Methods In Context

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Each research method has its own challenges, but using them in schools brings extra things to think about. Schools are structured places with rules, busy schedules, and students who need extra protection. Researchers must deal with practical problems, like getting permission, time and money, as well as ethical issues, like keeping students safe and respecting their privacy. This page explains the key practical, ethical, and theoretical issues that come up when doing research in schools, and how they affect the methods used.

Who could be researched?

In your exams, you could be asked about research into the school, its staff, its students, or their parents. Below are some factors that would affect each:

Practical issues

Researching Schools and Staff

Researching Students and parents

• Time Constraints: Teachers and staff often have tight schedules, and interviews or surveys conducted during busy periods (like exam season) might result in rushed or superficial responses, impacting the depth and quality of data.
• Choosing the Right School: Access may depend on selecting a school that fits the study's aims, and logistics like school size, location, or demographics.
• Gatekeeper Access: Permission from school authorities (headteachers, administrators) is required to conduct research, which can limit or even block access.
• Setting Challenges: Finding quiet, private spaces for interviews or observations in busy school environments is often difficult.
• Teachers' Perception of Researcher: Teachers may behave differently based on how they perceive the researcher, affecting the data collected.

• Access to Parents: Reaching parents, especially in diverse or busy communities, can be difficult. Some parents may not respond to requests due to lack of time, mistrust, or language barriers. Researchers may also struggle to access parents without direct contact from the school, complicating the process.
• Cost: For researchers to be able to handle situations carefully and with empathy to prevent distress can require a lot of training, which can be expensive
• Scheduling: Parents may have conflicting schedules due to work, childcare, or other responsibilities, making it challenging to arrange a suitable time for interviews or focus groups.
• Language Barriers: In schools with multicultural student bodies, parents who speak limited English or have low literacy levels may struggle to engage with research, making communication difficult and leading to potential misunderstandings in the data collection process.
• Technology Access: If interviews or surveys are conducted online, some parents may lack access to reliable technology or internet, especially in lower socioeconomic households, which could limit participation and create a biased sample.

Ethical issues

Researching Schools and Staff	Researching Students and Parents
Informed Consent: Must be obtained from students, teachers, and possibly parents (for minors), ensuring they understand the research.	Informed Consent: Ensuring that both parents and students fully understand the nature of the research and its purpose is crucial, especially when dealing with minors. Clear explanations are necessary to ensure participants are not unknowingly coerced into participation.
Anonymity and Confidentiality: Researchers must ensure that participants' identities are protected, particularly in sensitive school environments.	Confidentiality and Anonymity: Safeguarding participants' privacy is important, especially when discussing sensitive topics. Researchers must ensure that the identities of students and parents remain anonymous and that data is securely stored.
Ethical Review: Research must often pass an ethics review to ensure it complies with ethical guidelines, especially in safeguarding students.	Handling Sensitive Topics: Discussions on issues like bullying, family problems, or mental health require careful, empathetic handling to avoid causing distress. Researchers need to be trained to manage these situations with sensitivity and provide appropriate support resources if needed.
	Parental Gatekeeping: In some cases, parents may control what information is shared or allow their children to participate, creating potential bias if parents influence students' answers. This could compromise the authenticity of student responses.
	Power Dynamics: In interviews, parents might feel uncomfortable expressing honest opinions about their child's school or teachers, especially if they fear repercussions. This power imbalance can affect the validity of the data collected. Similarly, students may be hesitant to share true feelings if they believe their answers will reach their parents or school staff.

Theoretical issues

Researching Schools and Staff	Researching Students and Parents
Generational Gaps: When conducting research on younger students, researchers may encounter generational differences that impact the interpretation of questions, particularly in relation to modern technology or social issues. This can result in miscommunication or responses that don't fully capture the students' lived experiences.	Language Barriers: In multicultural school environments, English may be a second language for many parents. This can lead to them misunderstanding research questions or difficulty expressing complex ideas, which in turn affects the validity and depth of responses, especially in qualitative methods like interviews.
School as a Controlled Environment: The hierarchical and rule-based nature of schools can influence how students and staff behave during observations, often leading to performative behaviour rather than natural actions. This reduces ecological validity, as the artificial setting impacts the authenticity of the data.	Social Class and Education Levels: Parents with lower levels of education or from working-class backgrounds may struggle to engage with questions if academic terms are used. This can result in biases, as parents from higher educational backgrounds may provide more articulate or detailed answers and working-class parents can't express how they truly feel, skewing the data towards certain groups and affecting representativeness.
Hawthorne Effect: In observations, staff and students may change their behaviour because they know they are being observed, affecting data validity.	Perception of the Researcher: If parents perceive the researcher as an authority figure or associate them with the school, they may alter their responses to fit what they believe the school wants to hear. This introduces a social desirability bias, reducing the authenticity and validity of the data.
	Access to Marginalised Groups: Certain groups, like those from low socioeconomic backgrounds, may be less likely to participate due to distrust or practical constraints, leading to sampling limitations that affect how generalisable the findings are to the broader population.
	Hierarchy and Power Dynamics: Schools have a clear hierarchy, where students may feel intimidated by teachers or researchers. This could lead to socially desirable responses, especially when students or staff feel under scrutiny from someone in authority, reducing the validity of the data.

Methods In Context Simplified Revision Notes for A-Level Edexcel Sociology

Methods In Context

Who could be researched?

Practical issues

Ethical issues

Theoretical issues

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