Chapter 1: Introduction to Research Methods in

Education
DEFINITION OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
Educational research has been designed to investigate practices in order to
fundamentally improve the way we learn, know and describe our world
(Cohen, Manion & Morrison 2007). Merriam (1988: 6) points out:
Every discipline relies on research in order to expand its knowledge base as it
provides an architectural blueprint that helps its participants plan, assemble and
organize their discoveries and results in a systematic, understandable and
productive way.
AIM OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH:

Provide teachers, clinicians, managers and learners with systematically

obtained information that helps to improve the quality of the learning
process.

Difference between doing educational research and other healthcare research

is that often the immediate effects of the intervention are seen and
assessed on the educators or their students, rather than on the
processes and outcomes of patients.
We should think about how to measure the effects of an education intervention
on the student.
Parsell and Bligh (1999) suggest a number of reasons that stimulate people
to write educational (academic) research.
Intrinsic reasons

Extrinsic reasons

To share knowledge

Academic pressures

For career advancement

To demonstrate a commitment to best

pedagogy

To increase status

To improve practice

For collegial approval

To reflect advances in educational

technology

For pleasure

To monitor or evaluate changes in

educational delivery

To meet a challenge

Multi-professional team-based
practice (professional learning
community PLC)

To improve the learning environment

for teacher and students

Obligations

AIMS AND PURPOSES OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

The educational research available to teacher practitioners can be constructed
on the basis of distinction between:

Third person,
Second person, and
First person research.

Third Person Research

Addresses persons as them, or it (Kemmis 1991).
The researcher speaks about these people, describes their actions and
activities from what they believe is an objective point of view.
Called POSITIVISM where the people in the study are treated as
objects and the researcher attempts to establish distinct
relationship between cause and effect (Cohen et al., 2007).
Expert researchers test their theories on practitioners and describe
findings from outside the event.
Spectator research is where the expert comes in from outside to test,
manipulate the environment and observe particular relationships between
phenomena (McNiff & Whitehead 2006).
SECOND PERSON/QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
More interested in explanations, understanding meanings or
exploring feelings and will use structured methods referred to as
hermeneutic (interpretation) and reject objectivist notions of
universal truth (positivism) (Cohen et al., 2007; Knight 2002).
Recognize that subjects inherent values, cultural beliefs need to be
explored through their particular cultural lens in order to ascertain a
clear context for the research and describe any findings (Stake & Trumbull
2010).
Can be characterized as going native as the researcher attempts to
understand, observe and describe the cultural field the research
group interacts within in the everyday language and cultural context of
the group under investigation.

THE INHERENT STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF EACH APPROACH is

summarized by Burke and Onwuegbuzie (2004)

Table 1: Educational Research Paradigms

Research Type
Strength
Weakness
3rd Person
Positivist Quantitative
Test and validates
The researchers
how phenomena
categories may not
occur and discovers
reflect local
natural laws.
understanding,
Can generalize
traditions,
knowledge.
findings with
Knowledge
sufficient sampling.
produced may be
Findings are
too abstract for
reproducible under
direct application.
similar research
Outsider research
conditions.
can lead to massive
Control of variable
projection on the
shows cause and
researchers behalf.
effect relationships.
That is, the
Provides numerical
researcher sees
data.
only what they want
Research may have
to see.
credibility with
people in power,
government and
people who fund
research.
Useful for studying
large numbers of
people.
2nd Person Qualitative
Research

Data is in the
participants own
categories of
meaning, words and
culture.
Useful for describing
complex phenomena
in rich detail.
Inductively
generates theory
from the ground up.
Data is mined in the

Produces
knowledge that is
specific and
valuable to one
people or area.
It is difficult to
make quantitative
predictions from
data.
Data analysis is
time consuming
praxis.

1st Person
Action Research

field or natural
setting.
Responsive to local
situations, conditions
and stakeholders
needs.
Research is flexible
can change during
the study.

Inductively
generates theory
from the ground up.
Builds theory in real
world practice.
Data is mined in the
field or natural
setting.
Responsive to local
situations, conditions
and stakeholders
needs.
Insider research,
change comes from
local knowledge
within not from
outside expertise.
Research is flexible
and evolves with the
study in an inductive
fashion.
Research designed
to emancipate,
cause improvement
and social action.
Generates critical
thinking and
reflection skills that
are readily
transferable to
teaching and other
situations.
Involves person in
solving their own
problems.
Follows a logical
sequence of
research cycles.
Uses mix methods of
quantitative and

Results are more

easily influenced by
researchers bias
and idiosyncrasy.
Data is difficult to
obtain.
Low credibility with
governmental and
other funding
organizations.
Results are more
easily influenced by
researchers bias
and idiosyncrasy.
Results are only
valuable in context
and are often not
generalisable.
Produces
knowledge that is
specific and
valuable to one
people or area.
Uses
interpretations that
may not be expert
or equal and this
undermines praxis
and new knowledge
claims.
Time constraint on
teachers restricts
the quality and
rigour of action
research.

