多层混合法研究设计:挑战与优势

与目前运用单一方法的研究相比,多层混合法研究作为一种重要的研究范式,其研究结果可能因更严谨可靠而对政策和实践产生更大的影响。运用多层混合法不仅需要提升研究者的技术能力,还需要转变他们的思维方式。对大多数研究者来说,这可能是一个极大的挑战。当然,这并不是说所有的研究都应该寻求对他人的直接影响;相反,研究的目的各有不同。尽管如此,不同研究领域的研究者一致认为,教师课堂内外赖以生存的社会环境的生态具有不可预测性。对一项在英格兰实施的研究项目进行剖析,探讨多层混合法在教育研究中的应用,发现与单视角的量化研究、元分析或者纯质性研究相比,多层混合法可能提供更微妙的、更细颗粒度的、更严谨可信的、基于循证的领导力研究,从而更为全面地揭示校长如何通过领导力角色、领导行为实现并且保持学校的可持续发展。     

Accounting for – and owning up to – the messiness in cross-cultural/linguistic qualitative research: toward methodological reflexivity in South America’s Internet cafés

The author, a polyglot and world traveler, who lives and breathes multiculturality, examines her own contextual and methodological reflexivity while conducting fieldwork to explore youth’s public Internet use (in Internet Cafés) in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Although the process of conducting (qualitative) research is known to be non-linear, messy, complex, and unpredictable, many published research articles still convey data collection, analysis, and even findings in an orderly and uncomplicated fashion. In this paper, the author joins other scholars to call for greater transparency about the “messiness” of the process, and the meaning-making across linguistic/cultural/social borders, and argues that there should be more acceptance toward the ambiguities inherent in our research “findings.” Drawing from the work of hermeneutic philosopher, Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002), the author claims that “fusion of (hermeneutic) horizons” in cross-linguistic/cultural research requires that researchers maintain an active, critical presence in the field and beyond, as well as continuous attention to contextual and methodological flexibility and reflexivity. Finally, the author offers some practical suggestions on conducting fieldwork to researchers planning to conduct cross-cultural/linguistic qualitative inquiry.     

Aligning epistemology with member checks

ABSTRACT

Thoroughly conceptualized and designed member checks can strengthen credibility in qualitative research. Member checks can help researchers increase accuracy of their findings, reflect on their topic, and create change. Although member checks are widely used, numerous researchers have argued that they are often underdeveloped in terms of design and implementation. Yet, few researchers have examined how differences in epistemology may contribute to discrepancies between participants and researchers. A personal example is described where epistemology and member checking procedures complicated data analysis between a researcher and participant.     

Strength,Sharing and Service: Restorying and the legitimation of research texts

This article uses data from a longitudinal qualitative research project exploring the experiences of elementary teachers as they both learnt and taught science in the transition from a pre‐service to an in‐service situation. Interviews, journal entries and observations were the original data sources from which case studies were derived by narrative analysis. The material used in this article concerns a single participant. The purpose is to examine a narrative device, restorying, and explore its usefulness as a way of enhancing legitimation in narrative inquiry. Three sets of criteria for legitimation of qualitative studies are suggested; a set that requires research to be conducted in ways that provide evidence of thoroughness and fairness; a set that allows the reader to experience vicariously the world of the participants; and a set concerned with the ways in which education is enhanced for researcher, participants and reader. The authors suggest that a single text cannot fully satisfy all of these criteria sets but that by using multiple tellings or restorying, the legitimation of findings in qualitative research can be enhanced.     

Becoming researchers: doctoral students' developmental processes

A key step in the development of skills to conduct independent research is the ability to develop topics of interest into research studies that examine problems of significance in a field of study. This qualitative interview study conducted in the USA examined how seven novice qualitative researchers who had taken course work in qualitative research methods selected topics for research and developed these into studies for dissertation research. Findings identify processes contributing to novice researchers' abilities to conceptualize their topics as significant. These processes include recognizing the need to integrate their interests in existing disciplinary fields, learning that occurred through the practice of fieldwork, applying guidance from advisors and committee members, and developing a deeper understanding of the relationship of their studies to existing research. The paper suggests points of tension for new scholars in the development of research topics, exploring how doctoral supervisors and instructors might assist students in learning how to design and conduct qualitative studies for doctoral research.     

