In this chapter we will consider two key forms of qualitative research, viz. Action Research and Evaluation, though it is with the former that we are chiefly concerned.
1. Action Research
Kurt Lewin is commonly seen as the originator of Action Research [AR]. Lewin left Berlin in 1933 and worked as an academic at the University of Iowa. In 1911 Frederick Taylor published The Priciples of Scientific Management and Lewin endeavoured to show that there were alternatives to this approach. Taylor recommended the use of scientific method to systematise and standardise industry. Taylor demonstrated, for example, that if a man carried out orders to the minutest detail and showed no initiative he could load over 47 tons of pig iron a day onto a railway truck. He then used this as a standard to judge other workers who, he found, were typically loading only about 12 tons. Taylor reasoned that the hard working employee should be better paid and was happier to work under these conditions. There were then attempts to take these models of industrial efficiency into schools. Under the guidance of the US Office of Education a number of schools were surveyed their own work and 'objective tests' were developed to determine the quality of teaching [see Norris, 1990].
In contrast, Lewin carried out tests in factories and neighbourhood settings in order to show that there were:
"greater gains in productivity and in law and order through democratic participation rather than autocratic coercion." [Adelman, 1993]
At the heart of such projects was the notion of empowering ordinary people in local communities to do what they wanted done. From the 1950s onwards AR as an element in the approach to social problems has varied in its importance. In the 1960s in particular,
"UK and the US social policy provided exceptionally large budgets for intervention programmes in education, health and housing. These programmes were intended to raise the life chances, achievement and expectations of the poor, otherwise called the 'disadvantaged'." [Adelman, op. cit.]
By the early 1970s AR as an approach had been widely incorporated into managerial approaches in the US, thereby losing its character. At this time the Ford Teaching Project brought together John Elliott, Barry MacDonald, Clem Adelman and Rob Walker [1971]. Elliott maintained that while excellent teaching materials were being created there had been little correesponding change in teaching practice. In particular:
"There was an alarming gap between the aspirations of education policy makers, who decided on expenditure for curriculum development, and the implementation of programmes of change in classrooms." [Adelman op. cit.]
The intention was to show that teachers could change the curriculum by working together. The Ford T Project, as it became known, worked with forty teachers and demonstrated that teachers were able to reseach and improve their own practice. The idea has since spread to many parts of the world and the Classroom Action Research Network [CARN], based at UEA, is now an international organisation with members from a range of professions such as the health service and the police, in addition to teachers. There is now too, the new periodical The Educational Action Researcher in which the above paper by Adelman appeared. The periodical has an internationally based editorial board and publishes refereed papers. There is also a magazine called the Action Researcher which was recently launched with Jean McNiff as editor. The magazine provides publication opportunities for a anyone who carries out AR, not just academics.
2. Evaluation
While he was active in the 1930s, Lewin met and corresponded with John Dewey who wrote about progressive education. He did not, however, have contact with Ralph Tyler who was at Ohio State University during the 1930s and was later a colleague of Dewey at the University of Chicago. Tyler was engaged in the beginnings of evaluation and had ideas which closely resembled those of Lewin. Tyler, like Lewin, reacted against the ideas of scientific management.
In the 1930s The Progressive Education Association expressed a concern that secondary school curricula were not relevant to the needs of pupils. The association established a commission which engaged Tyler to study secondary education in an eight year study between 1932 and 1940. The study was called an evaluation because in Tyler's words evaluation implied "a process by which the values of an enterprise are ascertained". [Norris, 1990]. The process included too, a developmental element in that school curricula were changed as part of the study. Indeed curriculum design became a central part of the evaluation.
In 1949 Tyler's Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction was published. from this point Norris picks out 'two great landmarks' in the development of educational evaluation. The first followed the reaction to the launch of the Russian Sputnik in 1957. It prompted federal support for school curriculum improvement in a number of subjects, and an associated evaluation of these projects as much to support budget requests as to evaluate curriculum improvement.
