7/30/2019 Approaches to Educational Research

1/1

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 oftheir 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, orotherwise, 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