Educational Research Methods
A site to support teaching and learning...
Recording discussions
An alternative technique to interviewing a group, or setting up a focus group to observe and record, is to set up a discussion to record without the researcher being present. Pope and Denicolo explain why this might be a sensible choice:
“...the groups would carry out the task, although the quality of discussion depended on group composition...
the presence of a researcher in the group has a disproportionate impact, and changed the nature of the discussion to be more like a teaching context...,
whereas when the children were left alone the process would elicit a discussion rich in the their own ideas” (Pope and Denicolo, 1986: 159)
Pope, M. L., & Denicolo, P. (1986). Intuitive theories - a researcher’s dilemma: some practical methodological implications. British Educational Research Journal, 12(2), 153-166.
This is a personal site of Keith S. Taber to support teaching of educational research methods.
(Dr Keith Taber is Professor of Science Education at the University of Cambridge.)
2015
