Methods in Context - Topics

Labelling:

• Sensitive issue - can cause harm to participants or pupil may not want to open up

  • Building rapport over time with U.I or using G.I (longitudinal) - students feel confident they can share answers

• Marketisation: teachers & heads less willing to give consent as may be disciplined & would give the school a bad reputation - lower admissions or less funding

• Impression Management - teachers manipulate impression by changing how they act, invalid data

• Interviewer bias - pupils may exaggerate impact of labels on achievement, may blame or not teacher (not want them in trouble)

• Parents more likely to give consent - doesn’t impact their image

Social Class Achievement:

• Sensitive issue - pupils less willing to discuss their families’ income

  • Use questionnaire to overcome as anonymous

• Status differences - researcher more likely to be MC so WC pupils & parents may be reluctant to take part

• Difficult to quantify - too many variables

• Access - external factors difficult to observe as impacts mostly at home & behind closed doors

• WC Parents may also not want to give consent

Institutional Racism:

• Sensitive issue - teachers unlikely to admit to it, limiting type of research & can cause harm to children

• Teachers/Heads may not give consent due to marketisation - bad reputation

  • Findings would need to be confidential

• Gatekeepers less likely to allow access if they know issue researched - marketisation

• Impression Management - teachers alter their behaviour to not appear racist

• Need to gain full trust of teachers - lead to deception & breach of trust

Setting & Streaming:

• Access - school may not want to be found out for labelling impacting sets due to marketisation

Parental Involvement:

• Impression Management - parents may lie about how involved they are

  • WC = more involved than they are

  • MC = less involved, children naturally smart

• Not give consent - worry about being judged

• Hard to get access to the home - suspicious, harder to observe in a natural environment

• Avoids marketisation policies & reputation

Anti-school Subcultures

• Hard to build a rapport due to ‘teacher in disguise’ issue - associate researcher with school and hierarchy so less willing to open up

  • Especially with S.I

• Hawthorne Effect - change behaviour when being observed

• Access - although part of a captive population in schools, may be truanting

  • Leads to lower response rate

• Consent?

• Guilty Knowledge - may be involved in crime, researcher may have to break trust

• Gatekeepers may restrict access as could give a bad reputation for school - marketisation

• Low Validity - may exaggerate or lie about opinions on school for fear of ridicule , especially during group interviews