This is a selective summary of parts of the above text (part 3).
4. Experience and Observation: The Collection of First Hand Data
Manipulation of Context: From Experiments to Participant Observation
Experimental Research Design
Positivistic experimental design is described. Tight experimental control and manipulation of the independent variable allows the effect on the dependent variable to be investigated. Methods of control are discussed.
Acknowledging that educational investigations do not easily lend themselves to strictly experimental treatment leads some researchers to adopt quasi-experimental designs. With the consequent reduction in the ability to control variables this reduces the confidence with which causal relations can be established.
As well as investigating the effects of a planned intervention (pre-test - post-test) it is possible to observe the impact of events not directly controlled by the experimenter, or events that have already occurred (ex post facto research).
Ethnographic Research
The researcher seeks not to intervene but to observe and record. The principle of selection of the features worthy of comment, the interpretation of what is observed, the recontextualisation of all that is recorded - these are significant issues requiring explicit consideration (all the more so when the observation is undertaken by someone intimately familiar with the empirical setting, since preconceptions are more likely to go unnoticed).
An additional problem concerns the observer's degree of participation: his/her presence will inevitably influence what occurs. Covert observation may seem desirable but ethical problems abound in this practice. The practitioner researcher - one observing his/her own workplace, for example - is faced with one set of problems; the non-participating researcher another.
Structure: From Schedules to Fieldnotes
Information becomes data through selection and interpretation. This is a theoretically informed process. It is necessary to justify and communicate choices, i.e. declare what the researcher is doing and why.
Observation Schedules
Observation is an important source of information. The use of an observation schedule - a means of classifying what is observed - imposes structure on the phenomenon being studied, converting information to useful data. Issues relating to the design and use of such schedules are discussed. Their limitations are also rehearsed.
Fieldnotes
Fieldnotes of what is experienced are an alternative to organised schedules. They allow subtler, more sophisticated observations to be made, without prior constraint, but do not remove the ultimate need for selection and interpretation. The structured account required of a research project is deferred, but not indefinitely.
Practical issues relating to the use of fieldnotes are considered.
Brown, A. & Dowling, P. (1998), Doing Research/Reading Research: A Mode of Interrogation for Education, London, Falmer Press
