By step 5 of the Research Cycle, you have considered and refined your research question, building a broadening understanding of your research issue. It is now time to think about the most helpful research methodology to answer your research question. You need to develop an awareness of the range of research methods available to you in order to select the best method, or methods, to explore your research question.
In pursuing your research methodology, you can choose to collect data through a single research method, or combine a range of research methods. It is important to understand the theory behind research methodology. This will help you to define the type of methodology that will help to answer your research question. Theories such as qualitative and quantitative research, longitudinal research, single study research, microgenetic research, cross-sectional research, design experiments, action research and the mosaic approach. In understanding the theoretical basis for research, you can select your approach to research with confidence along with the practical tools for research.
Here are the key theories that underpin step 5 in the Research Cycle:
Qualitative research involves numerical data.
Quantitative research involves non-numerical data, this could include words or pictures/images.
Longitudinal research looks at how things change over time.
Single study research focuses on one participant (or sometimes a limited number of participants) in detail.
Microgenetic research is a form of study where the subject is observed during a period of rapid learning or change.
Cross-sectional research, unlike longitudinal research, collects data on students of different ages or developmental levels at the same time.
Design experiments allow the researcher to design their own parameters of research to test out their own hypothesis.
Action research critically examines one’s own practice and then make changes to practice based on the research findings.
The mosaic approach (Clark, 2005) was devised as a tool to gain the thoughts and perspectives of young children in research using a range of research tools.
References:
Clark, A. (2005). Beyond Listening: Children’s perspectives on early childhood services. The Policy Press.
In step 4 of the Research Cycle, you are encouraged to bring your knowledge of what is already known about your research issue to look afresh at the research question formed in step 1 of the Research Cycle. At this step in your research, you have defined an issue, built a research question then spent time reviewing what is already know about your research question. This will have moved your thinking forward and as such, it is a great point to stop and think about your original research question. With what you now know, is your question still the right question for you and your organisation or do you need to adapt it or completely change it?
Here are my top tips at step 4 of the Research Cycle as you think about reviewing your research question:
• Ensure the original research question is still relevant and will lead you to find out something new about your practice or the practice of others. • Consider the end point of research and confirm that the research question will help you to this end. • Ask again: is the research question relevant to your roles and responsibilities? • Based on the new knowledge discovered at step 3, don’t be afraid to jump back to step 1 or step 2 of the Research Cycle to ensure the issue is clearly defined and the research question is purposeful for you and your organisation.
In the cacophony of our daily lives in school, there is often a great deal of distracting noise. Not simply from the students we teach but from the myriad of unresolved tasks that fill our minds. In order to take the first step on the research journey, we must try our hardest to reduce this noise. We need to help ourselves as researchers to focus on the issues we face and to move beyond what Daniel Kahneman would call ‘lazy’ or ‘fast thinking’ (Kahneman, 2011). It would be easy to think of an issue we face and accept our first and most present thought, especially if our working memory is filled to capacity. However, while this most pressing issue may be relevant to the moment, it may not be at the heart of the systemic issue that affects our practice.
In order to define the issue worthy of research, both the time and place for thinking need to be considered. We need to subdue the distracting noise that we face in school, enabling our cognitive load to reduce and finding space in our working memory to think.
The starting point to help mute this organisational noise is to find a quiet spot, away from your usual routine, to have a coaching conversation. In creating the uninterrupted place to have a conversation that goes beyond fast thinking, you are afforded the space to find a meaningful issue that could evolve into an engaging research question. This place should be beyond distraction, be a treasured time for you and your research coach, and be a regular entitlement for you and all staff in school.
Once you have found that space and time, here are my top tips for defining the right issue to help you form a purposeful research question:
• Find time to meet with a research coach to still the distracting noise, enabling you to think about the professional issues you face. • Use appreciative inquiry to help you recognise strengths in your practice that can inform your research question. • Think slow in order to go beyond your initial thoughts and ideas. • Address your own assumptions and biases related to your research issue. • Meet with a research coach who will ask questions to encourage you to think, while allowing you to own your issue without being strong-armed into research that may lack relevance to you. • Funnel down the issues you face and focus on one relevant and accessible issue that is purposeful to your professional roles and responsibilities.
