Manual for doing an educational research
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ndividuals behavior during certain intervals of time; continuous stage requires the writing of so-called protocol of everything what is going on the certain moment.the process of observation starts it is necessary to know what kind of recording procedure will be used. It is possible to use some standard forms which were designed by some researchers before and it will save time. But if none of the standard form suits or because of other reasons, a researcher can develop his own form. It is also possible to train some people who will do observation as well. This practice has two advantages: first it will save time on data collection and second if several people are involved in the observation, the data then will be more objective and reliable. In order to have some assistances, before the procedure starts, they need to be trained, explained how to work with observation form and better practice the procedure in a words situation.are some typical mistakes, called observer effects, made during the observation which are better to be avoided.
.Effect of the observer to the observed. It is natural that people behave differently if there is a person who observes them. In order to avoid observing wrong behavior, it is recommended to come and visit the place and people or students several time, before the procedure begins. During that time participants will get used to a researcher and in few days will act normally. Sometimes if a researcher wants to evaluate the work of a particular teacher, it is better not to say the real aim of the study, because it can influence teachers methods.
.Rating error, can happen if a researcher can not identify what is of great importance for the study and what is which actions are not relevant at all.
.Observer contamination happens if a researcher has some specific knowledge before which can influence the whole procedure. For example a researcher wants to evaluate the work of English language teachers in several schools. But if he or she knows before that this teacher is better and the other one is one of the worst, then the quality of observation will be different based on this unreliable information.
.Observer drift and reliability decay can happen mostly to the researchers assistances of observation. If the procedure lasts longer than a week or so, they can forget their main target and concentrate on different issues. In order to avoid it, it is better to organize some refreshing meeting with these people.process of observation in qualitative research differs from the same in quantitative. First, in the qualitative study it is allowed for a researcher to express his own feelings, emotions and knowledge on the topic, to be less objective. Second, the target of observation in qualitative research is more flexible and can be switched if a new more interesting issue is found out. Third, the observation itself is wider and covers more details. The observer in qualitative study can be either complete observer only or even a complete participant.if the there is no other way, the observation can be made when participants are unaware of the study. In some cases a researcher can ask a teacher for permission to observe students or maybe students can be informed that one day during this week or month some observation will be done, but without identifying the date.
Nonexperimental research studies
Some of the educational studies are called nonexperimental, and can be done either through descriptive or casual-comparative designs. Descriptive research is very important in educational sciences and can be adequately used both in qualitative and quantitative studies. The main question of descriptive research is What is…? and then a researcher tries to give good explanation of the issue. Making a descriptive study, the researcher has to follow the usual procedure: identify the problem, research hypothesis and questions, choose sample, make data collection and then analyze them.researcher should always remember that sometimes there are two kinds of variable: independent and dependent. Suppose somebody hypotheses that introduction of flexible curriculum will increase students learning outcome. In this case curriculum is independent variable, while students outcome depends on it.nonexperimental research method is causal-comparative research. For this method a researcher has to select people in whom the independent variable is present or absent and then observe if there will be some changes connected to the dependent variable, in other words, the researcher studies cause-and-effect correlation.research is depended on two variables and it usually goes together with correlational statistics. The results of the study are presented in scattergram, where the connection between two variables is shown, x- and y-axis correspondingly. There can be either positive or negative correlation. If it is possible to predict how the y variable changes according to x, then it is positive; if it is impossible, then the correlation is negative. The use of correlational method allows a researcher to see how different variables can influence each other, what is not so easy to see in other methods, where main conclusions will be about effective and ineffective teaching styles or whatever.
Conclusion and discussion
As it is seen from above, there are plenty of ways to make educational research. Sometimes people are not aware of all the advantages and disadvantages of different methods and how they can be implemented, and mistakenly believe that there are two different kinds of research: qualitative and quantitative and as a result of this the methods are divided correspondently.the authors of this book showed how and what for each method can be used in different ways. This book gives a light and has to be a manual for everybody who wants to make research in education.alongside with globalization more and more educational studies are done, international tests are becoming more available, demanded and popular and it requires a good system for data analysis. Majority of these tests are either totally computerized or at least data are analyzed through special programs. And although the results are made through statistics or other quantitative methods, the researchers are able to give good interpretation and characteristics. And it proves that education is not a strange science.