W. Newton Suter argues that what is important in a changing education landscape is the ability to think clearly about research methods, reason through complex problems and evaluate published research. He explains how to evaluate data and establish its relevance.
Contents: Introduction, The Schools and the Children, Construction of Achievement Tests, Testing Children in Primary Schools, Findings: The State of Schools, The Child: A Reflection of the State of Education, Epilogue: Sharing Our Insights with the Reader.
This accessible and practical book is a perfect quick guide for postgraduate researchers in education. Looking at the interdependence of teaching and research, the authors show that a critical and analytical exploration of policies and practices is a necessary part of what we mean by being a ′professional′ in education. Drawing on the authors′ substantial experience of teaching research skills at postgraduate level, as well as on their own experiences as active researchers, the book will guide you through: - discourse analysis - visual methods - textual research - data collection and analysis This co-authored book is structured around a range of methods applicable to educational research and appropriate for use by practitioners at all stages of their professional development. It takes recognisable, ′real life′ scenarios as its starting point for each discussion of method, so that readers are able to start from the known and familiar. As well as exploring theoretical aspects of research method, each chapter provides practical tasks and points for discussion and reflection. These approaches, taken together, are designed to build confidence and encourage reader engagement and enjoyment. Liz Atkins is a lecturer and researcher in education at the University of Huddersfield. Susan Wallace is Professor of Continuing Education at Nottingham Trent University. Research Methods in Education series: Each book in this series maps the territory of a key research approach or topic in order to help readers progress from beginner to advanced researcher. Each book aims to provide a definitive, market-leading overview and to present a blend of theory and practice with a critical edge. All titles in the series are written for Master′s-level students anywhere and are intended to be useful to the many diverse constituencies interested in research on education and related areas. Other books in the series: - Using Case Study in Education Research, Hamilton and Corbett-Whittier - Action Research in Education, McAteer - Ethnography in Education, Mills and Morton
The concept of "funds of knowledge" is based on a simple premise: people are competent and have knowledge, and their life experiences have given them that knowledge. The claim in this book is that first-hand research experiences with families allow one to document this competence and knowledge, and that such engagement provides many possibilities for positive pedagogical actions. Drawing from both Vygotskian and neo-sociocultural perspectives in designing a methodology that views the everyday practices of language and action as constructing knowledge, the funds of knowledge approach facilitates a systematic and powerful way to represent communities in terms of the resources they possess and how to harness them for classroom teaching. This book accomplishes three objectives: It gives readers the basic methodology and techniques followed in the contributors' funds of knowledge research; it extends the boundaries of what these researchers have done; and it explores the applications to classroom practice that can result from teachers knowing the communities in which they work. In a time when national educational discourses focus on system reform and wholesale replicability across school sites, this book offers a counter-perspective stating that instruction must be linked to students' lives, and that details of effective pedagogy should be linked to local histories and community contexts. This approach should not be confused with parent participation programs, although that is often a fortuitous consequence of the work described. It is also not an attempt to teach parents "how to do school" although that could certainly be an outcome if the parents so desired. Instead, the funds of knowledge approach attempts to accomplish something that may be even more challenging: to alter the perceptions of working-class or poor communities by viewing their households primarily in terms of their strengths and resources, their defining pedagogical characteristics. Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities, and Classrooms is a critically important volume for all teachers and teachers-to-be, and for researchers and graduate students of language, culture, and education.
Impelled by a demand for increasing American strength in the new global economy, many educators, public officials, business leaders, and parents argue that school computers and Internet access will improve academic learning and prepare students for an information-based workplace. But just how valid is this argument? In Oversold and Underused, one of the most respected voices in American education argues that when teachers are not given a say in how the technology might reshape schools, computers are merely souped-up typewriters and classrooms continue to run much as they did a generation ago. In his studies of early childhood, high school, and university classrooms in Silicon Valley, Larry Cuban found that students and teachers use the new technologies far less in the classroom than they do at home, and that teachers who use computers for instruction do so infrequently and unimaginatively. Cuban points out that historical and organizational economic contexts influence how teachers use technical innovations. Computers can be useful when teachers sufficiently understand the technology themselves, believe it will enhance learning, and have the power to shape their own curricula. But these conditions can't be met without a broader and deeper commitment to public education beyond preparing workers. More attention, Cuban says, needs to be paid to the civic and social goals of schooling, goals that make the question of how many computers are in classrooms trivial.