Once you have defined your research question, it is time to move on to discover what is already known in this area. Research comes more naturally to teachers in their early careers as they return to practice learnt while at university. For many school staff, however, this may not be a natural step, and some may need guidance in how to review relevant literature and information about their issue. If your research question is to have meaning and purpose in your organisation then you need to find out how your research question, or issues relating to it, has been raised by others. This will help you to deepen your understanding of the issues that orbit your research question and will help you to refine your question. During this step of the Research Cycle, you may learn about difficulties others had in researching in this area or you may confirm that there has been limited research around your issue. This step is really important but it is one that the researcher in school often omits as they are keen to get going on their research methodology. It is important to slow down and reach out to as many sources of information relating to your research question as possible.
As a researcher, you need patience, time and talk. Patience, as you don’t want to rush headlong into planning your research methodology before you know what you are doing. Time, as you will need to fit your review into your busy working week. Talk, as you will need to talk to your research coach about the issues that arise from your review of what is known. All this builds what Dimmock (2019) refers to as a ‘professional learning community’ where a school creates the space where patience, time and talk rests.
Here are my top tips for reviewing what is known about your field of research:
• Finding out what is known about an issue is not research, but rather one of eight important steps in the Research Cycle. • In order to build a purposeful and helpful research question, you need to find out what is already known about your issue. • Professional learning communities and research buddies can be really helpful in connecting with other researchers with similar research questions to share knowledge about what is known about the research question. • Speaking to colleagues who have key knowledge and skills relating to the research question can provide a wealth of helpful context to the research, but be sure to plan the conversation carefully in order to ensure it helps you learn more about the context of your research question. • Consider speaking to colleagues beyond your organisation in order to gain insight into the context of your research question • Books are a helpful resource to the researcher, but be alert to author bias. • Approach journals that are relevant to your research question, read the abstract, read the conclusion, read the article and follow relevant references to broaden your knowledge of what is known. • Use websites and social media to learn more of what is known about your research question, but be aware of the limitations as some published material will not have been subject to deep scrutiny. • Consider joining relevant professional associations, particularly if they provide access to journals as a resource. • Think critically when approaching what is known about your field of study. Remember to beware – think fair – take care or to think FIRST. • Strive to understand the influence of conscious or unconscious cognitive bias in both yourself and the work of others.
A research poster is a simple yet engaging way to present research findings in a format that is easy to digest. Using the format of the journal article, the poster allows the researcher to present their findings in a way that can be browsed by colleagues. The poster can also be a reference tool for the researcher to use during a presentation to a small group of colleagues. I have used research posters as a marketplace of ideas during a presentation of research. In the marketplace, the research posters are mounted on easels around the room so that staff can wander amongst them and discuss their content.
I ran a research project with a group of middle leaders across ten primary schools. The final stage of the project was to share the research findings and the researchers gave a two-minute presentation to the delegates from their schools. This was followed with a marketplace of the ten research projects where the research posters were used as a talking point for each researcher as delegates wandered freely around the hall. The casual atmosphere of the marketplace allowed staff to pose questions to the researchers about their research posters and gain a deeper perspective about the research undertaken.
Here are some tips for creating an effective research poster, adapted from NYU Libraries (2020):
• Think about your audience and design your poster with them in mind. • Make your font size readable from a comfortable distance away from your poster. • Grab your readers with a clear title/research question. • Limit your words to keep your reader engaged and to be precise in what you are communicating Use bullets, numbering, and headlines to make it easy to read. • Think about your graphics and colours to enhance your poster rather than distract the reader. • Include logos from your organisation. • Remember to put your name on the piece. • Include references used in step 3 of the Research Cycle. • Share your poster with a colleague/coach to make sure it is easy to interpret.
