EDGZ921 Assessment Task 3: Take-Home Quiz

EDGZ921 Assessment Task 3: Take-Home Quiz This assessment adopts a 'take home' quiz format, yet provided early in the subject to allow consideration of these questions as you work through the subject material. You may use any reference material that you consider relevant, but your writing should be properly referenced. This quiz consists of six short answer questions. Each question will be marked out of 10. All questions must be responded to in 300 words. Given this length, clear and concise communication of ideas will be essential (an important skill for educational researchers). 1. An educational researcher is interested in determining the long-term effects of cyber-bullying on students’ social, emotional and cognitive development. Despite the fact that a true experimental design would give the strongest evidence of this (because, when well designed, it can establish cause and effect), why would it be unethical to adopt this design for this research? Discuss this with reference to the characteristics of an experimental design and core ethical principles. What other quantitative design might be more appropriate (while maintaining the aim of the research) and how would it circumvent these ethical issues? 2. A qualitative researcher aims to investigate how students at a comprehensive girls school who are identified as having ‘additional educational needs’ perceive their prospects of academic and professional success. To explore this, they propose to conduct one-on-one unstructured interviews and focus groups with students and teachers, collect student work samples, analyse school policy documents, observe in-class and out-of-class behaviours, analyse images depicting school contexts and administer a year-long free-writing journal. The researcher also plans to take an ethnographic approach to this study. Given the research question and design are each of the data sources necessary and appropriate? If so, describe the unique contributions and utility of each, making reference to the research aims. If not, indicate which you would retain, the unique contributions and utility of each kept and why the rejected data sources were discarded. 3. Although often overlooked, it is recommended that additional considerations are integrated in the design of survey-based research, in order to take into account the unique nature and limitations of questionnaire data. Identify these considerations, indicate why they are important and, for the following questionnaire, indicate the extent to which you believe they considered these aspects (using evidence from the questionnaire to support your claims). 4. After hearing about the potential strength of mixed methods designs (yielding generalisable evidence of statistically significant effects, while also suggesting how and why these effects occur) a researcher decides to adopt a mixed methods design to investigate the effectiveness of iPads for fostering student interaction and learning. A quasi-experimental study was conducted to identify whether: (a) students using iPads collaborated more than those without iPads; and (b) students using iPads achieved higher grades than those without iPads. Throughout this study, students were also asked to write personal logs about their impressions and experiences, while the researcher made detailed notes on their observations of how iPads were being used. Student work samples were also analysed. For this study: (1) identify which form of mixed method research was used; and then (2) evaluate what the quantitative data adds in response to the research aim, (3) evaluate what the qualitative data adds in response to the research aim and (4) evaluate and justify whether mixed methods was the ideal approach (compared to qualitative or quantitative alone). 5. A researcher sets out to answer the following: How does the introduction of play in the primary classroom influence students’ outcomes? Based on their reading, the researcher hypothesises that imaginative play, when appropriately designed, will improve student outcomes. To investigate this possibility, the researcher adopts a narrative design. They recruit 100 students to complete a paper-based survey asking them to rate their perceptions of how the newly introduced play influenced their motivation, concentration and cognitive abilities. Clearly there is a mismatch between the research question, design and methods. Explain why this proposal is problematic. Assuming the research aim is investigating the relation between play and student academic outcomes: (1) how could the study be altered to be a qualitative investigation?; and (2) how could the study be modified to be a quantitative investigation? 6. Cobern et al. (2010) sought to investigate the comparative effectiveness of direct and indirect science instruction primary school. To achieve this, they conducted an experiment with 180 either grade students from a range of demographic areas (feel free to read the source article for additional detail about the study). The authors interpret their results (no statistically significant differences between the two modes of instruction) as indicating “inquiry-based instruction potentially offers significant advantages for science instruction” (p. 93). Given the research question, design and methods, evaluate and justify: (1) the limitations of the study; (2) the extent to which the results are generalisable; and (3) what the key implications and applications of this study are for educational theory, research, policy and/or practice (i.e., what can and cannot be concluded – note: it is rarely that a study makes no contributions, so work hard to evaluate the contributions of this study). Cobern, W. W., Schuster, D., Adams, B., Applegate, B., Skjold, A. U., Loving, C. C., & Gobert, J. D. (2010). Experimental comparison of inquiry and direct instruction in science. Research in Science & Technological Education, 28(1), 81–96. Recommended Readings This is not an exhaustive list. Students are encouraged to use the UOW Library catalogue and databases to locate additional resources. Cohen, L., &Manion, L. (2001). Research methods in education.New York, NY: Routledge Cresswell, J.W. (2005). Educational research. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. Lankshear, C., &Knobel, M. (2004). A handbook for teacher research: From design to implementation. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. McMillan, J.H. (2004). Educational research: Fundamentals for the consumer. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Mertens, D.M. (2005). Research and evaluation in education and psychology: Integrating diversity with quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Punch, G. (2005). Introduction to social research: Quantitative and qualitative approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.