Educational Research: a Beginner's Guide

By Allyson Sesay

This book presents a rudimentary exposure
to the fi eld of educational research and an
attempt to allay the unwarranted fear of those
who perceive research as a highly technical
and complex scholarly activity carried out
by persons in the sciences. The author takes
the position that anyone can do research and
that it can be an interesting and very worthwhile experience.
Educational research, particularly action research, which the
author emphasizes, is an invaluable exercise about which
everyone in education should be knowledgeable or at least be
familiar. Starting with an explication of some salient concepts
in the study of research (e.g., research, educational research,
research problem v. research topic, hypothesis, experimental v.
non-experimental research) , the book takes the reader through
the process of conducting a research problem from problem
selection and statement, signifi cance, review of literature,
methodology, data analysis, fi ndings to recommendations
and conclusions. Detailed descriptions of the American
Psychological Association (APA) style of referencing with ample
examples are provided. The book is written in simple language
so that even high school students will be able to acquire a fairly
good understanding of each contents. Though the primary
target population is undergraduate students of education, the
contents are broad enough to provide a guide for students in
other disciplines, as well as whet the appetite of the general
reader who seeks only a basic knowledge of research and/or
educational research.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465365163

Book preview

Educational Research

A Beginner’s Guide

Allyson Sesay

Copyright © 2011 by Allyson Sesay.

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4653-6515-6

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4653-6516-3

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CONTENTS

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

CHAPTER I  INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER II  STEPS IN CARRYING OUT A RESEARCH PROJECT

CHAPTER III  TYPES OF RESEARCH

CHAPTER IV  PLANNING THE RESEARCH PROJECT

CHAPTER V  DATA COLLECTION

CHAPTER VI  DATA ANALYSIS

CHAPTER VII  THE MECHANICS OF WRITING-UP

REFERENCES

APPENDIX A.  SAMPLE QUESTIONNAIRE

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated first of all to all my former Educational Research Methods students at the then University of Sokoto, now Usmanu Danfodio University in Sokoto, Nigeria, for whom this material was originally developed. Also, importantly, I dedicate this work to my esteemed Professor of Measurement and Evaluation, Norman E. Gronlund, of The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA, who wrote the following evaluative and inspirational statement on a paper (Professional Learning Record) I had submitted for him in a graduate course: This is the best paper in class. Your writing is outstanding. You should be writing textbooks. I am happy I have finally written my first textbook.

PREFACE

The impetus for this book grew out of a need for a course to help prepare undergraduate students at the University of Sokoto (UNISOK), now Usmanu Danfodio University (UDU), to do their research project, a 4-credit hour course required for graduation in Nigerian colleges and universities. The original manuscript was developed to teach the first course in educational research methods in the Faculty of Education and Extension Services at UNISOK. Though the approach and intent have remained pretty much the same – to provide a hands-on guide written in very simple language for even the secondary school student to comprehend. Several additions and modifications have been made to not only broaden its scope but to make it relevant and useful to a wider population of beginning researchers in Africa and elsewhere. I hope that those not in the discipline of education and even the person who is just interested in learning the basics of the interesting and invaluable field of research will find it a useful reference source and guide.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I owe a debt of gratitude to a number of persons for their assistance in getting this work prepared. To Dr. Grace M. Ndip of the Department of Chemistry and Physics at Virginia State University who painstakingly took time to read through almost every line of the manuscript and offered valuable suggestions; to Dr. Simon Ugwuoke of the Department of Natural Science and Mathematics at Shaw University for his assistance in technology; to Ms. Marian Conteh who came to my rescue to complete the job of typing the manuscript after a long period of almost frustrating delay; thanks also to Professor Sheikh Umar Kamarah of Virginia State University for his inspiration; finally, to my dear wife, Irene, for giving up valuable quality time we needed to spend together so that I could devote time to complete this work.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Undergraduate courses in departments of education in colleges and universities in many nations, especially in many former colonial nations in Africa and elsewhere have undergone changes over the years. The contents of some courses have been significantly altered, and some courses have been dropped completely. Other courses have been changed from being optional (electives) to compulsory and vice versa. Amidst all these changes and modifications, the research project has remained unaffected as a core course in undergraduate programs in Nigeria and Sierra Leone, for example. Its contents, no doubt, may have been modified here and there, which is, in fact necessary to keep the course current and relevant to local needs and interests. But it is very unlikely ever to be made optional, let alone to be abolished. Esuabana’s (1984) investigation of students’ views regarding the desirability of the research project showed overwhelming support for leaving the project a compulsory course, and this opinion regarding the research project has not changed since then.

