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What is research?
As you begin to read and think about self-study it is worth taking a step back and thinking about what we actually mean and understand by 'research'.
Please contribute to this wiki (please use the edit function and not the add comment function) to build this wiki page on 'what is research'. Consider the following points: what is the nature, purpose and process of doing research? who does or should do research? who decides? [edit]

Research is:
the conscious process a researcher engages in to either question what has been taken for granted so far on a certain issue and challenge the existing findings or to contribute something new and different that has gone unsaid. "Research activity seeks to extend our knowledge", Briggs and Coleman, "Research methods in Educational Leadership and Management", introduction, and it is generally made up of three stages, namely planning, application, and analysis of the data collected and the recording of conclusions. Research, however, can take different forms and can vary from a scholarly study of a multi-disciplinary nature to a master's research, a governmental contract project or even a simple product survey among consumers. In this sense we have all been involved in some kind or research, whether as participants or as researchers (work permit) at some point in our lives.

As far as I can understand each research aims at a specific goal and should start with a set of questions. These questions will be the driving force of the work we are doing. Research also uses a number of tools , eg surveys, questionnaires, interviews, measurements and observations in order to ensure the collection of a significant amount of data for analysis. Nevertheless, the selection of which methods to use depends on the nature of the research.

For instance, during her PhD work, my sister had to do extensive research among school students in order to record their behaviour in her PE class and observe the development of the students' responsibility both on a personal and on a social level. Her research involved the use of questionnaires from both students and teachers, classroom observations and measurements. This year she herself had to participate in a research programme conducted by the Greek Department of Pedagogy in the form of personal interviews concerning the perspectives of working at a multi-national school,as the one she is appointed to in our home town.

I also remember last year when we had to do a govermental survey with our students about 'bullying' in schools. Students had to fill in a questionnaire designed by the authorities that were interested in recording the incidence of 'bullying' in Greek schools. A couple of weeks ago there was also an Internet survey conducted by a private organisation to find out to what extent people use the internet as a source of information on current affairs.
I have never been a researcher myself, but I have certainly been a participant on many ocassions and I remember that the first question I always asked was "What is it for?".
Edited by Sophia Nikopoulou.

In the literature there are two general paradigms regarding educational research, the quantitative and the qualitative. In the seventies and eighties there was a so called "Paradigm War" among researchers, during which each side favoured their own methodologies, and there were epistemological debates over which research methods were the best in terms of validity, objectivity, reliability and depth of understanding.


Quantitative research techniques in education include, among others, data specific classroom observation, surveys, questionnaires, analysis of numerical data from student results, etc.

These research techniques are often characterised by more of a scientific method approach. This would perhaps entail taking a large set of results and comparing one variable to another in the hope of finding some kind of statistical significance, even perhaps a causal relationship. Strengths of this approach become apparent when the project is of a big enough scale, and include an output of if we do this, this is more likely to happen, as well as an idea of the certainty with which we make this claim - once a statistical analysis has been done. There are weaknesses of these techniques though, for example a complete loss of the big picture because we tend to only look at one specific thing, and the idea of causality mentioned above is tenuous as while A may appear to lead to B, perhaps it's really because of some unknown, C.

Qualitative research techniques include things such as interviewing, generalised class observations, journaling, ethnography.

These approaches differ to scientific methods in that often they do not produce numeric data to be analysed, instead they provide much richer written data that must be analysed in different ways. This enables researchers to see the big picture more in terms of: What is actually happening? What processes are going on here? Why is this so?

Weaknesses of this approach possibly include a loss in objectivity - it is implicit within the concept of qualitative research that the researcher will affect the situation by researching it, that this written data will be interpreted differently by different people.

In Pring's book:
Chapter 3: Different kinds of research and their philosophical foundations. Pring, R. (2000). Philosophy of educational research. London: Continuum

He makes it clear that it is important to match the methods that we choose to our research questions, not to our idea of which techniques are philosophically more appealing.
Edited by Stewart Aitkenhead


Grounded Theory
This a kind of research which uses both quantitive and qualitative methods (although mostly qualitative). It is different from other forms of research because it begins with data gathering, and after that, theories and hypothesis are generated. This theory was developed by Anselm Strauss & Barnley Glaser in 1967, and since then there has been continued disagreement between the developers regarding the coding strategies which should be used when gathering the data.
Edited by Dan Frater

So far from what I've been reading, I realise how important it is to start your research with a good question. Every book stresses the vitality of having a strong starting point for any type of research. Then you need to do a literature review to find out what others have said about or done that is related to your research question. This must be time consuming and requires time management because you can easily be lost in the plethora of information available. From then on you need to decide on the methods and methodology you'll use, collect the data, review and refine your question, analyse your findings and draw your conclusions. All of these stages together will ultimately give you a good research project that could be grounded and controlled.

Commenting on Stewart's notes about research and the two 'Q words' , as Stephen Gorard calls them, I totally agree with what Stewart says about combining the two methods. Richard Pring argues in his "Philosophy of Educational Research" (2000) that the two methods are not in 'opposition' to one another and that they shouldn't divide the world of social and educational research. The goal is to be able to use the appropriate method that your investigation needs determine each time.
Edited by Sophia Nikopoulou

As an undergraduate student and then a post-graduate student in the past I saw research as a formal information gathering process. Qualitative research always seemed like a far more interesting process, in that it had the capacity to shed light on human experience.It tended to involve conversations and a wealth of information. However I also felt as if it was a, somehow inferior and less reliable version of the more scientific quantitative version. Perhaps a fear of statistics and mathematical analysis fed into this view.

In work in schools research is used to shed light on issues in that environment,rather than to answer a question of academic interest. In light of that I liked the idea in the Frost Chapter that the kind of research that answers a question is not the kind that has the best impact on practice improvement. "Rather than posing questions out of academic curiosity the practitioner researcher begins with a purpose or concern that arises in the normal flow of professional reflection, deliberation and discussion".(p. 176) In working on action plans with teams within my service there is a strong tendency for people to gather data.This is interesting and the results sound good. However,finding the answer to a question in this way does not lead directly to change in practice and even if these results are presented to people, it is my experience that people listen less to the data elements in any training session. In improving service impact it seems much more appropriate to consider carefully the impact of a particular approach in collaboration with colleagues and pupils involved. So instead of finding out what is there already by asking the right question, this kind of research would be messing around with what is there to see if it gets you closer to where you want to be.
Edited by Bryony