A REVIEW OF EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE ON SCAFFOLDING FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION

This content analysis of articles in the Social Science Citation Index journals from 1995 to 2009 was conducted to provide science educators with empirical evidence regarding the effects of scaffolding on science learning. It clarifies the definition, design, and implementation of scaffolding in science classrooms and research studies. The results show important cross-study evidence that most researchers have adopted a qualitative approach (67.44%), focused on learning context (72.09%), and used high school students as participants (53.49%). In designing scaffoldings, researchers have shown a preference for long-term explicit scaffolding using multiple representations to promote procedural and strategic skills and alternative assessments of learner performance. Nevertheless, scaffolding issues related to teacher education are unexpectedly few (11.63%) in empirical research. The results also indicate that there are too few studies to guide researchers in considering fading scaffolds for active learning (9.30%). Future directions and suggestions toward conducting research regarding scaffolding are provided.     

Roles and relationships in qualitative research on teachers' thinking: A reconsideration

Much research about teachers and teaching is still planned and conducted by researchers who give little thought or effort to the involvement and learning of the teachers who are their subjects. Whilst this continues to be the predominant research paradigm, and until collaborative networks between educators from different sectors of the professions are established, the traditional separation between academics - those who research - and teachers - those who teach - will remain, and the usefulness of research to both communities will continue to be subject to critical comment. This paper proposes a set of different roles and relationships for researchers involved in qualitative research in which researchers may also be consultants, and in which affective, human-relating skills hold the same importance as the more traditional technical skills of the researcher.     

A tenuous relationship: The African university and development policymaking in the 1980s

This paper examines some reasons why research findings generated by African university-based researchers seldom are taken into serious consideration by development policymakers in anglophone Africa. It begins with a brief review of the introduction of British models of higher education and scientific research into Africa, using Nigeria as an illustrative case. It then considers the current research environment of the African university and the changing role of the university in the late 1980s. The paper posits a number of reasons why research carried out at African universities rarely is used as input by policymakers in their development planning processes: (1) there is a clear dichotomy between the university and government, with relations that can best be described as mutually suspicious; (2) there is a dichotomy between university-based researchers working on national development problems and the rural populations who usually are intended as the recipients or beneficiaries of the research findings; and (3) research is seriously underfunded in virtually all African universities, with the result that researchers seldom have sufficient means to carry out effective dissemination of their research findings. The paper ends with some suggestions as to how the impact of these problems might be minimized.The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of the International Development Research Centre.     

Experiences of paraprofessionals in US preschool special education and general education classrooms

A substantial challenge confronting public education systems across the world is the employment and retention of high‐quality paraprofessionals (also known as teaching assistants and educational assistants). The current study expands upon previous research by employing a mixed methods design to examine the relationship between paraprofessionals' perceptions of their responsibilities and the corresponding satisfaction and issues relating to their job in the USA. Analytic induction through the generation of themes was used to analyse the qualitative data and revealed that paraprofessionals perceive or demonstrate issues relating to three primary domains: confusion of responsibilities in different contexts, relational power dynamics between paraprofessionals and teachers, and satisfaction based on both monetary compensation and recognition. In addition to the qualitative findings, researchers designed the paraprofessional perception survey, a quantitative survey measuring the concept of paraprofessional perceptions relating to their job. Results from the survey analysis revealed similar findings across domains. Additional results, practice implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Whose reality counts? Local educators as researchers on the quality of primary education

This article describes a methodology that local educators can use to conduct structured analytic research on the quality of primary education. The methodology has been developed by four twenty-person teams of local educators who carried out studies in rural regions of Madagascar, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda. In addition to describing the methodology, the article presents short summaries of the researchers’ conclusions and recommendations. However, its main purpose is to share the methodology that has evolved. The methodology is qualitative, but a simple quantitative measure of relationship between binary variables (Yule’s Q) was used to test the researchers’ qualitative findings. It is this tool that provoked the most significant reflection among the researchers in each group. In general, the results of the four studies corroborate other research on the factors that influence student outcomes in primary schools in Sub-Saharan Africa. More importantly, the studies’ results demonstrate that the methodology offers practicing educators a tool that helps them define, collect, and rigorously analyse empirical information to reach shared insights about their schools and then to formulate practical recommendations about what to do to improve student learning.     

Mixed methods in educational psychology inquiry

Mixed methods research has the potential to advance theory and enhance the usefulness of research findings. However, the success of a mixed methods research inquiry is tied to how well researchers integrate the quantitative and qualitative strands, and to how well researchers address the standards for quality in quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. In this introduction article, we define mixed methods research and discuss what mixed methods research can offer to the field of educational psychology. Then we consider what constitutes integration and rigor in mixed methods research and describe three core mixed methods research designs. Following this overview, we briefly introduce each article to this special issue, along with the commentary by Vicki Plano Clark. We also discuss how the use of mixed methods can help address common educational problems including: (a) identifying and exploring socially-situated and contextualized learning processes; (b) providing insights into differences across individuals with respect to educational outcomes; and, (c) building instruments that reflect the experiences of individuals who will be assessed by these instruments. Finally, we close with thoughts on the future of mixed methods research.