In Nigeria, for example, every student pursuing a degree program in Education (and in other majors, too) is expected to undertake and pass a research project to qualify for the award of the degree. When, in fact, candidates are being interviewed for employment, particularly for teaching positions at the tertiary level (e.g., Graduate Assistants), they are usually asked questions about their undergraduate research projects. The research project, it seems from all indications, has come to stay as a major component of the undergraduate program in many African universities and colleges. Even students at the National Certificate of Education (NCE) and Higher Teachers’ Certificate (HTC) levels and lower are now required to write a research project of some sort. The project thus continues to grow in importance despite some fundamental problems, such as the inadequate number of supervisors to effectively handle the increasing number of research project writers. In the United States of America, similar requirements exist for students to engage in carrying out research projects as a major program project or as part of one course or another. Even students at the high school level are required to undertake a research project as a requirement, especially in advanced courses.

The major concern of those involved with this very important academic exercise is therefore not whether to make the project optional or, worse still, to abolish it, but rather how the students can best be prepared to meet the demands of carrying it out. Not all students have been lucky enough to have taken a research methodology course prior to their undertaking the project. So techniques of doing the project have to be learned in the process of carrying out the work with the help of supervisors, some of whom, it is important to note, are themselves only barely literate in research methodology. Some

of them are graduate assistants who may have just completed their under-

graduate projects a few months back and are now faced with supervising four or five projects. A poor background of students in the basics of research methodology often results in the production of very weak projects, too great a demand on the time of the supervisor, students reproducing past projects, and the like.

Even in cases where a research methods course may be available, the contents may be too demanding of the students. Research designs and methods of data analysis may be too advanced for the majority of students at this level. One common characteristic of many students in Education, especially those majoring in arts, is their poor mathematics background. Many of them find problems in calculating the mean from a short array of scores, let alone standard deviations, variance, and correlation coefficients, or comprehending the mathematics involved in a T-test or a 2 x 2 factorial design. Though it is important to introduce students to these aspects of research methodology, undue emphasis must not be placed on them to the extent of scaring away students and making them dread doing the research project itself.

Most of the texts on educational research methods available to the undergraduate research writers assume fairly good mathematical background and report writing ability on their part. Unfortunately, this background is in many cases just not there. My experience from supervising and, more importantly, coordinating undergraduate research projects, as well as results from an extensive survey of projects written by students in several universities indicate that the majority of the projects are purely descriptive studies of the historical type or a survey of the literature in some aspect of a certain discipline. Very few of the projects involve or require any detailed quantitative analysis of the problems investigated.

What most students need at this level to help them carry out their projects is a solid grounding in the fundamentals of research methods at the most basic level of treatment. Students need to be exposed at a very elementary level to the methods of how to choose and formulate a research problem, how to collect the data necessary for carrying out the study, how to sort the data collected to address the questions raised in the study, and how to present their findings in a simple, clear, and intelligible form that would be understood by even the general reader without a background in research techniques. We cannot produce competent educational researchers after a semester’s course in research methodology. Those students who are willing and able to employ designs (e.g., experimental designs) demanding more than basic mathematical computations should be encouraged to do so. Extra coaching can be arranged for them, and they should be assigned to supervisors with the appropriate research background to help them develop their research potentials as much as possible.

This text is prepared particularly for those students who think the research project is almost impossible for them—the students who think that research is only for the very bright students of above average ability in mathematics. A word of encouragement to the student using this text is that you do not necessarily have to be a good mathematician to be able to carry out your research projects. The mathematics required for many undergraduate projects is of a minimal level. Besides, you can always seek help from a friend or a member of the staff as well as your project supervisor. Many problems, in fact, do not require any mathematical computations.. So, really, anyone can do research. It can be a very interesting and rewarding exercise. I hope this text will help you discover this truth.

The Meaning Of Research

It is first of all important to have a few basic concepts explained before going on to a discussion of the main thrust of research. An understanding of these concepts will help facilitate a clearer understanding of the rest of the materials in this text.

