TOPIC 1

RESEARCH IN EDUCATION
 TOPIC OVERVIEW
 Concept of research
 Research ethics
 Types of research
– Basic research
– Applied research
– Action research
– Evaluative research
 Approaches in research
– The positivist approach (quantitative)
– The interpretative approach (qualitative)
 Research Designs
 DEVELOPMENT IN TEACHING
PROFESSION

 NEW PARADIGM
 GLOBALISATION
 BORDERLESS
 WORLD CLASS EDUCATION
 NEW TEACHING APPROACH/STRATEGIES
 TEACHER AS A RESEARCHER
 CONCEPT OF RESEARCH
 Research is systematic, critical and self-critical
enquiry which aims to contribute to the
advancement of knowledge.
(Bassey, 1995)

 Research is systematic inquiry that is intended

to (i) extend knowledge or (ii) solve problem
Research that intended to extend knowledge is
called ‘basic research’. Research to solve
problem ‘applied research’ or ‘action research’
(Weber, 1993)
 A DEFINITION OF RESEARCH

 Enquiry: An enquiry conducted for some

clearly defined purpose.
 Systematic: There is a rationale to
collection and analysis of data.
 Critical: The data is subjected to scrutiny
by the researcher in attempts to ensure
accuracy.
 A DEFINITION OF RESEARCH

 Self-critical: Researchers are expected to be

self-critical of the decisions made by themselves
in pursuit of the enquiry.
 The advancement of knowledge: The
enquiry should aim to increase knowledge.
 Knowledge: Knowledge that something is the
case and knowledge how to do something: it
includes theory-in-the-literature and personal
theory of individuals which has not been
articulated in writing
 EXAMPLES OF EDUCATIONAL
CONCERNS
 A Mathematics lecturer wonders if discussions
are more effective than lectures in motivating
students to learn calculus
 A PE teacher wonders if ability in one sports
correlates with ability in other sports
 A Headmaster wants to improve the morale of
his staff
 A counselor wants to help a student to improve
her study habits
 WHAT IS RESEARCH?
 A process of steps used to collect and
analyze information to increase our
understanding of a topic or issue
 At a general level, research consists of
3 steps:
 Pose a question
 Collect data to answer the question
 Present an answer to the question
 EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
 Educational research may include any disciplined
enquiry which serves educational judgment and
decisions or which is conducted in educational
settings such as nursery, primary, secondary,
further, higher, continuing and adult education;
industrial, commercial and professional training
and the local and national systems of education.

ESRC Postgraduate Training Guidelines (1991).

Economic and Social Research Council, UK.
 WHAT IS EDUCATIONAL
RESEARCH?

