Types of Educational Research

Educational Research  Systematic and sustained inquiry, planned and self-critical, which is subjected to public criticism. Stenhouse 1981  Seeking through methodical processes to add to one’s body of knowledge and, hopefully, to that of others, by the discovery of non-trivial facts and insights. Howard and Sharp  Research is a combination of both experience and reasoning and must be regarded as the most successful approach to the discovery of truth. Cohen and Manion, Truth? Whose truth?

Different Perspectives  Different researchers from different traditions don’t agree over the nature of truth;  Some researchers feel that ‘truth’ is a fixed quality, out there, waiting to be discovered. These are often researchers from sciences and engineering who explore the natural world – their research sets out to find ‘the answer’. These kind of researchers are known as positivist researchers.  Other researchers feel that ‘truth’ is a much more slippery concept, and that my interpretation of what is true may be different from yours, and that there may be multiple truths in relation to any given line of enquiry. These researchers are often from sociology, philosophy, politics and the humanities and they are known as interpretivist researchers.  Educational research crosses these boundaries so you will find both positivist and interpretivist research when you read educational research: for example, educational psychologists are often positivist, whilst sociological research is usually interpretivist. 3

Different Perspectives An Example: You are investigating whether teaching children strategies for self-monitoring their reading comprehension. As a positivist researcher, you would expect there to be a Yes/No answer to this and would design a study to prove or disprove it. As an interpretivist researcher, you would expect there to be a range of responses to the teaching of strategies and a range of factors influencing their efficacy, so you would not expect a Yes/No answer. You would design a study intended to tease out this complexity. 4

Researching Innovations  As you do your research for Innovation Schools, just reflect on your own thinking in relation to ‘truth’ and whether you are leaning towards positivism or interpretivism.  An innovation, by definition, is a novel thing and there will be many factors that influence its success: how well is it designed? How carefully is it implemented? What pedagogical or subject knowledge do teachers need to implement it? How long does it need to achieve sustained improvement? Does it work better for some groups of children? Etc  So our innovation research needs to be interpretivist to capture the nuances of this complexity and to avoid over-simplified solutions.  Educational research is dominated by the quick-fix: think about brain gym; VAK; single sex classes to close the gender gap… none are solutions, but they are based on a positivist way of thinking which misses the complexity of real classrooms. 5

Generalisation  Generalisability refers to the extent to which research findings can be applied to settings other than that in which they were originally tested;  In other words, are the findings applicable only to your classes with you teaching them, or equally applicable to all classes and teachers in your school, or to all schools?  Generalisability is achieved through attention to the validity and reliability of the research: these are themselves positivist terms and interpretivist researchers will talk about trustworthiness, confirmability and dependability.  Small-scale studies are unlike to be generalisable because the sampling is too small and often the study is very context-bound;  But this does not mean other professionals cannot learn from them: rich particularity can help teachers think about how your research aligns with their own professional practice, and may challenge them to re-think their own practice.  If you want a more detailed understanding of these issues, read the document on Generalisation. 6

Types of Research Positivism and interpretivism are ways of thinking about research; there are lots of different ways to ‘do’ research, for example:  Ethnographic studies: the researcher gets really close to those being researched, often by living or working with them over a sustained period of time;  Cohort/longitudinal studies: large studies following particular groups of people over a sustained period of time;  Quasi-experimental studies: statistical studies which test out a hypothesis with measures to establish its truth and aim to be generalisable;  Mixed method studies: studies which use a mix of research methods and usually involve both statistical and qualitative data;  Case studies: a detailed investigation, usually qualitative, of a particular case or cases – its goal is detailed particularity, not generalisation;  Action research: research which is close to professional practice and involves cycles of action and reflection. 7

Innovation Research  The research for the Innovation Schools is very much small scale and exploratory: the kind of research which as value to professional reflection and practice, but which might also lead to further larger studies;  It is important research, supporting the goal of self-improving schools;  In terms of the type of research, it is: o Interpretivist: because you are investigating a situation which is complex and where there are multiple versions of the truth, which it is important to tease out; o Non-generalisable: because it is small-scale and context bound, but particularity and rich understanding of how the innovation works is of great importance; o Likely to be mixed methods, using both qualitative and statistical impact data. It may draw on case study methods, or quasi-experimental methods. For more detail about the research in the Innovation Schools project, look at the Powerpoint on Researching Innovation. 8