Research

I have been asked to give a research seminar later today to the group at Swansea Met. I have finished my preparation, and now feel only slightly anxious. Well if it isn't done by now it is too late to worry overmuch!!. One really useful aspect of all this is that it has once again clarified just what my purpose is. Over the last few months I have been flying around in circles and this has made me really scrutinise what I am doing and has helped me put everything in its place. It has even made me think about how to proceed from here instead of aimlessly carrying on. I have thought about structure and my reasoning behind that structure. Now all I have got to do is put thoughts into practice. One decision I have made is to use this far more regularly for my thoughts and readings. And on that note a little something I came up with for this afternoon.
Having worked out what questions I wanted to ask I had to now work out how to ask them, so, what sort of research was I going to carry out. I wanted to know what educators thought; what their understanding of ICT capability was, in my investigations I had found that there is a limited amount of literature, actually defining ICT capability, or indeed ICT literacy, and because of this I felt that this was worth investigation. The information I wanted to draw from both the educators involved and the pupils was of a qualitative nature, indicating that any research method used should be of a qualitative nature; furthermore it was concerned with what these educators were actually doing. Did their actions match their perception? Research in education in the past has tended to be of a single approach, either quantitative or qualitative (Cohen & Manion), however whilst there was a need for a qualitative approach, It was also necessary to have a wider approach to position this enquiry. Were the findings going to be a generalist view point, was the perception prevalent in the ICT educators arena or exceptions to the rule. In order not to make assumptions when analysing any findings or bias the conclusions it became obvious that a much broader initial approach would be needed. Given that the nature of determining perceptions is through interviews, focus groups and observations, financial and time constraints dictate that there are a finite number of these sorts of investigations that can be undergone. Therefore a mixed approach is necessary, Interpretive and scientific a combination of action research to provide the interpretive element and a questionnaire to provide a quantitative basis. Initially a questionnaire was to be produced to establish a platform for the research, and then a more detailed form of action research where observation of teaching practice can be carried out and analysis of case studies including schemes of work and assessment procedures together with discussions of the fellow researchers of the group can be carried out. Action ResearchRory O’ Brian in his article “An Overview of the Methodological Approach of Action Research” referred to Action research as being “learning by doing - a group of people identify a problem, do something to resolve it, see how successful their efforts were, and if not satisfied, try again”. However action research is not quite as simplistic as that though its essence may lie in this reflective cycle. Gilmore, Krantz and Ramirez (1986) define it as "Action research...aims to contribute both to the practical concerns of people in an immediate problematic situation and to further the goals of social science simultaneously. Thus, there is a dual commitment in action research to study a system and concurrently to collaborate with members of the system in changing it in what is together regarded as a desirable direction. Accomplishing this twin goal requires the active collaboration of researcher and client, and thus it stresses the importance of co-learning as a primary aspect of the research process." This embedding in scientific study whereby the research systematically studies the problem and makes sure that any intervention is based upon theory means that a proportion of the action researchers energies are spent refining the methodology to the situations presenting themselves and collecting the data analyzing it and presenting in an ongoing basis. Further differences in this approach to research focus on turning participants into researchers and to encourage them to change practices and apply their learning. This brings about another question when running an action research group, the role of the organizer of the group, how are they going to participate, do they act on an equal basis in the research, are they working as an observer to the group, or are they acting as a devil’s advocate so to speak? And how is the group to be formed? It was thought that the best method for establishing a group of action researchers would be to extract a number from the initial survey on a location sampling basis. To enable the action group to take place and regular discussions to occur, the researchers by necessity be situated within a specified locale convenient to all which would mean within reasonable distance of SMU. This limits the choice of researchers from the survey, and thus necessitates the need for a widespread dissemination of the survey for positioning of any ultimate results.

I know it needs a lot more work to it and it has possible oversimplified action research but it is a start.