Using observation to investigate education: a summary
- Created by: Azia Singh
- Created on: 15-05-16 21:35
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- Using observation to investigate education
- Structured observation
- Practical issues
- The Flanders system of interaction analysis categories is used to measure pupil and pupil-teacher interaction quantitatively
- Quicker, cheaper and requires less training
- The Flanders system of interaction analysis categories is used to measure pupil and pupil-teacher interaction quantitatively
- Reliability
- Likely to be easily replicated
- Validity
- Interpretivists criticise
- Sarah Delamont: simply counting classroom behaviour and classifying it into a limited number of pre-defined categories ignores the meaning that pupils and teachers attach to it
- Interpretivists criticise
- Practical issues
- Unstructured observation
- Practical issues
- Took Lacey 2 months to familiarise himself w/ the school
- Eggleston needed over 3 months just to set up his cover role for his observations
- Head of the school Fuller observed decided parents' permission was not required for her to observe, but it would have been for her to carry out interviews
- Wright found her African Caribbean ethnicity produced antagonistic reactions from some white teachers
- Took Lacey 2 months to familiarise himself w/ the school
- Ethical issues
- Delamont: every observer in a school sees and hears things that could get pupils into trouble
- Delamont: additional care should be taken to protect pupils', teachers' and schools' identities
- Validity
- Power differences between young people and adults is a major barrier to uncovering the real attitudes and behaviour of pupils
- Teachers may be quite skilled at disguising their feelings and altering their behaviour when being observed
- The language of the pupil may be very different to that of the researcher
- The Hawthorne effect
- Ronald King tried to blend into the background in an infant school by initially spending short periods of time in the classroom to allow the children to become familiar w/ his presence. Even used the wendy house as a 'hide'
- Ball: what did the children actually make of the tall man hiding in the wendy house?
- Ronald King tried to blend into the background in an infant school by initially spending short periods of time in the classroom to allow the children to become familiar w/ his presence. Even used the wendy house as a 'hide'
- Representativeness
- Willis studied a core group of only 12 boys
- This is because of how time-consuming PO is
- Hammersley tended to associate largely w/ 1 group of teachers w/ whom he had more in common because the others were suspicious of him
- Willis studied a core group of only 12 boys
- Reliability
- Data recording is often unsystematic and hard to replicate
- Hammersley found that on 1 occasion he had to write his notes on the back of a newspaper because he was observing staffroom conversations covertly
- Personal characteristics of different observers may evoke differing responses
- Wright found that as a black female she was met w/ hostility by some white teachers but readily accepted by black pupils
- Data recording is often unsystematic and hard to replicate
- Practical issues
- Structured observation
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