The second was
"the elementary and Secondary Education Act 0f 1965 ... which was the first piece of social legislation to mandate project reporting. This unprecedented evaluation requirement was tied to Title 1 of the Act, which was a compensatory education programme of 1 billion dollars per annum allocated to meet the needs of disadvantaged children." [Norris, op. cit.]
Later, large scale and [even huge] federal funded, and smaller state funded, evaluations took place in the 1970s. Many of the evaluations were quantitative and yielded little by way of helpful information yet they continued to be funded. Gradually a new breed of evaluators including, Lee Cronbach, Bob Stake, Ernest House emerged.
In Britain there is a long history of Royal Commissions and similar committees of enquiry that could be called evaluative. Something slightly closer to what might be called evaluation took place in the late 1950s and early 1960s [see Norris, op. cit.]. Several major educational evaluations took place which compared the effectiveness of the initial teaching alphabet to traditional orthography as means of helping young children to read. There were considerable problems not least of which was a heavy reliance on psychometric testing as a measure of children's ability. Additional problems arose when researchers were unable to randomly select schools and pupils when this was politically and administratively inexpedient. The possibility of generalising was therefore undermined.
In 1964 there were some small scale evaluations carried out by the National Foundation for Educational Research but it was the Schools Council, founded in 1964, which established evaluation as a feature of curriculum development. Indeed, educational evaluation in Britain came to grow out of the activities associated with curriculum development. Yet the community of evaluators was tiny in comparison to that of the US and the experience miniscule. Before long the US experience, which emphasised curriculum objectives and technological measurement, was in conflict with what many British educators saw as teacher autonomy. Educationists such as Alec Clegg were very outspoken against what they saw as the systematic, rational and coherent method of curriculum development implied by such forms of evaluation.
In 1972 a major change took place with the publication of Evaluation as Illumination: A New Approach to the Study of Innovatory Programmes by Parlett and Hamilton. This was a paper by evaluators for evaluators which confronted and rejected those forms of evaluation which grew from the technological and psychological traditions. Equally important was a paper by Barry MacDonald called Evaluation and Control of Education.. This second paper drew attention to the 'political' nature of the evaluation of a programme or project. In the process of evaluation it is usual for different groups to seek to impose or at least be most familiar with their own perceptions and interpretations. The evaluator might seek to represent the programme director most forcibly [Bureacratic Evaluation] or the evaluator's personal views above others [Autocratic Evaluation]. MacDonald contrasted both with Democratic Evaluation in which all participants have an equal say. Both papers remain influential.
A fuller explication of both the papers will be found in chapter 7.
Programme evaluation, which is usually conducted by an external, practising evaluator is concerned with providing information for decision making. AR stresses action much more, and in this case action by the professional who wants to improve his or her decision making and the quality of social action. In this sense the two components of qualitative research have a different intention. Yet when the evaluator is, say a teacher evaluating the work of a department in her own school, that is an 'insider evaluator', she is almost the same as an action researcher. Similarly, when the action resarcher actively engages with her colleagues she becomes similar to the inside evaluator. In these cases evaluation and AR are practically the same.
In that both forms of qualitative research generate knowledge about other people, the researcher has some power over those people. There will be many instances where the researcher will have information which is confidential and where both the researcher and the researched, if they are different, need the protection of an agreed set of ethical principle
Ethical principles are vital. Research in any institution, is a community action. In order to maintain a positive ethos the rights of all the community have to be respected. The relevant community will depend upon the focus of the study. For this reason it is worth considering the principles under which the research will be conducted.
These are general principles relevant which can be modified or form the basis of guidelines for any project:
Researchers have to negotiate their way through their research. They have to negotiate access, i.e. they have to ask colleagues and others if they will agree to be researched and if they will give up time for interviews and similar activities. If access is agreed and an interview given, steps should be taken to ensure that the account is fair, accurate and relevant.. This is called the negotiation of accounts. There are various degrees of negotiating accounts. A strong form occurs when complete manuscripts are returned to interviewees but in most cases this is a daunting and impracticial task. More often, guarantees of confidentiality and anonymity allow the interviewer to use data from an interview. In this case the interviewer has an ethical duty to act responsibly. Alternative strategies include:
- showing complete transcripts only to those who are most easily recogniseable.