Since the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) children’s rights have assumed a central position in a wide variety of disciplines and policies. This handbook offers an engaging overview of the contemporary research landscape for those people in the theory and practice of children’s rights. The volume offers a multidisciplinary approach to children’s rights, as well as key thematic issues in children’s rights at the intersection of global and local concerns. The main approaches and topics within the volume are: • Law, social work, and the sociology of childhood and anthropology • Geography, childhood studies, gender studies and citizenship studies • Participation, education and health • Juvenile justice and alternative care • Violence against children and female genital mutilation • Child labour, working children and child poverty • Migration, indigenous children and resource exploitation The specially commissioned chapters have been written by renowned scholars and researchers and come together to provide a critical and invaluable guide to the challenges and dilemmas currently facing children’s rights.
The District Primary Education Programme is one of the home grown innovative educational programmes with three main goals universal access, retention and achievement. It is an ambitious national programme firmly rooted in the national policy on Education aiming to achieve Education For All by 2000 A.D. It is a sustainable, cost-effective are replicable one on a national scale. It is also an exercise in decentralised planning which puts local communities in charge of education. The districts chosen under it represent those where female literacy is below the national average of 52.21%. With great hope, conviction and preparation it was launched on November 8, 1994. DPEP will be another success story in the field of education. Let the goals of DPEP be realised and in process, every one of the society be a part of this success story.
How can ethnographic studies be generalized, in contrast to concentrating on the individual case? Noblit and Hare propose a new method for synthesizing from qualitative studies: meta-ethnography. After citing the criteria to be used in comparing qualitative research projects, the authors define the ways these can then be aggregated to create more cogent syntheses of research. Using examples from numerous studies ranging from ethnographic work in educational settings to the Mead-Freeman controversy over Samoan youth, Meta-Ethnography offers useful procedural advice from both comparative and cumulative analyses of qualitative data. This provocative volume will be read with interest by researchers and students in qualitative research methods, ethnography, education, sociology, and anthropology. "After defining metaphor and synthesis, these authors provide a step-by-step program that will allow the researcher to show similarity (reciprocal translation), difference (refutation), or similarity at a higher level (lines or argument synthesis) among sample studies....Contain(s) valuable strategies at a seldom-used level of analysis." --Contemporary Sociology "The authors made an important contribution by reframing how we think of ethnography comparison in a way that is compatible with the new developments in interpretive ethnography. Meta-Ethnography is well worth consulting for the problem definition it offers." --The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease "This book had to be written and I am pleased it was. Someone needed to break the ice and offer a strategy for summarizing multiple ethnographic studies. Noblit and Hare have done a commendable job of giving the research community one approach for doing so. Further, no one else can now venture into this area of synthesizing qualitative studies without making references to and positioning themselves vis-a-vis this volume." -Educational Studies
This highly readable text demystifies the qualitative research process—and helps readers conceptualize their own studies—by organizing the different research paradigms and traditions into coherent clusters. Real-world examples and firsthand perspectives illustrate the research process; instructive exercises and activities build on each other so readers can develop their own proposals or reports as they work through the book. Provided are strategies for selecting a research topic, entering and exiting sites, and navigating the complexities of ethical issues and the researcher's role. Readers learn how to use a range of data collection methods—including observational strategies, interviewing, focus groups, e-mail and chat rooms, and arts-based media—and to manage, analyze, and report the resulting data. Useful pedagogical features include:*In-class and field activities to apply qualitative concepts.*Discussion questions, proposal development exercises, and reflexive journal activities.*Exemplary qualitative studies and two sample proposals.*Cautionary notes, or "Wild Cards," about possible research pitfalls.*Tables that summarize concepts and present helpful tips.
Studies of the retention of literacy and numeracy by adults who have only obtained primary schooling have given little encouragement to the belief that the cognitive effects of schooling are enduring for many school leavers. How these findings can be reconciled with the claims made for the importance of schooling as an instrument of social and economic change is the subject ofinvestigation in this volume. The cognitive outcomes of literacy acqusition and secular schools in coastal Kenya are the focus of this ethnographic study, which stresses the relevance of an international understanding of the particular problems and dilemmas that face the educational systems of individual countries.