 It is a scientific method that incorporates

observation and data
 The data are systematically collected and
analyzed in order to obtain understanding
of phenomena based on controlled
observation and analysis.
 A fundamentally problem-solving activity
which addresses a problem, tests
hypothesis or explains phenomena
 TEN CHARACTERISTICS OF
EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
1. Attempts to solve a problem
2. Gathers new data from primary sources
or uses existing data for new purpose
3. Based upon observable experience or
empirical evidence
 TEN CHARACTERISTRICS OF
EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
4. Demand accurate observation and
description
5. Employs careful designed procedures
and rigorous analysis
6. Emphasizes on the development of
generalizations, principles or theories
7. Requires expertise –competence in
methodology, technical skill in collecting
and analyzing data
 TEN CHARACTERISTICS OF
EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
8. Attempts to find unbiased solution to the
problem and takes great pain to
validates the procedures employed
9. Refines problem or questions as research
progress
10. Carefully recorded and reported to other
persons interested in the problems
 EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH:
WHY?
 Research adds to our knowledge
 Research improves practice
 Research informs policy debates
 ADDITION TO KNOWLEDGE
 Educators undertake research to contribute to
existing information about issues
 Through research we develop results that help
to answer questions
 As we accumulate these results, we gain a
deeper understanding of the problem
 A study that has not been conducted fill a void
in existing knowledge
 Provide additional results to confirm and
disconfirm results of prior studies
 IMPROVES PRACTICE
 Add to the literature about practices that
work or advance better practices
 Suggest improvement for practice so that
educators become more effective
 Offers new ideas about practices that have
been tried in other settings or situations
 Evaluate T&L approaches
 Build connections between similar ideas in
different locations via conferences
 INFORMS POLICY DEBATE
 Creates conversations about important issues
when policy makers debate educational topics
 Offers results that can help them weigh various
perspectives
 Policy makers are informed about current
debates and stances taken by other public
officials
 Research need to have clear results,
summarized in a concise fashion and include
data-based evidence
 RESEARCH ETHICS
 Ethics refers to questions of right and wrong
 Committee on Scientific and Professional Ethics
of the American Psychological Association (APA)
published a list of ethical principles for the
conduct of research with human subjects
 Protecting participants from harm
 Ensuring confidentiality of research data
 Deception of subjects / respondents
PROTECTING PARTICIPANTS FROM
HARM
 Ensure participants are protected from physical
or psychological harm, discomfort or danger that
may arise due to research procedures
 Obtain consent if they may be exposed to any
risk
 Formal consent by participants or their
guardians
 CONFIDENTIALITY OF RESEARCH
DATA
 Ensure that no one else has access to the data
 Names of subjects should be removed from all data
collection forms
 Assigning a number or letter to each form
 Subjects can be asked to furnish information
anonymously
 Names of individual subjects should never be used in
any publications that describe the research
 Participants have the right to withdraw from the study or
request that data collected about them not be used
 DECEPTION OF SUBJECTS
 Many studies cannot be carried out unless
some deception of subjects takes place
 It is often difficult to find naturalistic
situations in which certain behaviors occur
frequently
 Example: reinforcement in a certain way
 May be easier to observe effects of such
reinforcement by employing teacher as
confederate (bersatu/bersekutu/sepakat)
 TYPES OF RESEARCH
 Basic research
 Applied research
 Action research
 Evaluation research
 Basic research
– focus on the discovery of knowledge for
knowledge.
– carrying out in-depth research on the
existing theories in education.
– acquire empirical data that can be used
to develop and evaluate theories.
– less orientation on ways to practical
problem solving
 Applied research

– Bertujuan untuk menyelesaikan masalah

praktis yang dihadapi atau untuk
menguji sesuatu teori untuk menilai
kegunaannya dalam arena pendidikan.
– Dapat memberikan data sama ada
menyokong sesuatu teori, mengubah
suai, atau mengembangkan sesuatu
teori baru.
 Action research

– Related to solving a local situational

problems based on a teacher’s research
findings and is done by the teacher
– Situational (based on certain situation);
participatory (involves practitioners,
students or the system )
– To solve problem in the classroom
 Evaluation research
 Researcher attempts to make
judgements about merit, value, or
worth of educational programmes,
projects, materials and techniques
 APPROACHES IN
EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
 Positivist approach (quantitative)
 Interpretative approach (qualitative)
 POSITIVIST / QUANTITATIVE
APPROACH
 Researcher decides what to study; asks specific,
narrow questions; collects quantifiable data from
participants; analyzes these numbers using
statistics and conducts the inquiry in an
unbiased, objective manner

 This paradigm is based on a number of

principles, including: a belief in an objective
reality, knowledge of which is only gained from
sense data that can be directly experienced and
verified between independent observers.
POSITIVIST / QUANTITATIVE
APPROACH
 Emphasis:
– Collecting and analyzing information in the
form of numbers
– Collecting scores that measure distinct
attributes of individuals and organizations
– Comparing groups or relating factors about
individuals or groups in experiments,
correlational studies, and surveys
 INTERPRETATIVE /
QUALITATIVE APPROACH
 Researcher relies on the views of participants; asks
broad, general questions; collects data consisting largely
of words (or text) from participants; describes and
analyzes these words for themes; and conducts the
inquiry in a subjective, biased manner

