METHODS IN CONTEXT

EXPERIMENTS

QUESTIONNAIRES

LAB EXPERIMENTS [teacher expectations]

  • ETHICAL PROBLEMS:
    • lab experiments that dont involve real pupils have fewer ethical problems than those that do
    • Harvey & satin didn't use real pupils so no child suffered any negative effects
    • Charkin et al however used real pupils and this raised ethical concerned
    • young peoples vulnerability and their more limited ability to understand what's happening means there's greater problems of deception, lack of informed consents & psychological damage
  • this is the main reason lab experiments only play a limited role in educational research
  • NARROW FOCUS:
    • lab experiments usually only emaimine 1 specific aspect of teacher expectations e.g body language
    • this can be useful bccs it allows the researcher to isolate and examine this variable more thouroughly
    • However this means teacher expectations are not seen within the wider process of labelling and the self-fulfilling prophecy
    • e.g CHARKIN ET AL identified the existence positive & negative body language, they didn't examine
    • how it might effect a pupils performance
  • HARVEY & SLATIN: examined whether teachers had preconceived ideas about pupils of differnet social class
    • used a sample of 96 teachers
    • they were shown 18 photos of children from different social backgrounds
    • teachers asked to rate the children based on performance, parental attitudes towards education, aspirations etc
    • they found L/C children were rated less favourably
  • CHARKIN ET AL: - used a sample of 48 uni students who each taught a lesson to a 10 year old boy
    • 1/3 = told boy was highlymotivated & intelligent
    • 1/3 told he was poorly motivate with low IQ
    • 1/3 given no info
    • Charkin found those in high expectancy group made more eye contact & were more encouraging

FIELD EXPERIMENTS [teacher expectations]

  • PRACTICAL PROBLEMS:
    • Schools are large, complex institutions in which many variables may afec teacher expectations
    • e.g their expectations may be influenced by a wide range of variables such as class size, streaming, type of school etc
    • its impossible to identify, let alone control all the variables that might exert an influence on teachers expectations
    • sociologists often interested in the role of large-scale social factors and processes e.g impact of social policies on achievement
    • things like this cant be studies in a small scale lab setting
  • ARTIFICIALITY:
    • The artificiality of lab experiments means that they tell us little about the real world of education
    • e.g Charkin used uni students, not teachers
    • Harbey & Slatin used photos of pupils rather than real ones
    • its unlikely uni students behave in the same way as experienced teachers
  • ROSENTHAN & JACOBSEN's 'pygmalion in the classroom' illustrated the difficulties of using field experiments to study teachers expectations
    • carried out their research in a primary shcool
    • pupils given IQ test and teachers were told this had enabled the researchers to identify the 20% of pupils who were likely to 'spurt'
    • the pupils however were selected at random-the pupils peformance there was no reason to expect their performance would be any different to others unless teacher expectations had an influence
    • 'teachers expectations' therefore identified as the independent variable
    • all teachers re-tested 8 months later & then again after a further year
    • the 20% of students had progressed further
  • ETHICAL RPOBLEMS:
  • field experiments pose major ethical problems
    • potential impact of Rosenthal & Jacobson's experiment on students is substantial
    • e.g whilst the 'spurters' bend the remaining 80% of pupils did not
    • Some may have even been held back educationally because they received less attention and encouragement from teachers
    • children have more rights now than they did in he 1960s and the legal duty of care schools have today means such an experiment is unlikely to be carried out today
    • field experiments best take place when those involved are unaware they're in the experiment
    • yet this requires deception- Rosenthal & Jacobson had to deceive the teachers
  • RELIABILITY:
    • Rosenthal & jocobsons research design was relatively simple & therefore easy to repeat
    • within 5 years the years of the go study, it had been repeated no less than 242 times
    • However given all the many differences between school classes, e.g pupil age teaching styles, its unlikely the go can be replicated exactly
  • OPERATIONALISIMG CONCEPTS:
    • involves turning abstract ideas into a measurable form
    • this can be difficult when creating a questionnaire for pupils
    • this is because their grasp of abstract concepts is less than that of adults
    • therefore its more difficult to turn sociological ideas such as 'cultural capital' into language pupils will understand
    • this may produce answers that are based on the respondents misunderstanding of what the question means
    • alternately there's a danger the sociologist will have to over0-simplifythe questions so much they cease to have any sociological value

ACCESS & RESPONSE RATES

SAMPLING & SAMPLING FRAMES:

