This is an explanation of a preferred method of critique following a summary and comparative analysis of two research studies, one qualitative and one quantitative.
Preferred method of research. In terms of my own research interests, the method that is most appealing to me as a new educational researcher is a mixed method. Such an approach offers the merits of the benefits of both quantitative and qualitative methods, which often compensate for each other’s weaknesses. For example, the qualitative approach personalizes the subject and allows for analysis of complex traits and processes. While the quantitative approach may depersonalize and simplify human traits and processes, it offers the potential of measurement of a larger and representative population sample, and enables analysis of a trait or process with minimal researcher or subject bias. In my research, I hope to propose a method that includes survey and an interview and/or focus group, which will allow for data collection and analysis by both methods.
The research methodology that is less appealing to me is the quantitative method. My background in humanities-based research makes me predisposed to qualitative research and has also resulted in less exposure to conducting or critiquing quantitative research. Because I have far less experience in quantitative research, I am relatively unfamiliar with numerically based instruments, data, and methods of analysis. Consequently, I am able to collect and analyze only basic descriptive statistics with confidence. I also have less capacity to verify the correctness of the statistical analysis conducted in studies. While I understand that an empirical study must be in all ways valid and reliable, with a lack of honed skills I am limited in my ability to discern—beyond my own general reasoning—to discern validity and reliability in quantitative research.
However, qualitative research is also my preferred method of research due to what I perceive as ideological and practical limitations of this methodology. It is my belief that quantitative research often falsely presumes neutrality, may be limited in its practical applicability, risks depersonalizing (even dehumanizing) its subjects and, to a lesser degree, offers a writing style that can result in less engagement of and lower comprehension for readers.
Science-based study is a discourse that, like any other, circumscribes what can be said and thought based on a particular value system that is ideologically informed and culturally biased, even as it makes “truth” claims based on the authority, objectivity, and impartiality of its processes. For example, given that the 5-6 year old students were assessed by a large number of different teachers in the Hamre and Pianta study, I wondered to what extent that their reporting, though represented as “objective” in the data, was in fact quite subjective. Although the study suggests that those who receive stronger instructional and emotional support had better achievement in school and better student-teacher relationships than their peers, there isn’t clarity on exactly what is considered to be “high” or “low” supportive classrooms, especially given that there were what the researchers described as a wide variety of programs in which assessments took place. Also, although the researchers pointed to the naturalistic classroom observation over a short time (one morning) as a strength of the study, I believe that it is a limitation. Many variables could contribute to the way children and instructors behave with each other on a single day, increasing the likelihood that anomalous behaviours would be reported as “normal” and “consistent” between teachers and students. To my mind, evaluating teacher-student interactions repeatedly and over a longer period of time, analysis of the nature of those interactions, and perhaps interviews to determine what stakeholders differently describe as “high” and “low” instructional and emotional support, would offer a more consistent, thorough, and representational picture of teacher-student interaction in classrooms.
I also wonder about the extent to which the research questions, though contributing to gaps in theoretical or research knowledge, may still not contribute to existing gaps in practical and experiential knowledge. For example, the study reported on the effects of emotional and instructional support as facilitating the development of at-risk students. The most interesting feature of this study, for me, is the nature of this support—what did instructional and emotional support of at-risk students look like? How did students respond to what the teacher did and said? How did the instructors adjust their strategies for individuals or groups of students? The conclusion that instructional and emotional support assists student development may seem somewhat self-evident to in-practice teachers; the relevant question for them is less “what” students need than “how” to give it to them given the affordances and limitations of the classroom and the other demands of the teachers.
Indeed, the lack of detail regarding the interactions between teachers and students, and the kinds of “support” the teachers provided, takes a somewhat simplistic and depersonalized view of the complexities human communication. In another illustration of the way quantitative methods depersonalize, the study relied upon prior research that stated that that students whose mothers had less than a 4-year college degree was a predictor of “high risk.” However, this study overlooks the fact that some women have national, cultural, or religious backgrounds that may their exposure to formal education, yet their lack of education does not equate with a lack of intellectual or emotional development in their children. Perhaps these students aren’t successful not because their mothers have little education but because they have cultural or linguistic barriers that prevent them from communicating effectively.
Moreover, identifying the amount of a mother’s education alone as a predictor of student success is ethnocentric and gendered. Although the correlation between a mother’s education and a child’s perceived risk may be expressed in neutral terms, the social implication of this claim is quite negative: mothers who are not formally educated make bad parents. Additionally, mother’s education and children’s at-risk-ness is a correlational but not a causational relationship; many other broader social factors (like poverty) rather than individual factors may contribute to limited education for mothers as well as high levels of risk for students. The scientific method, which privileges correlational relationships based on numerical data, simplifies complicated relationships, but simultaneously risks producing dangerous, unfounded stereotypes about already marginalized groups.
Finally, although Sleeter’s article lacked some evidence-based research that supported its truth claims or showed the need for more case-based research in multicultural curriculum delivery and teacher education, I found her narrative style personal and readable. Although Sleeter might have addressed some of the limitations of her research more explicitly, rather than bury the subjectivity of her case-based study she emphasized it and then reported the success of her study as attributed to the support she gave to her student. By describing details, using direct quotations, and summarizing her teacher educator’s progress in a narrative fashion, the study was not only informative but also a pleasure to read.
In contrast, I often found myself lost in the lengthy introduction and literature review in the Hamre and Pianta article. The formal, third person style makes the tone of the writing impersonal and unengaging. The long sentence length occasionally made the thread of the discussion difficult to follow. The authors used complex diction and referenced many psychological terms, only some of which were defined explicitly. As a result, the amount of jargon made the article difficult to read and understand. Although Hamre and Pianta’s research may be both timely and sound, if the writing is relatively inaccessible to its readers then it is limited in its value to the educators who would most benefit from its ideas.
References
Hamre, B.K., and Pianta, R.C. “Can instructional and emotional support in the first-grade classroom make a difference for children at risk of school failure?” Child Development 76, 949-967.
Sleeter, Christine. “Developing epistemological sophistication about multicultural curriculum: A case study,” Action in Teacher Education 31 (1), 3-13.
Teaching Techné 