Here is an example of a research poster produced by two teaching assistants whose research question was, ‘Can a nurture approach support pupils with complex needs to improve their behaviours?’:
While this poster does not share the detail of the research undertaken, it allowed the researchers to share the key steps in the Research Cycle. In displaying this in a research poster, the researchers were able to talk through each step with colleagues. While this poster is not a perfect example of a research poster, I have included it to give you an idea of the form a research poster could take. My advice is to be playful and use the Research Cycle to help structure your poster.
Staff often enjoy creating research posters as it allows for creative flair. The posters can be produced digitally using programs such as Microsoft Publisher or PowerPoint or by a simple cut-and-paste onto A1 card backing.
Reference:
NYU Libraries. (2020, July). NYU Libraries. Retrieved from How to create a research poster: http://www.bit.ly/3eGuG5N Accessed: March 2021
The gingerbread man method uses the image of a gingerbread man as a reference for the research discussion and looks at four key elements in the participant. The method considers the participant’s knowledge, skills, values and experience. Similar to the triangle method, the gingerbread man can give the researcher a helpful framework for a research conversation with a participant.
As an example, a music subject leader in a primary school exploring how teaching assistants support pupils in music lessons starts by asking a teaching assistant, ‘What do you know about classical music?’ The researcher may then move straight to the experience of the participant and ask, ‘Have you ever heard a live classical performance?’ The skills of the teaching assistant are then explored through the question, ‘Can you play an instrument?’ or further to this, ‘Have you ever played a brass instrument?’ The final element of the gingerbread man will then ask the participant about their values and could be represented by the question, ‘What music do you love to listen to and why?’ The data gathered from the gingerbread man method helps the researcher to gain an understanding of the underpinning musical knowledge, skills, values and experience of teaching assistants in their school and can then be compared with how this impacts on the effectiveness of the support given to pupils in music lessons.
The gingerbread man image can be used to write key words or phrases from the respondents. Each gingerbread man can then be analysed for similarities and differences between the respondents, building a broader picture of evidence for your analysis of data.
The triangle approach is one that I have devised to structure research observations or discussions. I use the simple image of a triangle that apportions three questions posed by the researcher to ask what subjects in the study think, feel and do. I explain to the subject that they will be asked questions about what they think, feel and do. When asked about what they think, the subject is encouraged to be factual and try not to talk about their feelings or emotional response to the questions. Once the subject has explored the factual response, their feelings related to their response can be explored in detail during the ‘feel’ section of the triangle. Finally, the subject is encouraged to focus on their reaction to their thoughts and feelings in the ‘do’ section of the triangle.
As an example, imagine a researcher investigating the research question, ‘Do newly admitted year 7 students feel safe when moving around the school?’ The first point of the triangle can be used to ask how the student thinks. The researcher will ask, ‘Tell me about where your most and least favourite spaces are around the school. Be descriptive and try not to tell me how this makes you feel – we’ll get on to that in a moment.’ This asks the student to articulate what they think. The student answers, ‘The garden area is best; it’s a nice open space with loads of plants. The toilet block is too small – there isn’t much space to move around if there are several people in it at once.’ The student is asked to provide a factual or rational answer based on what they think. The researcher will then move to the feelings associated with this answer and ask, ‘Tell me what you feel when you are in those spaces.’ This explores the feelings associated with being in their least and most favourite spaces. The student then shares, ‘I love the garden because year 9 aren’t allowed in. There’s a boy in Year 9 that doesn’t like me. I don’t like the toilet block because that’s where the year 9 lad and his friends wait and they push us about.’ The final step of the triangle tool then asks the participant to state what they do as a result of their thoughts and feelings. The researcher asks, ‘Tell me what you do as a result of the feelings you have when you think about the toilet block.’ The participant then answers, ‘I don’t go to the toilet in school. This is OK in the morning, but by the end of the afternoon I can be really uncomfortable. I guess that is why I don’t concentrate well in history.’