 It is characterized by a belief in a socially constructed,

subjectively-based reality, one that is influenced by
culture and history.
 Nonetheless it still retains the ideals of researcher
objectivity, and researcher as passive collector and
expert interpreter of data.
DEFINITION OF QUALITATIVE
RESEARCH
 “QR takes an interpretive, naturalistic
approach its subject matter; qualitative
researchers study things in their natural
settings, attempting to make sense of, or
interpret, phenomena in terms of
meanings that people bring to them”.
(Catherine pope & Nick May, 1995)
 DEFINITION OF QUALITATIVE
RESEARCH
 QR is concerned with developing explanation of
social phenomena. It aims to help us understand
the world in which we live and why things are
the way the are. It is concerned with social
aspects of our world and seeks to answer
questions about:
 Why people behave the way they do?
 How opinion and attitudes are formed
 How people are affected by the events that go on around them
 How and why cultures have developed in the way they have
 What are the differences between social groups?
 INTERPRETATIVE / QUALITATIVE
APPROACH
 Recognition that:
 Researchers need to listen to the views of
participants in our studies
 Researchers need to ask general, open
questions and collect data in places where
people live and work
 Research has a role in advocating for
change and bettering the lives of
individuals
 Research Designs
QUANTITATIVE QUALITATIVE
 Experimental study  Ethnography
 Quasi-experimental  Case study
study  Historical study
 Survey study
 Correlational study
 Experimental Design
 Test whether an educational practice or idea
makes a difference for individuals
 Assess the impact by giving one group one set
of activities (intervention) and withholding the
set from another group
 Intervention study
 Group comparison study
 Quasi-experimental Design
 There are variables that we cannot control subjects’
exposure to, such as their age, race, background,
experience or personal characteristics (quasi-
independent variables)
 Cannot randomly assign subjects to be exposed to a
particular condition
 Instead, subjects are assigned to a condition because
they already qualify for that condition based upon some
inherent characteristics  use intact groups or non-
randomised sample (natural setting)
 Quasi-experiment: Example
 It is hypothesized that 18-year-old females like males of
a certain characteristic more than 22-year-old females
 We cannot select females for the study and make some
of them 18 and others 22
 We create the conditions of 18- and 22-year-olds by
randomly selecting one sample of 18-year-old females
and another sample of 22-year-old females
 Correlational Study
 Focus more on examining the association or relation of
one or more variables within a single group of individuals
 Researcher measures the degree of association or
relation between two or more variables using the
statistical procedure of correlational analysis
 Degree of association indicates whether the two
variables are related or whether one can predict another
 Survey Designs
 Describe trends in a large population of individuals
 Administer a survey or questionnaire to a small group of
people (sample) to identify trends in attitudes, opinions,
behaviors or characteristics of a larger group of people
(population)
 Ethnographic Design
 Examining a group of individuals in the setting where
they live and work, and in developing a portrait of how
they interact
 Describing, analyzing and interpreting a group’s shared
patterns of behavior, beliefs and language that develop
over time
 Provides a detailed picture of the group, drawing on
various sources of information
 Describes the group within its settings, explores themes
or issues that develop over time as the group interacts
 Case Study
 Explores in depth a program, event, activity, process, or
one or more individuals
 Bounded (separated out for research) by time, place and
activity
 Researcher collects detailed information using a variety
of data collection procedures over a sustained period of
time (Stake, 1995; Creswell, 2007)
 Historical Study
 Focuses primarily on the past
 Perusing documents of the period
 Examining relics
 Interviewing individuals who lived during that time
 Reconstruct what happened during that time as
completely as possible
 Systematic collection and evaluation of data to describe,
explain, and thereby understand actions or events that
occurred in the past
 No manipulation or control of variables
 Tutorial 1
 Make a comparison between quantitative and qualitative
approaches.
 Compare the purpose of the various research designs
discussed
 Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the various
research designs discussed
 ISL
– Explore / read other types of educational research
designs other than those discussed (Causal-
comparative, narrative research, grounded theory
design, phenomenology, mixed methods, etc.)