Understanding Research in Early Childhood Education

Quantitative and Qualitative Methods

Jennifer J. Mueller, Nancy File

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781134691272
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Understanding Research in Early Childhood Education: Quantitative and Qualitative Methods prepares readers to be informed consumers of early childhood research. Rather than following the traditional format of covering quantitative and qualitative methods separately, this innovative textbook offers side-by-side coverage and comparison about the assumptions, questions, purposes and methods for each, offering unique perspectives for understanding young children and early care and education programs.

Understanding Research in Early Childhood Education is broadly based across the major research paradigms, and numerous examples are offered throughout the text. Through the use of this book, students will be able to more knowledgeably read, evaluate, and use empirical literature. These skills are becoming more important as early childhood educators are increasingly expected to use evidence-based research in practice and to participate in collecting and analyzing data to inform their teaching.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315882734-1

“The research …” There are many ways that this sentence is completed. Perhaps some of the following are familiar. “The research…

• suggests …”
• proves …”
• is inconclusive …”
• raises questions …”
• adds to our understanding …”
• implies that …”
• leads to these conclusions…”
• contradicts earlier research …”
• supports earlier research …”
• fails to show …”
• has limits …”

These examples are drawn from both the way that researchers discuss their work and the way that research is presented in popular media outlets. We live in a society in which individuals are exposed to research through many means. One can read original research reports written for professional audiences, read versions of research reports written more specifically for a lay audience, and hear or read about research as interpreted by others, such as journalists, professional development providers, and even marketers.

Within this environment, it is common to hear a variety of claims about research. Anyone paying attention is bound to have questions. Does research prove something? Why does research result in contradictory findings? What does it mean if research fails to show something? Why do researchers sound so cautious or tentative—can’t they just take a stand? Is research about finding answers or generating more questions? How does research lead to implications?

One might be led to declare: “JUST TELL US!” (and, please, in language we can understand). The truth of the matter is that it is not that simple. Research does result in contradictory findings across different studies. When research findings are described, sometimes it can feel a bit ‘underwhelming.’ Research is almost always limited by the manner in which it was conducted. Limitations might relate to who participated, what types of data were collected, and the degree to which the findings might be similar if the study was conducted with other people or in another place. In general, research is driven by questions, and it is likely that questions will lead to more questions.

Finally and importantly, research is difficult to approach for those who are not researchers. The processes involved are intricate, and much of the professional terminology sounds like so much gobbledygook to the uninitiated. We have found when discussing research with students that they are likely to admit that when reading a quantitative study, marked by displays of numerical results presented in tables, that they “just go to the discussion section” at the end of the study, for an interpretation presented in words. And although they might feel more comfortable reading a qualitative study, described solely through verbal means, it often happens that the vocabulary and conceptual knowledge required to comprehend the work can get the better of them.

With this text, it is our intent to provide guidance for understanding research. As professionals, teachers in the early childhood education field are expected to have some knowledge of the literature. Inquiry is a highly valued activity in teaching; good teachers continually ask questions about their work and the children they serve. The literature produced by researchers is a useful tool for teachers to consult in their inquiry process. Understanding the literature also provides teachers with a chance to participate in dialogue with others about where and how research links to practice.

Thus, we believe that being a skilled consumer of research literature is an important competency for teachers. Not all research is created equally. It is important to be able to evaluate the methods used within a study and decide how much trust to place in the findings. Each study has a unique profile of strengths and limitations, and often one must look below the surface to identify these. Additionally, readers of research must make the translation to their own situations. How might the results apply? What implications are warranted? Capable consumers of research understand research more deeply. They can follow the processes involved, evaluate the decisions made in the study, and decide what the work means to their own understanding and practice.

Research in Society

What Is Research?

Research defines a particular form of inquiry intended to extend our understanding. For some, this understanding is meant to be a more complete or thorough understanding of the topic of inquiry, an understanding that can be generalized to other situations. For others, understanding is defined as a way of making meaning about that topic in ways that acknowledge the unique nature of situations and the variety of ways that one can choose to make meaning, all of which lessen generalizability.

Research revolves around questions, and typically in the search for more understanding, more questions arise. For some, the research process begins with clearly delineated questions, often formed from an understanding of the research conducted to date. For others, the questions are less specific at the outset, allowing the study and the questions to evolve as they proceed.

Research procedures are meant to result in data, as research is an evidence-based process. In other words, evidence, in the form of data, is generated and then analyzed to develop findings and implications. For some researchers the evidence is reflected via numbers, with numeric descriptions of the phenomena and statistics used to analyze the data. For others, the evidence is expressed in words, and the analysis allows for the identification of descriptions and themes.