qualitative
approaches to obtain
data.
Positivism
Observation and reason as means of understanding human behaviour.
True knowledge is based on experience of senses and can be obtained by
observation and experiment.
Positivistic thinkers adopt the scientific method as a means of knowledge
generation.
Hence, it has to be understood within the framework of the principles and
assumptions of science.
These assumptions, as Conen et al (2000) noted, are determinism,
empiricism, parsimony, and generality.
Determinism means that events are caused by other circumstances; and
hence, understanding such casual links are necessary for prediction and
control.
Empiricism means collection of verifiable empirical evidences in support of
theories or hypotheses.
Parsimony refers to the explanation of the phenomena in the most
economical way possible.
Generality is the process of generalizing the observation of the particular
phenomenon to the world at large.
- With these assumptions of science, the ultimate goal of science is to integrate
and systematise findings into a meaningful pattern or theory which is regarded
as tentative and not the ultimate truth.
- Theory is subject to revision or modification as new evidence is found.
- Positivistic paradigm thus systematizes the knowledge generation process with
the help of quantification, which is essential y to enhance precision in the
description of parameters and the discernment of the relationship among them.
- Positivistic paradigm was criticized due to its lack of regard for the
subjective states of individuals.
- It regards human behaviour as passive, controlled and determined by external
environment.
- Hence human beings are dehumanized without their intention, individualism
and freedom taken into account in viewing and interpreting social reality.
- According to the critics of this paradigm, objectivity needs to be replaced by
subjectivity in the process of scientific inquiry.
- This gave rise to naturalistic inquiry.
APPROACHES IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
1. THE POSITIVIST APPROACH (QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH)

 Relies primarily on numbers as the main unit of analysis.

Although quantitative methods, such as surveys, are used in
educational research, the vast majority of research is relatively
small scale, intensive, focused on change and involves
human perceptions.
Educational research relies much more heavily on qualitative
methods.
One of the most common instruments to gather numerical
data in education (particularly in evaluation of programmes) is the
questionnaire survey, using a series of closed questions to
which responses are given against a Likert or other type of scale.
Open questions can also be included to gather richer data.
Large amounts of data can be gathered from a wide number of
people and the results can be analysed by computer (either by an
optical mark reader or through an online survey instrument such as
Survey Monkey), thus making it fairly straightforward to research
a large sample of respondents.

Survey questionnaires can be given out and collected face to

face, sent by post or posted online.

If achieving a high response rate is important, then note that the

less personal involvement there is with potential
respondents, the lower the response rate.

So, typically, online surveys may have a response rate of under

20%, whereas if the questionnaires are given out and
collected face to face, you may achieve a very high response
rate.
2. THE INTERPRETIVE APPROACH (QUALITATIVE RESEARCH)
Relies primarily on words as its unit of analysis and its means
of understanding.
It can also use voice tone, loudness, cries, sighs, laughs, and many
other ways of human communication (the human context of the
story).
The words may be spoken in individual interviews (face to face or
on the telephone) or groups, or they may be written, so you may
have to analyse the spoken words of an interview, focus group or
conversations (for example between a student and teacher or
student and student), or the written words of an account or
description or journal record.
Qualitative research tends to be small scale, simply because it is
hugely labour intensive.
For example, interviews or focus groups will usually need to be
transcribed before they can be analysed .
The researcher is often more involved with the person
producing the words, and so it is sometimes helpful for others to
conduct the analysis; again this can be costly.
Having said that, nothing else can provide the same level of
richness as qualitative data, and at the very least, adding space for
respondents to provide some words to describe what might be
otherwise gathered by numbers is immensely useful to the

researcher, and may even, in some situations, be a help to the

subject.

Table 2: Selection of research paradigms and research methods

(Dash, 2005
Research
paradigms
Positivism

Research
approach
Quantitative

Research
methods
Surveys:
longitudinal,
cross-sectional,
correlational;
experimental, and
quasiexperimental and
ex-post facto
research

Interpretive

Qualitative

Biographical;
Phenomenological;
Ethnographical;
case study

Examples
- Attitude of distance
learners towards
online based
education
- Relationship
between students
motivation and their
academic
achievement.
- Effect of intelligence
on the academic
performances of
primary school
learners
- A study of
autobiography of a
great statesman.
- A study of dropout
among the female
students
- A case study of a
open distance

ETHICS OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

Ensure that knowledge production is created in conjunction with a moral

responsibility toward participants rights during the research study.
These rights include the right to informed consent, trust, a right to
withdraw and confidentiality (Ryen, 2010).

1. The first concerns the rights of students, staff (principals, parents, and

teachers) and learners to be treated as openly and fairly as possible

within the research, and be sure to obtain informed consent
BEFORE taking part in the research study.
Study participants should receive informed consent that their
participation is voluntary and that they had the right to withdraw
from the study at any time without explanation or notice to the
research team (McNiff & Whitehead, 2010).
The process of applying for ethical approval is useful in pushing you
to clarify the aims, process and outputs of the research.

Ethical considerations may lead to modification of your planned

research: you may decide that the time frame, scale or scope of the
research is unrealistic.

2. Your own position as researcher (personal bias).

Particularly relevant if you are researching your own organisation or
have a position of influence over research subjects.
In
educational research, which often involves qualitative
methodologies, this issue is typically brought to the foreground as
part of the methods selected, and in the analysis and discussion.