Introduction to Educational Research

Making a decision about teaching. What is one decision you have made recently in your teaching? How did you make this decision? What evidence did you use? How did you know it was a good decision? How many times do you have to make a decision in your teaching? What does it mean to use “experience” in this context?

ALL aspects of teaching and learning are RESEARCH issues. Good teaching involves ongoing action research: Observations from ones' own experience and those of others (formal and informal), process modelling, hypothesising and experimenting (purposeful change), data collection and analysis, modification and refinement of models, all leading to a new cycle of reflection and action.

ALL aspects of teaching and learning are RESEARCH issues. For most good teachers this occurs almost subconsciously. Knowledge about teaching and learning is generally implicit. Making the implicit explicit is the basis of much education research. Detailing, explaining, and organising the process in a way others can understand and follow leads to new insights for one's own practice and assists the action research of others.

ALL aspects of teaching and learning are RESEARCH issues. Impressions are not data. Guesses are a poor basis for changes that may influence people’s lives. Idiosyncratic new strategies may do damage to some or many of the students. What other choices are there? Does a new strategy actually work, and how will you know? How do you monitor a new strategy to make continuous improvements?

Identifying a research question Personal experience: “that’s odd” moment Observations: realising something over time, and wondering why Investigation: reading reveals something inconsistent. Conversation with others: shows up variations in practice or experience.

Is the truth out there? How you approach your research will reflect how you see the world and the knowledge within in: your Epistemology.

Two perspectives on knowledge. Positivist A perspective that defines knowledge as something that exists independently in the world, and can be discovered through careful observation. Since it exists independently, knowledge is verifiable and stable.

Two perspectives on knowledge. Interpretivist (constructivist) A perspective that defines knowledge as dependent upon human perception, and thus as never free from such influences as culture, history and belief. Because perceptions vary, multiple realities exist simultaneously.