EDUC 500:

Introduction to Educational Research

Dr. Stephen Petrina

Dr. Franc Feng

Department of Curriculum Studies

University of British Columbia

(Explanation)

Cultural & Social Processes & Forces, Nature, Ideologies,

Mentalities, Grand Narratives Structure

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EDUC 500

• Methods, procedures, concerns

• Instruments - interview, scale, questionnaire

• research objectives - identifying sample- reminder quantitative methods keys to questions (“what” rather than “why”)

• Population for inclusion in study- people, events, objects, sampling related to choices of perspectives, approaches, ethics

• Criteria for sampling- related to research objectives, understanding of phenomena, practical constraints

• Proxies: attributes, constructs, operationalization, rationale for focus

EDUC 500

• Diversity: Homogeneity vs. heterogeneity, Invariant/relative: blood (Palys, 2003), people Krech, Crutchfield & Ballachey, 1962), classrooms Denzin & Lincoln (1994)

• Representativeness, adequateness, intact, variability, influenced by socialization, norming, “common sense”, social construction

• Skinner box: rat in a maze, operant conditioning- perhaps facile, consistent with deductive scientific worldview (invariant example)

EDUC 500

• Deductive model - Research in which theory is driven by a priori underlying assumptions

• Functioning to test, explain, affirm (closed); influences sampling choices, exceptions exist (e.g. exploratory factor analysis)

• Limitations in putting theory before research- preconceived notions, socialization factors, where “a procedural research decision implicitly reaffirms and supports a particular social arrangement” (Paly. 2003: 127)

•Discourses of power (Foucault, 1970, 1972)

•Knowledge as arbitrary, role in surveillance, control, discursive borders, voice, margins

•Knowledge = (technical) power

•Influences research from the base: directions, rationale, sampling, etc.

•Reasons for sampling based on alternate rationale that pays attention to the margins

EDUC 500 • Why not get statistics of population? • At times possible- but frequently impossible, impractical,

expensive to sample. • It is possible to make predictions with relative size samples,

around 2000 for national survey with error limits, where N=

Population, n= Sample, +/- 2%)