As you can see from this example, the triangle method can give a simple but helpful framework to a research question. The method helped the researcher to define areas in the school where the year 7 pupil felt safe and less safe. As this research project unfolds, the researcher is well positioned to be clear about the thoughts and feelings of a vulnerable group of year 7 students and better plan for their integration into secondary school. While thoughts and feelings are interconnected, thoughts depend on rational observations and feelings on an emotional response to these thoughts. It’s a subtle distinction, but by separating these out through the use of the triangle approach, the researcher gains a deepening insight to the thoughts, feelings and actions of their respondents
When thinking about your research methodology, you can choose to collect data through a single research method, or combine a range of research methods. I have used the Diamond 9 research method in many research projects as it provides a really helpful tool to gain helpful data that unpacks your research question.
How does it work?
The Diamond 9 research tool encourages your research participants to order their preferences to a range of images or statements linked to your research question. The statements or images are given to an individual or group and they are asked to rank them using the Diamond 9 format to define which statement or image is the most and least important to them.
For example, consider a teacher researching the question, ‘Do children favour similar play-based interests in home as they do in school?’. She produced a range of 12 images on postcards and asked the children to rank them in a Diamond 9 pattern. The children placed their favourite activities at the top of the Diamond 9 and those with similar preferences were placed in the middle rows with the least preferred form of play at the bottom. Pictures that were not of interest were discarded as were any that remained after the Diamond 9 was complete.
The teacher talks to the child throughout the activity and encourages them to order their preferences. The teacher recorded the final Diamond 9 in a photograph, noting the comments made during the discussion with the child as they grappled and reasoned with their choices. The researcher can record both the final Diamond 9 but can also transcribe the children’s discussion as they consider where each image is placed, providing additional data for analysis.
Using the Diamond 9 with different respondents can also provide an interesting opportunity for analysis of data. With the example above, the researcher could select differing groups of pupils, perhaps selecting gender, disadvantage or ability; to see if there is any correlation between the choices made by the different groups.
The Diamond 9 activity builds a fascinating bank of data that when analysed, helps the researcher to move forward with their curriculum, pedagogy and practice.
In developing a culture of research at Veritas MAT, I have been thinking about how we can best support our staff team in analysing their qualitative data by using visual representations. Adapting the use of Thinking Maps we use with pupils, we can help the researcher to filter their thoughts as they analyse their findings.
Mind Maps were popularised by Tony Buzan who developed the use of mind maps to categorise learning. Here is an example of the chap himself inside a mind map.
Thinking Maps were developed by David Hyrle and Yeager in 2007 for use in schools to help students to reason and recall. They involve a range of map templates that help students to develop thinking.
The first strategy to use in analysing your data is the constant comparative method. This is used when you have collected evidence in words and don’t want to convert the data to numbers through further analysis. This process involves reading through the evidence collected and comparing similarities, differences and anomalies to spot patterns in the words. The researcher is encouraged to read their data over and over to compare and contrast and allow the information to come together to present patterns of information they can analyse.
Analysis of words in your evidence base
Gary Thomas once again provides a helpful checklist for the researcher analysing written evidence. I have simplified this in these steps:
1. Read through your written data.
2. Mark up your data, highlighting points of interest, similarities across the data, make notes about parts you find relevant or interesting.
3. Draw initial thoughts together linked to your research question from your first read through.
4. Use your initial thoughts or emerging findings to re-read the data to seek for further patterns relating to this.
5. Make notes of key patterns and helpful quotes from the data that can be used to answer your research question.
6. Draw out the key themes from your analysis and map these out and illustrate this with the quotes you have highlighted.
Mapping out your findings
Creating a visual map of your analysis of written evidence can help your researcher to visualise the patterns in their analysis. There are a few ways this can be done, let’s look at these.
