Saturday Review

Educational Research Sunday, January 11, 2009 Introduction to Educational Research EDF 689

Review Course requirements Timeline

Review-Educational Research – The application of a scientific and disciplined inquiry approach to the study of educational problems

Goal – To explain or help understand educational issues, questions, or problems

Six ways we can know something – – – – –

Tradition Expert opinion Personal experience Intuition Logic Inductive Deductive

– Research

Educational Research Research – Systematically studying problems using a scientific and disciplined inquiry approach that provides detailed descriptions of procedures

Scientific and Disciplined Inquiry Four general steps – Identify a topic; an issue or problem that can be answered through collection an analysis. – Collect data; describe and execute procedures – Analyze data; what did you find – Report the results and implications; this is what I found and this is why it matters.

Flexibility of these steps to incorporate a range of purposes and methods

Specific Approaches to Research Lack of a single, appropriate method to study education Family of research methods – Quantitative – Qualitative

Glesne and Peshkin (1994) suggest that Quantitative researchers prefer the measurable Qualitative researchers prefer, or at least enjoy, the ambiguous

Einstein: Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. Albert Einstein, (attributed)

Quantitative Research Designs make meaning with numbers Purposes – Describe current conditions – Investigate relationships – Study causes and effects

Four major designs – – – –

Descriptive/survey Correlational Causal comparative Experimental

Quantitative Designs Descriptive/survey (continued) – Characteristics Use of tests, questionnaires, and surveys

Correlational design (what relationship exists?) – Purpose – to ascertain the extent to which two or more variables are statistically related

Quantitative Designs Causal-comparative – Purpose – to explore relationships among variables that cannot be actively manipulated or controlled by the researcher

Quantitative Designs Experimental – Purpose – to establish cause and effect relationships between variables

Qualitative Designs Action research – Purposes To provide a solution to an educator’s problem in their own school or organization To improve practice or understand issues

Qualitative Designs Historical research – Purpose – to gain insight into past events, issues, of personalities to better understand the current situation

Qualitative Designs Ethnography – Purpose – to obtain an understanding of the shared beliefs and practices of a particular group or culture

Qualitative Designs Grounded theory – Purpose – to derive theory from the analysis of identified patterns, themes, and categories emerging from data