Research follows forms of logic. In presenting the results of a study, the researcher is working to explain the decisions and theory that led the study forward, allowing others to agree or not with those processes. Additionally, the logic stems back to very basic philosophical positions about the world. At the very beginning are questions about reality and how we know what we know. For some, what we can perceive is our reality. It can be measured and assessed and ‘known’ in objective ways. For others, reality is what we construct as we work to make meaning about the world.

There are processes to be followed in research, rules of the road that are taught to successive generations of researchers. Although the processes exist within separate schools of thought or paradigms and thus differ, they act similarly in any school of thought to enclose the project within a shared definition of what that form of research means. Not unexpectedly, though, there are always some who push against those boundaries and work to define new understandings of what procedures mean and could mean.

To summarize what research is, we offer the following. Research is a form of inquiry that relies on evidence, or data. It is complex because, in part, there are many accepted ways to do research. And yet ‘accepted’ is a key word, because research is governed as a particular form of inquiry with defined processes, differentiated from other ways of knowing about the world such as wisdom, reflection, or craft knowledge. Research is conducted through a variety of processes. Its scope can be very finely focused, for example, a case study of a single child. Or it might be wide ranging, such as the impact of a policy change on kindergarteners.

Furthermore, research is traditionally conducted within a setting of accountability and scrutiny. The traditional standard for publication of a research article is the peer-review process. Typically, prior to publication other researchers read the article, without the authors being identified. Their evaluation of the article (returned to the authors also without the reviewers being identified) may raise questions and suggest concerns about how the research was conducted, oftentimes leading to a new draft of the article. Through this review process, the editors of journals decide which research articles will be published and which will be rejected.

In addition, foundations, think tanks, or private entities can self-publish the findings of their own research. This has always been the case, but in an Internet-dominated world, these reports are more easily accessible than ever. It is absolutely true that many of these reports reflect skilled research. At the same time, the reports have not undergone the peer-review process, leaving more responsibility on the shoulders of the reader to evaluate and decide upon the quality of the study.

The Impact of Research

Science and the processes of research are revered in our society. Information gained through research is typically assumed to have credence among the public. After conducting a poll of both the public and scientists, the authors of the report wrote (Pew Research Center, 2015),

Science holds an esteemed place in the public imagination and in the minds of professionals. Americans are proud of the accomplishments of their scientists in key fields and, despite considerable dispute about the role of government in other realms, there is broad public support for government investment in scientific research.

Yet, as mentioned earlier, scientific research can be perplexing, particularly when viewed from the ‘outside.’ For example, different studies focused on the same topic can vary one from the other in the process details, which can impact the findings. The chains of logic utilized by researchers vary among studies, including what assumptions are accepted. New methods are developed that produce different results. To illustrate, consider a story reported in the New York Times in 2014 that detailed how the latest research on mammography for detection of breast cancer raised new questions about its effectiveness. The newest research used a large group of women and was described as “meticulous” in this article. The newest study reported that the death rate from breast cancer was almost the same between the group of women who had mammograms and those who did not. Still, there were many unanswered questions. The study resulted in a set of findings, but these findings did not answer questions about ‘why’ mammograms did not offer the health benefits that are widely assumed of their use. Was it because of newer, more effective treatments for cancer? Or because women are now more aware of breast cancer and thus more proactive in their health care? What more do we know about detecting and treating cancer over time? What questions do we not know to ask yet? Because of the mixed results and the unanswered questions, the reporter stated that it was unlikely that recommendations for regular mammogram screening would be changing soon (Kalota, 2014). In this case, a single study, even one described as well done, was not enough to change practice.

This story illustrates a central point about research. When examining complex subjects, the answers are often partial and accompanied by cautions. In regard to medical research, the human body is indeed an intricate system. Some research findings provide us with averages, but rarely do these researchers describe the individual processes of one person’s genetic inheritance, life habits, environment, and reaction to medications used in treatment. There are often many potential reasons results might vary from one study to another. To account for these differences, some researchers specifically state that their findings are not generalizable to others.

Similarly, intricacies abound in educational research. Each classroom is made up of many children, all from unique families and each with a distinctive relationship with the teacher. Each child enters the classroom with an individual set of background experiences, while also subgroups of individuals may share cultural norms and expectations. Thus, there is a complex mix of similarities and differences among children. Similarly, each teacher is an individual. During any particular learning activity, some children may be deeply engaged while others are tired, out of sorts, or disinterested. Accordingly, results may vary from study to study, and most often what we know through educational research is incomplete.