Concept maps
I first came across thinking maps when lecturing in primary education at Canterbury Christ Church University in the late 1990s. My students were grappling with how to make effective notes and I used the mind maps of Tony Buzan (Buzan, The Mind Map Book, 2009) to help them to connect their thinking during lectures. This process looked at recording key words, images or ideas and making connections through link arrows to define how these ideas were interrelated. David Hyrle (Hyerle, 2011) took Buzan’s idea of the concept maps and applied this to structure a range of thinking maps. These maps can also be really helpful when analysing written data. Here are a few.
Flow map
The flow map helps the researcher to define the cause and effect within their research. The researcher will have reviewed the raw data and if there is a clear sequence of consequences from their data, this can be recorded in a flow map. A teacher researching the impact of the introduction of a new retrieval practice initiative in history could record their analysis using this template. The teacher’s research question is ‘Does retrieval practice affect pupil’s confidence in geography?’ Each new action leads to a new observation in the study over the course of three terms. Each term the teacher introduces a new element of the strategy and reflects on the impact the has on the pupil’s perceived confidence. The map produced is shown here.
Double Bubble Map
A double bubble map allows the researcher to compare and contrast two things. For example, a researcher may be pursuing the research question, ‘How does teaching style effect student motivation in history?’. Their observations have been recorded in narrative form and the researcher has also used discussion with staff and pupils using the pyramid method. In reading through the narratives, the researcher uses the bubble map to map out the similarities and differences between the motivation of students to a didactic textbook-based approach to teaching as opposed to a discussion-based approach. The double bubble could look like this:
The researcher has used this double bubble to start to focus on the key similarities and differences they have noted in the written data. With this clarity, the researcher is now in a position to draw together their analysis of their key findings.
Tree map
The purpose of the Tree Map is to help the researcher classify their findings into key branches. This does not help the researcher consider the interconnectivity of their findings, but helps clarify the grouping or common threads to their findings. An example of this would be seen in a research question, ‘What are the most effective strategies to encourage reading at home for my reluctant readers?’. The researcher may have used a range of research tools to gain data from their pupils, staff or parents. The reading through of the evidence base then led to the following summary in a Tree Map.
The researcher can then unpack the common themes drawn from the evidence base. This researcher then went on to produce a second Tree Map outlining the main themes from the parent’s response. This allowed the researcher to compare and contrast the two viewpoints in their research analysis. The invaluable insight to how both parents and pupils of reluctant readers responded led to a strengthening of practice to support this group of pupils to increase their confidence and motivation to read.
And finally…
When thinking about analysing your qualitative data, you can use these maps to help crystallize your thinking and use them to present your key findings by seeking for similarities and differences and points of interest in your evidence base.
Working in the often frenetic environment of a schools often poses senior leaders to be faced with the task of making swift and decisive decisions. When out of school, I often play ’email Top Trumps’ with colleagues to see who has the highest number of unanswered emails. My average email count is in the high sixties after an afternoon away from my inbox and it is often the case that I am trumped by colleagues with in excess of one hundred unanswered emails. When walking the corridors in school, I am often met with several demands for decisions or questions about unresolved issues that demand a timely and decisive response. As school leaders face the myriad of questions and problems, it is often tempting to fire out solutions and answers to complex issues or make swift decisions on developmental practice without asking deep and searching questions about the issues at hand. It is, therefore our challenge as school leaders to slow down and develop the art of thinking slow when making important decisions.
I came across the concept of ‘slow thinking’ in a book by Daniel Kahneman called Thinking, Fast and Slow. The book explores the concept of cognitive bias ‘heuristic’, namely providing a simple and often imperfect answer to a difficult question. He explores two systems of thinking, one that is described as ‘lazy thinking’ that is open to influence and emotion and one that is conscious of the heuristic influences at work.