  • HOWEVER schools may not keep lists that reflect the researchers interests
  • e.g they may want a representative sample of pupils of particular ethnic origins, but there is no sampling frame available
  • Schools may also deny access to such confidential info

-

  • Distributing questionnaires is fairly easy way to access large numbers of potential respondants
    • However the researcher will first need the schools permission to give them out
  • parents are harder than pupils or teachers to locate and contact, so using the school to distribute questionnaires is an effective way to overcome this difficulty
    • e.g pupils can take questionnaire home for theft parents to complete
  • Younger children are more open to peer pressure and its difficult to preverbal pupils who are completing questionnaires from discussing responses
  • A questionnaire that doesnt involve a researcher being present when its completed may help overcome the problem of status differences between age adult researcher and younger respondent
    • howver a questionnaire has the appearance of a formal document which pupils may find off putting
  • Response rates for questionnaires is often low
  • schools may be reluctant to allow sociologists to distribute them because of disruption to lessons that may be casues, or because of the teachers research topic
    • e.g underage sexual activity
  • However when questionnaires are conducted in schools, response rates may be higher than in other areas
  • this is bcus once the head has given their consent to the research, teachers & pupils may be under pressure to participate
  • similarly the head may authorise time out of lesson so the questionnaire can be completed
  • the higher response rate mat produce more representative data where generalisations can be performed

PRACTICAL ISSUES

  • Questionnaires vert useful for gathering large quantities of basic factual educational info very quick and cheaply
  • RUTTER used questionnaires to collect large qualities of Dara from 12 inner-london secondary schools
  • from this he was able to correlate achievement, attendance and behaviour with work variables such as school size, class size & staff number
  • it would have been difficult to do this with labour-intensive methods e.g interviews or observations
  • HOWEVER data generated by questionnaires is often limited & superficial
    • E.G no explanation was provided between the correlations in RUTTERS study
  • There are problems in using questionnaires to study childern
  • written questionnaires involve participants being able to read and understand the questions
  • therefore there unsuitable for those who cant read e.g children, those with learning difficulties
  • Children have shorter attention span than adults, so questionnaires need to be relitevly tried to be completed
  • this limits the amount of info that can be gathered
  • childrens life experiences are narrower & recall differently than adult this means pupils may not actually 'know the answers'

ANONYMITY & DETACHMENT

  • Schools have very active informal communicational channels so word of the researchers presence may rapidly spread
  • if the questionnaires delivered class by classics questions may become known throughout the school long before all pupils or teachers have been given it
  • this may affect the responses given by later participants and so recuse validity
  • Teachers are well-educated professionals who will have experience of completing questionnares
  • they may be able to analyse patterns of questioning and recognise the researchers intentions
  • they may then adjust their answers accordingly, resulting in invalid data
  • teachers= busy professionals so may not have time to complete if questionnaire is lengthy
  • Questionnaires can be useful when researching sensitive educational issues e.g bullying, where their anonymity may overcome pupils embarrassment or fear of retribution from bullies
  • As a result response rates may be higher
  • pupils may be more likely to reveal details of their experience of being bullied
  • this will provide more valid data than a face-to-face interview would
  • howver much depends on whether pupils are reassured their anonymity will be safeguarded
  • yet this reassurance may be difficult to achieve as questionnaires is a detached method , where there is no/little contact with the researcher
  • Interpretivist sociologists emphasise the importance of developing RAPPORT with research participants so they reject questionnaires as a means of researching pupils
  • because of the lack of contact with participants makes rapport hard to establish, young people may be less likely to give full and honest responeses
  • compared with face-to-face forms of research e.g interview, its easy to make questionnaires anonymous
  • as a result teachers may feel able to set aside concerns about their careers so they give more honest answers to sensitive questions about issues such as their attitudes to pupils