In sum, our society has a history of holding scientific research in high esteem. And who can argue with the impact of research on many aspects of our lives? Nonetheless, research often does not provide us with the clear and absolute answers we might desire and that those uninitiated to the complexities of research feel they can expect. Continued questioning, new methods, and different perspectives all contribute to the tentative nature of ‘what we know’ via research. So researchers cannot “just tell us,” as we mentioned earlier. What they can do is tell us about their work. The rest is up to those who read the study—to understand the work, put it alongside other work, consider its implications, and thus make meaning of it within their own understandings of teaching young children.

Research in Early Childhood Education

Anyone who has read an introductory textbook in the field might remember that it is commonplace to look back across the centuries to attribute contributions to early childhood from figures such as Locke, Rousseau, and Pestalozzi. Philosophical stances and ideologies regarding childhood and learning do indeed have a long history. In contrast, the history of research as a way of knowing about children and education is much briefer, only slightly longer than a century.

Even with a relatively brief history of research, there has been much change over time. What we will help the reader better understand in this text is how the ideas and phenomena that are valued in research are greatly influenced by larger social and cultural contexts. What we believe to be important, what we value, and what we need to understand as a society or as a culture at any point in time is shaped by historical moment, dominant political ideologies, technology of the time, and the prominent paradigms of thought. It follows that early childhood education, as an institution of our society, has moved through different phases in terms of what we have believed to be its purpose and main goals and so follows the purposes of and needs for educational research.

In order to be a competent consumer of research in early childhood education, it is important to realize and understand how larger social contexts have come to bear in the research endeavor over time within the field. We will help the reader understand how the two main approaches to research—quantitative and qualitative—have at different points defined the field, determining what it is we value and study and what it means to be a child in a classroom and an early childhood educator. But we also will discuss how social conditions and the needs of young children in educational settings have pushed a need for different kinds of study and different voices being heard in the research endeavor. In the early childhood field, we have moved back and forth with various goals of research, from finding overall universal truths that allow us to explain and predict what it is children need to know and do in their learning settings to examining more fine-grained and deeper understandings of localized situations and phenomena.

As we will explore in the coming chapters, those who operate in these differing paradigms, quantitative and qualitative, start from different places. They have different answers to questions about what reality is and how we come to know what we know. They pose different questions and work to answer them with different methods. Most importantly, they provide us with different perspectives about what it means to be a young child within a family and ever-enlarging contexts, including an early childhood program.

Outline of the Book

Our intent in this text is to prepare readers to be informed consumers of early childhood research. To that end, we will include information across the major models for conducting research. We include both quantitative and qualitative methods so that readers may access all of the available literature. We will coach readers in how to understand the research literature and make evaluations about the trustworthiness and applicability of studies. It is possible to become a competent evaluator of research with a single text. The task of learning how to do research is more complex and requires multiple texts and courses across both paradigms, however.

To make this work most relevant, we will be drawing our examples from the early childhood literature. Our purpose is to equip readers with the background knowledge needed for understanding research; because we draw our examples from the field, we hope readers will also learn about the exciting work being done in our field.

We will begin by examining the structures of research. In Chapter 2, we describe the basic foundations of research, the epistemology that drives researchers’ perspectives on questions such as: How is reality defined? What assumptions are held about what we know and how we know it? In Chapter 3 we discuss in more detail the context within which research is conducted and used, as well as the cultures of research. Focal topics include the ethics of conducting research and how research and policymakers interface.

Beginning with Chapter 4, we introduce the major paradigms of qualitative and quantitative research. We will compare the major tenets of the research process within each paradigm, including the researcher’s role, standards of rigor, and assumptions about the implications of studies. In the two chapters that follow, we describe how qualitative research is conceptualized and processes for generating data, as well as how to understand presentations and interpretations of data. We follow a similar set of goals for Chapters 7 and 8, which examine the conceptualization of quantitative studies and processes for data collection, as well as understanding the presentation of findings in a quantitative study. In this group of chapters, we will also present information on how to read and evaluate research studies.

The second major section of the book consists of a set of five chapters that bring to life the logic and modes of inquiry used in early childhood research. In this section, our structure is around the ‘unit of analysis,’ or the focus of the study. Thus, there are chapters that center on questions about children, questions about the adults in children’s lives, questions about classrooms and curriculum, and questions about institutions and policy. In each of these chapters, we compare the perspectives and work of qualitative and quantitative researchers. For instance, we note the types of questions they ask and the t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• PART I Structures of Research
• PART II Examining Research Questions
• PART III Conclusion
• Glossary
• References
• Index