What is Research?

We as individuals and the world in which we live are faced with a variety of problems—problems such as unemployment, political instability, natural disaster (e.g., earthquakes, droughts, floods), poor agricultural productivity, the spread of deadly diseases, climate change, rising divorce rate, juvenile delinquency, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, indiscipline in the classroom, widening digital divide, falling education standards, and countless others. A good many of our activities in life consist, in one way or another, of seeking for solutions to these problems. The process of searching for solutions to our problems may be called research.

Another major purpose of research is to extend knowledge. This does not necessarily mean the knowledge of any particular individual or group, but the . . . pool of knowledge available to anyone with the equipment to use it (Evans, 1978, pp.10-11). Therefore, if a piece of work (for example, a thesis, dissertation, or your final year project) consists essentially of summaries or compilations of information already in existence, it cannot, as Evans notes, strictly be termed research, even though the material or information may have been collected from a variety of sources. Genuine research is usually begun because someone has asked a question and he or she has set out to find an answer(s) to the question. Though partial answers or answers of questionable validity or reliability may already be available, further research might be necessary to furnish a more complete or accurate answer (p.11). Leedy (1985) perceives research as a way of thinking; . . . a way of looking at accumulated fact so that those data become meaningful in the total process of discovering new insights into unsolved problems and revealing new meanings (p.4). Conducting research is not a haphazard and unplanned process based purely on past experience. Rather, it is a well planned, organized and systematic process. Slavin (2007) has defined research as an organized and systematic inquiry that seeks to answer well-framed questions (p.5). In carrying out research, the researcher uses what is called the scientific method, which will give more credence to the results or outcomes of the research. By scientific I am not implying, as some people misconstrue the term, an approach that necessarily involves the application of statistical or quantitative analysis. Rather, I am referring to science in its generic sense as a system of verified information or data. The scientific method is discussed later in this chapter.

What is Educational Research?

The field of education, be it foundations, curriculum, finance, administration, policy, planning, not to mention philosophy, is full of problems to be solved. Since almost, if not all, the work we do in education revolves around teaching and learning, the problems of education are essentially those of teaching and learning—problem areas such as attention, motivation, intelligence, methodology of language teaching, multiculturalism, classroom discipline, instructional technology, parental involvement in their children’s education. Any investigation or study, therefore, which sets out to search for solutions to the problems of teaching and learning can be aptly termed educational research. For example, a researcher may be interested in finding out the factors that were responsible for the high rate of failure in the West African School Certificate Examination in 2008. Another investigator may be interested in finding out the factors that gave rise to the culture of cultism among university students in Nigeria, or in evaluating the impact of the 6-3-3-4 system of education in Sierra Leone after five years of its implementation.

It is important to note that the educational problem to be investigated need not be a specific aspect of teaching or learning, such as the teaching of Integrated Science or the effect of rote learning on the ability to solve practical problems. It could be some aspect related directly or indirectly to the teaching/learning situation (Nwana, 1981:3). Consider, for example, the following research studies:

a)   Effects of the Policy of Free Education for Females of Sokoto State Origin on the Educational Aspirations of Girls in the State’s Secondary Schools.

b)   Effects of the Introduction of School Fees at the Secondary School Level on School Enrollment.

None of the two studies above is specific to an aspect of teaching or learning. They both, however, have something to do with teaching and learning. For example, the outcome of these studies may result in increased student enrollment in the secondary schools. This will necessitate an increase in the supply of teachers (of the right quality and quantity) to secure a conductive teacher/pupil ratio; it may also require the provision of appropriate laboratory space and equipment, workshops, tools for technical subjects, etc. to facilitate effective teaching and learning.

What is the Importance of Educational Research?

The discussion in the previous paragraphs should indicate the importance of conducting educational research. Educational research, because it attempts to seek solutions to the problems of teaching and learning, is an area of cardinal importance in the theory and practice of education. Action research in particular, as noted earlier, is of significant importance in education because its main focus is to improve the researcher’s (usually the practitioner’s) practice, such as attempting to enhance her effectiveness in improving the oral and writing skills of students with limited English. It has long been argued that in order for educational research "to have any impact, it must eventually be used in a practical setting by