Conducting Educational Research
Caroll
Caroll
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CHAPTER 1<br />
as part of your daily professional responsibilities in ways that provide defendable<br />
information about the choices you make—you can be an educational researcher.<br />
Let’s start by learning some background about educational research processes.<br />
8<br />
SCHOOLS OF RESEARCH<br />
There are basically two main types of research paradigms: quantitative and<br />
qualitative. As the names imply, quantitative research methods have to do with<br />
quantities—numbers. Data might be pre and post test scores, ratings on a survey,<br />
amount of time spent doing homework or viewing television or playing computer<br />
and video games. They tend to answer the question “what.” They generally measure<br />
characteristics of groups. Qualitative research is more interested in the “whys” and<br />
“hows” of the what, often including beliefs and opinions of individuals. Data sources<br />
might be interview transcripts, reflective writings, photographs, and observations. It<br />
is more descriptive in nature. Qualitative and quantitative camps are opposite ends of<br />
a research continuum, with a variety of mixtures of the two main ideologies in between.<br />
Here are some additional research questions to get a better sense of these<br />
schools of research before delving more deeply into them:<br />
1. Is the amount of time spent viewing television related to student achievement?<br />
2. Does the new mathematics curriculum improve students’ state test scores?<br />
3. Why do students possess the attitudes they do about studying history?<br />
4. What do teachers feel are the pros and cons of looping in the early elementary<br />
grades?<br />
5. How do students feel about studying history?<br />
Look at those five questions. Which of the above questions can be answered by<br />
some kind of measurement? (Do look first before continuing with the reading!!)<br />
Did you decide questions one and two would lend themselves to gathering<br />
numbers? For the first question, we could have measurements of time and test (or<br />
other achievement) data. The second question could be answered by examining<br />
student scores taught using the old and new curricula (with some caveats). For<br />
questions three and four, however, there isn’t an easy number that could be obtained.<br />
Students would probably have to be asked specifically why they felt the way they do<br />
toward studying history—was it peer influence, family influence, boring content,<br />
riveting content, the way it is taught? Likewise, to get teachers’ opinions of looping,<br />
the easiest way would be to ask them to list or state what they perceive to be the pros<br />
and cons of the practice. So the first two would most likely be quantitative studies<br />
while the second two would employ qualitative methods.<br />
What about the fifth question? The answer is—it depends. How do you want to<br />
go about collecting the data? An attitude questionnaire, with a Likert-type scale<br />
(strongly disagree to strongly agree) could produce a quantified idea of students’<br />
attitudes toward the subject and lead to a quantitative study. An open-ended<br />
questionnaire (where students write in responses to questions) or a conversational<br />
interview with students could produce qualitative information about the students’<br />
attitudes and lead to a qualitative study. So like most things in life, in educational<br />
research it is not always obvious how to proceed.