Active Research

Importantly, appropriate [research] methods and disciplinary approaches always follow from the central questions and puzzles to be addressed, not the other way round. Researchers should select those methods that will best address the question in hand. However, methodological pragmatism does not mean that vague approaches to method are permissible. Questions of validity of measures and inferences, and reliability of data sources and analysis must be always at the forefront of your thinking. Students will be expected to explain and justify their methods and approaches rigorously and precisely.

In addition to internal and external validity researchers need to pay close attention to construct validity. There are numerous ways to go about establishing the construct validity of a test, but the basic strategy is always the same. The test developer sets up an experiment to demonstrate that a given test is indeed testing the construct that it claims to be testing. (Brown 1988: 103-104)

In all cases, whatever the particular methodological approach used, a critically important aspect of scholarly method is rigour in the use of sources. This means learning to be discriminate and judicious in the use of sources; distinguishing what is true from what merely appears to be true; striving, wherever possible, for an authentic source for any given fact, quotation, viewpoint or data-set; avoiding exclusive reliance on a second- or third-hand source when a better one can be found; using ‘triangulation’ to verify the reliability of sources; and making it unambiguously clear (for example in footnotes) which sources you have used, and exactly how you have used them. These simple guidelines are important whether you are engaged in historical and archival research, interviewing and fieldwork, quantitative or qualitative work. Following good practice regarding sources not only reduces the risks of factual error and misquotation, but also reduces the danger of failing to understand and communicate the original context of any fact, view or statement. (Research Methods, Oxford Univ. 2008) (1)

A form of research which is becoming increasingly significant in education is Action Research. John Elliott (1991:69) defines action research as “the study of a social situation with a view to improving the quality of action within it.“ The three defining characteristics of action research are highlighted that it is carried out by practitioners rather than outside researchers, secondly that it is collaborative; and thirdly that it is aimed at changing things. A distinctive feature of action research is that those affected by planned changes have the primary responsibility for deciding on courses of critically informed action which seem likely to lead to improvement, and for evaluating the results of strategies tried out in practice. For some action research is a group activity , and the essential impetus for carrying out action research is to change the system (Kemmis and McTaggar 1988:6).

The research bit in Action Research has been best defined by Stenhouse as systematic and sustained enquiry, planned and self critical, which is subjected to public criticism. It does not have to include statistics or experimental and control groups, it does not have to produce any kind of definitive proof of anything: it merely has to investigate an aspect of teaching in an orderly and objective fashion- to find out something new, however limited the context. The action bit means that the teacher is not just looking at someone else, he or she is actually acting in the classroom in order to try out the ideas that the research is throwing up and to come to some conclusions that can help his or her own teaching as well as through publication that of others( Rudduck and Hopkins, 1985:18).

Action research is a worthwhile enterprise for novice teachers - indeed, for us all. The fact that it is very difficult to do well does not mean that it should not be done at all. It merely means that these difficulties should not be underestimated, and that we have to invest a lot of work - perhaps more than we might have expected - in tutoring and supporting the teachers or trainees who are embarking on it (Ur P. 1996).


(1) http://www.politics.ox.ac.uk/teaching/res_meths/introduction.asp






Active Research



The policy idea which attracted the most comment was the proposal to support marriage in the tax and benefits system. There were many messages of support for the policy, as well as some cautioning against penalising single people or single parent families.

Steven Crabb, Stand up Speak up, www.conservatives.com





......Research backs up their assessment that social services and health visitors did not appear to have the will to engage with young fathers, and aspirations of young men to be better fathers than they have had themselves are certainly not encouraged(Speak et al 1997). The near collapse of marriage in such communities has almost completely eroded its function as a meaningful and beneficial life script (Hymowitz 2006), especially for men. Early fatherhood does not draw disadvantaged young men into dependable and responsible adulthood. A lack of purpose continues the cycle of worklessness, addiction and crime. Instead there appears to be an easy dependency on the state which people will not willingly give up.

This is an environment where young women routinely express the attitude that "everyone else is a single parent anyway, so what’s the big deal if I become one." However, as the boxed quote from one social worker indicates, the gap left by an absent father yawns more, not less, widely with time.

Breakthrough Britain, Policy Recommendations to the Conservative Party, 2008