All 2 entries tagged Education

Current thoughts about Educational Research

Having just completed the first year of the Ph.D. I have had a fair amount of time to think about what Educational Research is really all about and what Educational research actually means. You can read through a dozen (and more!) textbooks on the subject and you’ll be greeted with an assortment of definitions and goals of Educational Research. Read through the vast empirical literature and you’ll find a vast quantity of different areas of teaching and learning explored using a variety of different methods and methodologies, all led by the intentions, aspirations, desires, and even agendas of the researchers.

To define Educational Research after the first year of the Ph.D. is not quite easy and any attempts on my part will obviously be driven by my own interests and research passions, but in any case currently I view Educational Research as a set of Psychological, Sociological, Anthropological, and Philosophical methods and theories that are used to explore the relationship between Learners, their Psyche, and the applications and approaches that they use for their learning with the aim of better understanding learning processes within a variety of learning environments. At primary and secondary school, and probably also at College level, this can be expanded to include the teacher or tutor and their teaching or tutoring processes.

The more I explore Educational Research the more expansive the field is realised and that it’s a continuously growing field of research and practice; however, I must keep focus of my own research interests and therefore explore Educational Research within the context of my own areas of interests. Even then, I’m only just scratching the surface here as not only are there many methods and approaches to Educational Research, but near enough limitless debates and discussions about using these methods and approaches to explore constructs of a particular research area, and more contributions to these discussions and debates can occur as well as ways in which methods and approaches can be used for different purposes.

In what way should Educational Research be performed? There shall never be a general agreement or consensus as to the most ideal way that Educational Research should be carried out because near enough every researcher carries a set of assumptions regarding the way that knowledge of reality can be or should be obtained, which impacts on their preferred research orientation therefore it really depends on their Ontological and Epistemological assumptions of reality. For me personally, I do not view Educational Research as a Scientific endeavour; I view it as a Social Scientific endeavour, because I believe that to investigate all aspects of Education using a Scientific method would be too restrictive and would give too narrow a focus when analysing data and dealing with the research subjects in general. Quantitative data and methods dominate Scientific research, but I do not believe that it should dominate Educational Research because teaching and learning and the ways to make this more effective cannot be expressed in just quantitative data alone: there is a need for qualitative approaches and data as well. Some people perceive Science and the Scientific Methods as the be all in answering everything and whilst I respect that, I don’t agree with the view that it can answer everything and this is something that I will be expressing more in my thesis.

Like I said, I’m only just scratching the surface here and so far along my Ph.D. journey. I have chosen my methods, general approach, and methodology and shall be developing arguments that support their selection and use within my research. Will my methodology and methods change? Not likely: I’m settled on these now; I always have been, but needed to read more to understand the constructs that needs to be explored and these I am also beginning to settle upon.

With that, and because there are so many definitions and approaches to Educational Research, the best advice I can give any person doing a Ph.D. in Education is to really explore the methodological literature and select the method or methods that best answer the questions that you have formed from the problems that you have identified.

There is no right or wrong answer: just know what you are going to do, what methods you are going to use, and develop arguments that support your selection.

Happy research!

Alex Darracott : 01 Sep 2015 14:17 |  Tags: Education Epistemology Ontology Research |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Thoughts on the new research into impact of class size on the teacher

The new research into the impact of class size on the teacher is an interesting piece of research. Though my research is in the adult education, post graduate sector at the moment, I do have an interest in the role of the teacher and the impact that a teacher can have on children in the classroom.

When I think about the teacher in a classroom, I have a host of questions such as: what is the role of a teacher? In what way can a teacher disseminate information to a whole classroom? What methods do they use? Do they prefer a method over another method? Do they differentiate between different styles of learning and levels of abilities? Do they believe in a macro learning environment only, or micro learning environments within a macro environment? In what way do they include those perceived to have learning abilities outside “the box”? Should learning be placed within a box anyway? What implications do all these considerations of methods, inclusions, abilities, and environments have on the teacher?

Obviously, when it comes to adult education particularly post graduate education these questions are not really that important because learners are meant to be more independent. That’s not to say, however, that children are not able to be independent learners as learning systems in other countries have shown, but that’s another topic. At Secondary and especially at Primary levels, the idea is that children are not exactly independent in their learning. Therefore, as can be understood, this is a big responsibility placed on the teacher. The politicisation of the UK education system in terms of the development of the national curriculum, and Governments’ attempts at telling teachers the way to do the jobs they are already qualified for, has simply increased the pressure on them over the years.

So then, the study! It is an international investigation into the impact of class size on the effectiveness of a teacher. So there are already a couple of variables: class size, and teacher effectiveness. Class size is somewhat predictable: about thirty to a class, but teacher effectiveness is a bit more difficult because effectiveness is one of those abstract terms that are difficult to define, and different researchers have different ideas as to its meaning. The study might also mention student achievement: in what way should this be measured? Most research in Education points to this variable being measured through grades, which is a quantitative evaluation. I would like there to be more qualitative evaluations and definitions of achievement, but admittedly this would be more time consuming and complex to carry out although a more realistic perspective of achievement might be obtained.

Professor Peter Blatchford, the study’s director, has the belief that previous research that uses student achievement as a variable did not take class size variable into account, and I tend to agree with him because in research I have come across there has not been a significant analysis of class size and their impact on class or group based learning.

I shall be watching the progress of this research. Whilst it is not directly related or perhaps even relevant to my Ph.D research, it is an interesting piece of research that shall provide new knowledge about the role of teachers within varying classroom sizes, and in what way they manage environments of different sizes.

More information on the research can he found here: https://news.tes.co.uk/b/news/2015/02/20/international-study-to-look-at-effect-of-class-size-on-teachers.aspx

Alex Darracott : 24 Feb 2015 15:52 |  Tags: Children Education |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem