Conducting Educational Research

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