Approaches to Educational Research

Action Research Action Research is essentially practical, its problem-solving nature makes this approach attractive/appealing to practitioner-researchers who have identified a problem during the course of their work and see the merit of investigating it, and if possible, of improving practice. Case Study The Case Study Approach gives an opportunity for one aspect of a problem to be studied in some depth within a limited time scale. The great strength of the case study method is that it allows the researcher to concentrate on a specific instance or situation and to identify, or attempt to identify, the various interactive processes at work. These processes may remain hidden in a large scale survey. The Ethnographic Style The Ethnographic style of field work research was developed originally by anthropologists who wished to study a society or some aspect of a society, culture or group in depth. They developed an approach which depended heavily on observation and, in some cases, complete or partial integration into the society being studied. This form of participant observation enabled the researchers, as far as was possible, to share the same experiences as the subjects, to understand better why they acted in the way they did and to see things as those involved see things (understanding the subjects perception). The Survey The aim of the Survey is to obtain information which can be analyzed and results generalized. The Experimental Style It deals with experiments where phenomena can be measured. For example, experiments have been set up to measure the effects of using fluoridated toothpaste on dental cavities/caries by establishing a control group (who did not use the toothpaste) and an experimental group which did. In such experiments, the two groups matched for age, gender, social class and so on were given a pre-test dental examination and instructions about which toothpaste to use. After a year, both groups were given the post-test dental examination and conclusions were then drawn about the effectiveness, or otherwise, of the fluoridated toothpaste. Activity: Which method of data collection is it? Can provide measures of many characteristics of people => Test Provides direct information about behavior of the individuals and groups => Observation Provides opportunity to explore topics in depth => Interview Can be expensive => Test