- showing edited parts that might be included in a final report.
The negotiation of boundaries rests upon the respect which should be offered to all participants, especially those without power. There maybe a number of different perceptions that have to be pieced together. All of these should be considered. Should a respondent assert that the testimony of X is basically flawed the researcher will have to ask why. Some interviewees may use part of an interview to carp about a colleague and the response could be that the interview is concerned with issues not people. Plainly there is a narrow line between the two.
Research within schools can too easily be abused. Within the community of the classroom, teachers are powerful figures in the lives of children. Similarly, within the community of the school Headteachers are powerful figures in the careers of their staff and their pupils. Such power relations, if used in the process of research will lead to abuse. Knowledge is power. And knowledge of other people is power over people.
An essential question which must be asked by all those who want to engage in research is: Why and for what purposes is the research to be carried out? Basically, this is an ethical question. In answering the question, one must ask whether anyone's interests, needs, feelings will be damaged or hurt. One must ask also, if anyone will profit by the research and in what way.
The central force of the ethical principles outlined here is concerned with the collection of data. It has been pointed out that there is little reference to the action or change that maybe anticipated to emanate from the research. The above question in bold type suggests that researchers should pay attention to this question as does, to some extent, the principle of empowerment. The value that qualitative research attaches to human decision making is an indication that control of action should lie with individuals. Equally important is the conviction or assumption that the engagement of practitioners in researching their own practice will prompt action. This is often treated as empirically or historically demonstrable by established qualitative researchers [see MacDonald in Rudduck, 1991]. As I have pointed out above, qualitative researchers are generally well aware of the importance of practitioner engagement as an essential factor in change.
Nevertheless, we live in an age of information gathering. What will happen to the data? What rights do people have in relation to such data files? Is research just another process of gathering information on people? These are uncomfortable questions, but must be asked by the researcher.
Data from different sources soon reveals that there are a range of views and biases, including those of the researcher him or herslf. You will probably find yourself comparing what different people are saying about the same issue. In addition we can even compare what they say during an interview with what you observe them doing, what they say in a staff meeting, with what they say at a parents evening, and with what they write in school publications. This process of cross-referencing is called triangulation.
The results of the process of triangulation are these:
Also, by watching video recordings, or listening to the talk of children we may see or hear things that otherwise would be overlooked. This can provide insights into and increase awareness of classroom activities and processes.
As we go through the case records noticing comparisons and differences we can increase the sophistication of our indexing procedures as we notice more and more points of comparison and contrast.
By now the reader should begin to realise that to conduct qualitative research it is not necessary to have sophisticated resources, though some can help. The resources can be as simple or as sophisticated as time and money will allow. The essential need is for some way to record observations. A pen and paper will do. However, the following will increase the richness and utility of the record:
Of all these time is the most vital resource. Research always takes longer than you think. If transcribing taperecordings or video is important to your research, then one hour of tape can take five or more hours to transcribe! However, such exactitude may not often be necessary for your purposes.
If your research is funded, you may be able to build in supply cover. This is a great boon. It generates the possibilities for team teaching, transcribing, thinking, planning and writing. Word processors are now relatively cheap. At the time of writing a small machine such as an Amstrad costs just over £300 and will do a considerable period of reliable work producing good quality script. The great advantage of WPs is that you can build up materials, gradually editing them together into a final report. One can write more intuitively in the knowledge that the parts that are ragged, ill-thought out can be polished and edited later. For many people this seems to free the mind to think and this is in contrast to pre-wordprocessing days when there was the dread of finding a sentence in the middle of a paragraph that did not fit. It was then a matter of continually re-writing whole sections, often ending up with piles of cuttings, empty glue pots on the living room floor and children and cats walking around the house with bits of paper stuck to their feet.