Kahneman explains that the lazy thinker will answer a complex question by presuming they know everything there is to know about the problem. This is the concept of ‘WYSIATI’:
W hat Y ou S ee I s A ll T here I s
Slow thinking – resolving a parental complaint
I have used Kahneman’s WYSIATI concept when approaching complex problems in school. It is easy to be drawn in by a passionate and heartfelt problem explained by a staff member or parent and to presume that this is the only information you require in order to resolve the issue. For example, a parent may raise a concern about bullying in the classroom. Taken at face value and thinking fast to resolve the issue, the issue can be resolved by speaking with the bullies and sanctioning them with a stern warning to abate any future bullying. Oh, but if it were always so simple! Let us now presume WYSIATI is not the complete picture. With WYSIATI in mind, we then speak to the other children involve and to those witnesses in class who are impartial. At this point we ascertain that there is no perceived intent to bully and the allegation appears spurious. Once again, we could leave this issue here as resolved, but once more WYSIATI may have clouded your understanding of the issues and therefore make any resolution at this point trivial. When we dig further, we speak with the child again and discover that one of the children she was accusing was absent on the day of the alleged bullying; at this point the child in alleged to have been bullied breaks down and admits she is concerned about an incident at home relating to online bullying from a penpal on a social media site from USA who has threatened to fly over to the UK and ‘beat her up’ (yes this actually happened). The girl in question was not able to admit to her mother why she was crying as she was not allowed on the social media site and fabricated a bullying incident to explain her tears. By using the simple presumption that there may be more information about a problem than you first presume, the understanding of the problem and consequential action becomes far deeper.
Kahneman teaches us that a presumptuous confidence that you have a deeper understanding of a situation than those around you can restrict thinking and therefore lead to poor decision making. Applying this concept to decisions made about curriculum, assessment, teaching and learning opens out a research-based approach to school improvement and strategic planning.
Slow thinking – strategic development
The concept of slow thinking can also be applied to strategic development. Our Senior Team applied slow thinking to the introduction of our system of assessment without levels. Our initial thoughts, now over two years ago, were to stick with levels to assess progress and attainment as we understood them and had invested much time in refining our teacher’s understanding of the levels. David Didau has also written a super book entitled What if everything you knew about education was wrong? David explores a range of heuristic that leads us to make judgements as mental shortcuts and echoes the research of Daniel Kahneman on cognitive bias. David Didau talks about the ‘sunk cost fallacy’, this occurs when you continue with an action or decision because you have invested significant time or money in it, regardless of whether it is the right action or decision. This was a concept our Senior Team grappled with deeply with assessment beyond levels as our time investment in the current assessment system was significant and we found this very hard to relinquish. Understanding that we needed to move to a different assessment system, while not jumping at an easy solution allowed our Senior Team to ask deep and searching questions about the best route ahead for our children, staff, governors and parents. As a result of deep thinking, the school has adopted an assessment system that has integrity and purpose with a process , carefully managed by the Senior Team (@primaryreflect, @MisterHackett, @AnneMarieMiddle and @KS1Rocks), that has given ownership to all. Slow thinking allowed us to work beyond the majority of pitfalls before we tumbled in.
David Didau @learningspy also provides a very useful checklist in his book devised by a surgeon, Atul Gawande, who devised questions that to slow thinking in junior doctors who faced the immense pressure of making quick but at times flawed decisions on the A&E ward. This checklist is worth a read as it acts as a check on your cognitive bias, allowing you and your team to check that you haven’t fallen into Kahnaman’s WYSIATI trap.
Go forth and think slow
Thinking slow has deepened our Senior team’s ability to understand complex problems and provide solutions that have deep and lasting impact on the quality of provision at Warden House. The concept of slow thinking can also be applied to the classroom environment as students face complex problems and engage in lazy thinking because of their cognitive bias. The concept of slow thinking can also underpin a culture of research-based learning for staff, leading to deep changes in practice.
I challenge you to have a go at slow thinking and build in time to ask yourself whether WYSIATI. I would love to know how you get on.
References:
Didau (2015) What if everything you knew about education was wrong? Crown House PublishingThinking Daniel Kahneman (2012) Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow Penguin Books
Irresistible Learning 