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It may be obvious to study pupils, teacher and the school but parents also play an important part in the educational process.

Parents can influence what goes on in education. Any examples?

However, they are not a single homogeneous group, their class, gender and ethnicity may affect how willing or able they are to participate in research. This in turn effects the researcher’s findings and representativeness of the research. Examples?

Parental permission

Parental permission is required for many forms of research with pupils. How likely parents are to give their permission may depend on the sensitivity of the research issue and on whether they can see their children benefiting from being involved. In general, the more sensitive an issue appears to be for parents, the less likely they are to consent to their children participating in research. Examples?

Impression management

Parents may engage in impression management, presenting themselves to researchers in a positive light by exaggerating their involvement in their children’s education. For example, they may lie about whether they attend parents’ evenings or how often they read to their children. What can this do to your results?

Access to parents

Parent-child interaction takes place in the home, which is a private setting often closed to the researcher. Unlike most other important groups within education, parents are unusual in that they are the most part, physically located outside the school. This may make them more difficult to contact and research.

Although lists of parents’ names and addresses exist in school records, a school would not normally release such information to researchers. However, the school might well be happy to help a researcher contact parents b using the usual method of sending letters or questionnaires home with pupils. However, what other issues might there be with sending questionnaires to parents via students?

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There are tens of thousands of schools of many different kinds in the UK. If the sociologist uses observational methods, they are unlikely to have time to investigate more than a very few and their research risks being unrepresentative. What methods to use instead?

Schools’ own data

There is a great deal of secondary data publicly available about schools, often produced by the school themselves. This includes exam results and league tables; figures on truancy and subject choices; Ofsted reports; government inquiries and school policy documents. Schools also produce personal documents such as reports on individual students.

Schools are therefore ‘data-rich’ places and sociologists may be able to make use of some of these secondary sources in their research. Is this rich data accessible to researchers? And why?

Other school data may pose particular difficulties on issues that may not be reported.

The law

The law in effect requires young people to attend school in order to be educated. Having such a ‘captive population’ to study has both advantages and disadvantages. Researcher will always know where the students are but can’t always take them out of lessons because the school’s purpose is to educate students.

It is a legal requirement for schools to collect information on student’s attendance and achievement etc. This information could be useful for the researcher.

Gatekeepers

Head teachers and governors are gatekeepers who have the power to refuse the researcher access to the school. They may do so if they believe that the research will interfere with the work of the school or undermine teachers’ authority.

Meighan and Harber (2007) head teachers sometimes view research negatively. For example, heads’ reactions to a research project that Meighan wanted to carry out on consulting pupils about teaching included the following views: it is dangerous to involve pupils in commenting on their teachers, discipline would be adversely affected, it would be bad for classroom relationships and children are not competent to judge teachers.

Some situations and school settings are ‘off limits’ to researchers such as head teacher’s interviews with parents. What other settings could be off limits?

School organisation

Schools are formal organisations with rules and hierarchies. Researchers may come to be seen as part of the hierarchy. For example, students may see them as teachers, while teachers may see them as inspectors. In schools where there is conflict, for example between students and teachers, researchers may even be seen as ‘the enemy’.

Many schools in today’s society are single-sex schools, which may cause difficulty for the researcher. How?

Schools are relatively large-scale, complex, highly organised social institutions. They have daily and yearly timetables, management structures, meetings schedules and so on, and these may all affect when and how a study can be carried out. Any examples?

Size of the school can also be a complexity. It may take the researcher months to work out where everything in the school is and who does what in a particular school.

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Teachers often feel over-worked and may be less than fully cooperative, even when they want to be helpful. This may mean that interviews and questionnaires need to be kept short, and this will restrict the amount of data that can be gathered. On the other hand, as professionals, teachers are likely to be sympathetic to educational research. Is this an advantage?

Power and status

Power relationships in the school are not equal. Teachers have more power and status because of their age, experience and responsibility within the school. They also have legal responsibilities and a duty of care towards the young people they teach.

The nature of the classroom reinforces the power of the teacher. Teachers often see it as ‘my classroom’, in which the researcher may be viewed as a trespasser. What would the researcher have to do?

Impression management

Teachers are used to be being observed and scrutinised. Example? As a result, they may well be more willing to be observed by a researcher since it is something they are accustomed to experiencing.

However, because a major part of the teacher’s role is to ‘put on an act’ for pupils and others, teachers are often highly skilled at what Erving Goffman (1969) calls ‘impression management’ – manipulating the impression that other people have of us. The researcher may therefore have to find way to get behind the public face that teachers put on.

Goffman also analyses how, as social actors, we behave differently when we are acting out a role ‘front stage’ as opposed to when we are back stage. Some researchers study teachers in their backstage setting – usually the staffroom. Any problems with this?

Head teachers may try to influence which staff are selected to be involved in the research and these may not be fully representative of all teachers in the school. For example, a head may hand pick teachers who will convey a favourable image of the school – another example of impression management. So what?

Other staff around the school may provide useful insights in to school life. For example, playground attendants and support staff might see school life differently from teaching staff.

Extension

How might teachers’ front stage and back stage behaviour differ? How might you research their back stage behaviour?

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Malcolm Hill (2005) identified three differences between studying young people and studying adults. Power and status, ability and understanding and vulnerability.

Power and status

Children and young adults generally have less power and status than adults, therefore meaning it may be more difficult for them to state their attitudes and opinions. Especially if their views challenge those of adults. This is evident in school due to the hierarchal institutions, which gives teachers higher status and power over pupils. Teachers may sometimes even be able to use this power to influence which pupils are selected for research, for example in order to promote a good image of themselves or the school.

The researcher’s personal characteristics are also a factor when researching students. Students may portray the researcher and therefore not want to take part in the research or even speak to the researcher.

The type of research method is also to be considered. If the research method is very structured and doesn’t allow for students to express further opinions, it reinforces this power difference. As well as this, response rate is to be considered when providing questionnaires for example to pupils. How can the researcher overcome this?

Ability and understanding

Pupils’ vocabulary, power and self-expression, thinking skills and confidence are likely to be more limited than those of adults – particularly when trying to express abstract ideas. What would the researcher have to do?

Young people use language in different ways from adults, which makes the construction of appropriately worded questions particularly demanding. Young children in particular are also likely to require more time than adults to understand questions.

A young person’s memory is less developed than that of an adult, so they may be unable to recall in detail relevant material when asked to do so by the researcher.

Are all pupils the same in terms of ability and understanding?

Vulnerability and ethical issues

As a result of their more limited power and ability, young people are often more vulnerable to physical and psychological harm than adults.

Given the vulnerability of school-age pupils, child protection issues are very important. For example, personal data should not be kept unless it is vital to the research.

Researchers should also consider what form the participation will take and any stress that may result. For example, questioning young children for a long period of time would be considered inappropriate. Why?

Laws and guidelines

Child protection laws such as the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006, operate a vetting and barring scheme on adults working in schools, which requires researchers to have a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check. This may delay or prevent researchers from carrying out their research. Researchers also have to follow ethical guidelines provided by the British Sociological Association to ensure the rights of children are protected.

Extension:

Why might members of an anti-school subculture be unwilling to cooperate with a researcher who wants to interview them?

How could you overcome this problem?