Research methods in context - Education
OK so this part of the course is part of what I would call 'real sociology' whereby you are using research methods to look at a particular issue within this study of education.
This means, for example, you are given an issue within the topic of sociology - let's say the effect of labelling on working class boys. Now, you could go ahead and research this topic in a number of different ways (interviewing, observation, questionnaires etc etc) and there would be no real right or wrong way to do this; however there are of course some ways that would be seen as better to use than others.
What you will be asked is, out of a choice of methods, which one would be better and why. So let's say you use interviews. You need to think about who you are going to interview, how you are going to do this, how you are going to gain access to these people, why you are even interviewing them in the first place!! Think really hard...you want to use interviews to find out about the effects of labelling on working class boys...using interviews. You need to gain access to the school, so you need a CRB check. You need to gain access to students, asking parents for permission, to teachers as well, you need to get to the school, find out opening hours, when teachers are free, decide which teachers to interview as well as which students....ARGH!! So much to consider!
This is where it gets a little troublesome so...what to do...OK, we'll break things down step by step.
In this part of the unit we will want to look at different studies sociologists have used to study education, see what they found out and see if how they did it was great...if not why not. We can also do our own investigations and see how they go. Then we have look at hypothetical scenarios and think about how they could be tackled. Once we've done all of that, you should be keen sociologists in no time :)
Use the resources here and also the information about the different types of research method to get a good understanding, then we can start looking at exam questions.
The Research Process Booklet
Theory and Methods