INTERVIEWS

PRACTICAL ISSUES

  • young peoples linguistic & inetellectual skills are less develped than those of adults and this may pose practical; problems for interviewers
  • young interviewees may:
    • be less articulate & more reluctant to talk
    • not understand long, complex questions
    • have limited vocabulary, use slang
    • have shorter attention span, poorer memory
  • these factors may lead to a misunderstanding and incorrect /incomplete answers, undermining the validity or data obtained
  • such communication difficulties also mean unstructured interviews may be more suitable since they allow interviewer to clear up misunderstandings by re-wording questions
  • However children may also have more difficulty keeping to the point , especially in unstructured interviews
  • POWBEY & WATTS note young children tend to be more literal-minded and pay attention to unexpected details in questions , and may use different logic to adult interviewers
  • training therefore needs to be more through fo someone interviewing children which adds to the cost of the research
    • However given that young people tend to have better verbal than literacy skills so interviewers may be more successful than written questionnaires to get valid answers
  • another practical problem is that schools have active informal communication channels
  • this means the content of the interview , possibly an inaccurate account, may get around to pupils & teahcers
  • this may later influence their responses , reducing validity
  • the location of the interview can also be problamatic
  • if they're conducted on school premises, it will affect how comfortable the pupil or parent will feel
  • the school & classroom represents higher authority , which some may find off-putting
  • teachers may be put off by the fear of colleagues or head teacher overhearing , especially if the questions are of a sensitive nature
  • unstructured interviews can take hours or more to conduct
  • with the time constraints most teachers work under, interviews with them would have to take place outside school hurs
  • if the interviews are conducted during school time there are likely to be interruptions and other distractions
  • parents aslo have busy work & parenting schedules and may only cooperate in lengthy interviews if they can see some benefit to their children education
  • For children mainly, there is the ethical issue that they may be unsettled by strange situations such as an interview
    • researchers will need to take care that the interview doesnt distress them
  • RELIABILITY & VALIDITY:
    • Structured interviews produce more reliable data because each is conducted in precisely the same way , with the same questions, in the same order, with the same tone
    • however structured interviews may not produce valid data since young people are unlikely to respond to such a formal style (makes interviewer appear too much like a teacher)
    • BENTLEY Began each interview by joking & fooling around , maintaining a relaxed atmosphere y smiling & making eye contact
    • however this personal interviewing style cannot easily be standardised
  • ACCESS & RESPONSE RATE:
    • Schools are hierarchal institutions which can cause problems seeking to interview teachers or pupils
    • POWNEY & WATTS: the lower down in the hierarchy the interviewee is, the more approvals that have to be obtained
      • e.g pupils have to have consent from parents & teachers
        • Schools may be reluctant to conduct interviews during lesson time because of the disruption it causes, or due to sensitive topic
        • may be difficulty conducting interviews after school hours, whether on School premises or in pupils homes
        • parental permission may be requires to interview children (the likelihood of this being granted varies according to research subject)
        • however if research can obtain official support for the study, the hierarchal nature of the school may work in their favour e.g heads can instruct teachers to release pupils from class for interviews (increasing response rate)

TEACHER IN DISGUISE [BELL]

  • Power & status inequalities can affect the outcome of interviews
  • if interviewees have less power than the interviewer they may see it as being in their own interests to lie, exaggerate, conceal info, or seek to please when answering questions
  • they may also be less sef-confident and their responses less articulate
  • this will reuduce the validity of the data
  • There are power inequalities between young people & adults
  • interviewers are usually adults and children may seethe as authority figures
  • especially if done on school premises
  • BELL: student may see the interviewer a a 'teacher in disguise'
  • this may effect the validity of the data
  • e.g pupils may seek to win the 'teachers' approval by giving untrue, socially acceptable answers that show them in a favourable light (e.g how much Tim they spend on hw)
  • pupils are accustomed to adults 'knowing better' and so may defer to them in interviews
    • e.g children more likely than adults to change their original answer when the question is repeated because they think it must have been wrong
  • There may be similar inequalities when interviewing certain parents
  • w/c parents may perceive the interviewer as having a higher status than them and may feel the questions are patronising or intrusive
  • by contrast when interviewing m/c teachers, power and status inequalities are likely to be less pronounced

IMPROVING VALIDITY: - GREENE & HOGAN

  • use open ended questions
  • dont interrupt children's answwers
  • recognise that holder new more suggestible so its important to avoid asking leading questions
  • avoid repeating questions as it makes them thing they ere wrong

GROUP INTERVIEWS WITH PUPILS

  • pupils are strongly influenced by peer pressure & this may reduce validity or data gathered
  • more likley in a group interview for individuals to conform to peer expectations than express their true thoughts
  • free flowing nature of group interviews makes it impossible to standardised the questions
  • this will reduce reliability of the method and comparability of the findings
  • GREENE & HOGAN argue that group interviews are suitable for use with pupils
  • they create a safe peer environment and they reproduce the small group setting that young people are familiar with in classroom work
  • group interviews can also reveal interactions between pupils
  • e.g how 'lads' reinforce each others position to authority