Chris Taylor

Stephen Gorard

“This excellent book promises much and delivers a whole lot more. It provides a description of the practicalities of combining evidence from a variety of data collection modes in order to enrich our responses to educational research questions. This is achieved with thoroughness and clarity and even some wit. There are outstanding teaching materials here…. This is the best book on educational research methods published in this country for decades.” Professor Charles Desforges, University of Exeter "In this timely and important contribution, Stephen Gorard and Chris Taylor help us move beyond the wasteful schism of 'qualitative versus quantitative' research by offering sound basic theorising and extensive practical illustration of the combining of research methods... I see their book as essential reading for anyone concerned for effective educational and social research." Professor Peter Tomlinson, University of Leeds There is growing interest in the possibilities of combining research approaches in education and social sciences, as dissatisfaction mounts with the limitations of traditional mono-method studies and with the schism between quantitative and qualitative methods. This book argues the case for combining multiple research methods, and provides much-needed practical guidance for researchers who want to use this mixed-methods approach. The authors believe that all research has an over-arching logic and that, within this, the fruitful combination of quantitative and qualitative methods is possible. They develop the idea of the ‘new’ education and social researcher, for whom the combination of approaches is a representation of a diverse skills base, rather than a matter of ideological or theoretical allegiance.The book outlines and evaluates methods that are currently used, and looks at combining different methods across and within studies, including complex interventions, Bayesian approaches, new political arithmetic, triangulation, life histories and design studies. It offers a radical, new and very simple way of working with numbers. Drawing on examples across the social sciences, this book is key reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students in Education and social science courses with a research element, as well as academics and professionals undertaking research projects.

EBOOK: Combining Methods in Educational and Social Research

Beng Huat See

Governments, local authorities, school leaders, and teachers all over the world want to improve the educational attainment and participation of all students, and to minimise any systematic differences in outcomes for social and economic groups. A particular concern is for those students from backgrounds that may objectively disadvantage them at school and beyond. However, considerable effort and money is currently being wasted on policies, practices and interventions that have very little hope of success, and that may indeed endanger the progress that is being made otherwise. The poor quality of much education research evidence, coupled with an unwillingness among users of evidence to discriminate appropriately between what we know and do not know, means that opportunities are being missed. At a time of reduced public spending it is important that proposed interventions are both effective and efficient. Overcoming Disadvantage in Education is unique in the way that it: Shows where the solutions to underachievement and poverty lie combines primary(new), secondary (official) and published (review) evidence distinguishes between those possible causes of underachievement that are largely fixed for individuals, and those that are modifiable. There are evidence-informed ways forward in handling under-achievement and increasing social justice in education. This book shows which the more likely approaches are, and where further work could yield further benefits. This book will be a key text for students, developing academic researchers and supervisors in the social sciences, and for those research users charged with improving educational outcomes.

Overcoming Disadvantage in Education

This book discusses the nature of design, design notation, a flexible approach to new designs, a range of standard design models, and tips for real-life problems - all in an easy to understand style, for those wanting to design research and make critical judgements about the designs of others

Creating Robust Approaches for the Social Sciences

Research Design

Emma Smith

Patrick White

Issues concerning the supply of teachers are of perennial concern to both policy-makers and researchers in the world of education. This trenchant and wide-ranging study not only provides major new research findings but also a re-interpretation of extant data. Combining qualitative and (very extensive) quantitative research, Teacher Supply provides a rigorous and iconoclastic treatment of issues relating to the recruitment, quality, training, and retention of teachers throughout the developed world and offers important recommendations for the future.

The Key Issues

Teacher Supply

In a new textbook designed for students new to statistics and social data, Stephen Gorard focuses on non-inferential statistics as a basis to ensure students have basic statistical literacy. Understanding why we have to learn statistics and seeing the links between the numbers and real life is a crucial starting point. Using engaging, friendly, approachable language this book will demystify numbers from the outset, explaining exactly how they can be used as tools to understand the relationships between variables. This text assumes no previous mathematical or statistical knowledge, taking the reader through each basic technique with step-by-step advice, worked examples, and exercises. Using non-inferential techniques, students learn the foundations that underpin all statistical analysis and will learn from the ground up how to produce theoretically and empirically informed statistical results.

How to Make Sense of Statistics

This is a comprehensive guide to quantitative research, rooted in the author's own teaching and research. In particular, it challenges both the student who "does not do numbers" and the student who does nothing but numbers (and who therefore fails to interpret or challenge his/her results). The book shows how all educational researchers need to "do" quantitative research, even if only in the sense of reading other people's research findings. In fact, the book argues that the conventional distinction between primary and secondary research data is inadequate, since there is enormous need/opportunity for conducting research through using and reinterpreting secondary data. This leads to one of the main selling points of the book - Gorard's idea of the "idle researcher", who makes valuable contributions to the research literature by using data gathered by other researchers.

The Role of Numbers Made Easy

Quantitative Methods in Educational Research

Neil Selwyn

Find out the facts fast with these easy-to-use yet comprehensive overviews Teach Yourself 101 Key Ideas Information Technology is perfect for you if you are a student or are just interested in the subject. It provides an interesting and informative account of the field's 101 key ideas, arranged in alphabetical order. No need to read cover to cover—you can just dip in and find the explanations you need!

Teach Yourself 101 Key Ideas Information Technology

Nadia Siddiqui

The Trials of Evidence-based Education explores the promise, limitations and achievements of evidence-based policy and practice, as the attention of funders moves from a sole focus on attainment outcomes to political concern about character-building and wider educational impacts. Providing a detailed look at the pros, cons and areas for improvement in evidence-based policy and practice, this book includes consideration of the following: What is involved in a robust evaluation for education. The issues in conducting trials and how to assess the trustworthiness of research findings. New methods for the design, conduct, analysis and use of evidence from trials and examining their implications. What policy-makers, head teachers and practitioners can learn from the evidence to inform practice. In this well-structured and thoughtful text, the results and implications of over 20 studies conducted by the authors are combined with a much larger number of studies from their systematic reviews, and the implications are spelled out for the research community, policy-makers, schools wanting to run their own evaluations, and for practitioners using evidence.

Stephen Gorard

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