Which Shaped Teachers' Assessments Of Individual Scenarios Most Highly And Least Highly Rated?

By Author: Peter King
Total Articles: 73
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Respondents' conceptions of research were elicited in two ways (Appendix 1, Sections 1 and 2). They were first asked to assess a series of scenarios, then to comment on the characteristics of 'good' research. The questionnaire presented 10 scenarios, all describing some form of inquiry, and teachers were asked to indicate to what extent they felt the inquiry in each case was research. There were no right or wrong answers here and the purpose of the item was to Merrell Sandal gain insight into respondents' views of what counted as research. The findings for this question are summarized in Table 4, which gives the percentage of teachers selecting each of the four possible ratings for each scenario.

Defining research is in itself not a straightforward issue. However, it is necessary here for me to state briefly my own position as this informs some of the comments I make below in analyzing the data. It is possible to extract from the research methodology literature a number of commonly cited minimal elements in definitions of research a problem or question, ...
... data, analysis, and interpretation. Regularly mentioned too are characteristics of the research process such as systematicity and rigour. Additionally, it has been argued that to qualify as research, inquiry needs to be made public; Stenhouse (1981), for example, states that 'private research for our purpose does not count as research' and Crookes says that 'research is not research unless communicated'. My own views of research resonate with the above-mentioned characteristics. I do not subscribe to the view, however, that research should be Merrell Boot defined according to its methodological orientation; I am thus supportive of views of research with promote epistemo-logical pluralism [i.e. which acknowledge different research traditions see Ernest (1994) for a discussion] and which resist attempts to sustain 'paradigm wars' (Bryman 2006b) by claiming that particular traditions and investigative methods are necessarily superior to others.

As Table 4 shows, the three scenarios most highly rated as research by the teachers were numbers 4, 2, and 6. Scenarios 8, 9, and 1 were the three least rated as research. While the statistical analysis of these scenarios provides an overall picture of teachers' conceptions of research, the questionnaire data alone do not provide any insight into teachers' reasons for their assessments. For this we must turn to the follow-up data obtained, as discussed earlier, in writing and through interviews. I do not have the space to provide an exhaustive qualitative analysis of teachers' comments on every scenario, but will draw on the written and spoken data to highlight common factors which shaped teachers' assessments of the individual scenarios most highly and least highly rated.