
• Laboratory experiments are rarely used in educational research due to ethical issues with carrying out experiments on young people
• Experiments are small-scale and can usually only examine a single aspect of behaviour
• It is impossible to identify, let alone control, all the variables that might exert an influence on teachers' expectations in schools
• Questionnaires are very useful for gathering large quantities of basic information quickly and cheaply from large numbers of pupils, teachers or educational establishments
• Schools keep lists of pupils and staff that can provide accurate sampling frames
• Response rates for questionnaires conducted in schools can be higher than in other areas
• Children generally have a shorter attention span than adults and so a short questionnaire can be more effective than lengthy interviews
• Turning abstract ideas into a measurable form is particularly difficult when researching pupils
• Schools may not keep lists that reflect the researcher's interests, e.g. ethnicity
• The life experiences of children (especially primary-age children) are narrower, so they may not actually know the answers to questions
• Structured interviews are less disruptive to schools' activities, so researchers are more likely to receive official support
• Structured interviews are easy to replicate, allowing large-scale patterns in educational behaviour to be identified
• As young people tend to have better verbal than literacy skills, interviews may be more successful than written questionnaires
• The formal nature of structured interviews means pupils are unlikely to feel at ease and therefore may be less forthcoming
• It is more difficult to create questions for use with young people because their linguistic and intellectual skills are not fully developed
• Parental permission may be required to interview children, depending on the sensitivity of the research topic
• Pupils and teachers are not equal in power and status, and this affects their behaviour
• Unstructured interviews may overcome barriers of power and status inequality and encourage interviewees to open up and respond more fully
• Younger pupils have a shorter attention span, so they may find long unstructured interviews too demanding
• The difficulties in communicating with young people mean that unstructured interviews may be suitable, because the interviewer can clear up misunderstandings
• Children may have more difficulty in keeping to the point and may present contradictory or irrelevant responses to questions
• Different interviewers may obtain very different results in unstructured interviews, reducing the reliability of their findings
• Pupils are accustomed to adults 'knowing better' and so may defer to them in interviews
• Teachers may seek to protect their professional self-image and so are likely to represent themselves in the most positive light
• Unstructured interviewing of young people requires more training than interviewing adults
• The classroom is well suited to structured observation due to its clear boundaries and relatively limited range of behaviours
• Structured observation generates quantitative data, which makes comparison straightforward
• Interpretivists criticise structured observation of classroom interaction for its lack of validity