Understanding Research in Early Education

The relevance for the future of lessons from the past

Margaret M. Clark

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351797689
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In this newly revised edition of Understanding Research in Early Education, Margaret Clark demonstrates the continuing relevance of research in the homes of young children and in preschool units.

Through rigorous yet understandable language, the text stresses the importance of research, acknowledging how easy it can be, amidst the change and flood of documents on early education and care, to overlook the insights to be gained from past research. The author draws on her own studies, and those of others, to illustrate how to avoid common pitfalls, ask the right questions to inform students' research projects, and critically apply findings in the classroom or nursery. The book is one of the few texts for students to bring research alive, analysing key research to consider its limitations and the extent to which results are relevant to policy and practice.

Without requiring any prior expertise in research and research methodologies, the third edition will prove invaluable for undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses in early years' education, and practitioners undertaking continuing professional development. New content includes: fully revised chapters, an updated reference list, and a new chapter discussing current research on baseline assessment.

1

INTRODUCTION

Background

In the rapidly changing educational scene, it is easy to be blinkered by the pace of change and flood of documents, and to fail to heed earlier warnings and insights from research. The early education and care of young children has had a high profile in recent years with all political parties in the United Kingdom and in many other countries. This expansion in education and care for children under 5 years of age, and in out-of-hours care for children in schools, has in part been driven by a desire to encourage more mothers of young children to enter the workforce or train to do so. Many of those concerned with early education feel that balance and breadth in the curriculum in the early years in primary schools is being sacrificed in attempts to raise standards in literacy and numeracy and by the demand for primary schools in England and elementary schools in some other countries to be accountable and rank high in league tables. We can perhaps take comfort that some curricular guidelines and other documents have aimed at improving the quality and breadth of education and care for children from an early age.

Note that education and care are among devolved powers in the United Kingdom, so policy documents come from the Department for Education (DfE) for England, the Scottish Government for Scotland, the Welsh Assembly for Wales and the Department of Education (DE) in Northern Ireland. Each country has its own curriculum, and there are some differences in the way the classes are named. In England and Wales, the first class is reception, while in Scotland it is Primary 1 and in Northern Ireland it is Year 1. These are important distinctions to be aware of if you are comparing researches across the countries. Schools in England are inspected by Ofsted, in Wales by Estyn, and in Northern Ireland by the Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI). In Scotland, what was Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education (HMIe) was in 2011 joined with Learning and Teaching Scotland to form a new agency, Education Scotland. For a comparison of policy and practice in early childhood education and care across the United Kingdom and in the Republic of Ireland, see Clark and Waller (2007). It is important to bear in mind differences in policy when comparing researches from different parts of the United Kingdom and other countries – something not always considered in international comparisons. For example, that error was made in comparing the results for England and Scotland on PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study), where Year 1 in England and Primary 1 in Scotland were compared (see Clark 2016a: chapter 19). For comparative information on England, consult Gillard (2011), and on Scotland Clark and Munn (1997) and Bryce et al. (2013).

As early as 1972, there was a commitment to increase the provision of preschool education for 3- and 4-year-olds in the United Kingdom. Sadly, changes in the economic climate meant that these promises were not fulfilled. However, the proposed expansion led to the funding of a programme of research to inform that expansion. There are still insights for current policy and practice from these researches, and lessons to be learnt to ensure we do not overgeneralize from limited evidence or ignore existing findings.

It is important to encourage students of early education, and practitioners on advanced courses, to make a critical appraisal of research, enabling them to relate the findings to current policy issues and gain a framework from which to plan their own investigations. Governments so often state that their policies are founded on research evidence; professionals should be equipped to evaluate any such claims. This new edition of Understanding Research in Early Education is planned with this aim in mind. It includes revised chapters from the previous editions (Clark 1989, 2005) and from Children under Five: educational research and evidence (Clark 1988). The latter presented my evaluation of research of relevance to the education of children under 5 years old, based on a personal commission from the Secretary of State for Education. The topics I have retained are of contemporary relevance, and although most of the researches were undertaken in England and Scotland, the issues they address are of concern to a much wider readership. In this new edition, I am including evidence from my recently published book Learning to Be Literate: insights from research for policy and practice (Clark 2016a) and from recent articles and ongoing research on baseline assessment. Assessment of language in young children on starting school, and in particular baseline assessment, is a current controversial government policy in both England and Scotland, as it is in the United States.

Government policies frequently ignore contrary evidence, seeking only that which supports a decision already made. In a recent article, I made a plea for a research-literate profession – one with a voice (Clark 2016c). The governments in England and in some states in the United States, for example, claim that synthetic phonics should be the method of teaching reading, in spite of research evidence questioning any such assertion. Large amounts of money have been invested in commercial synthetic phonics materials in England and the United States. In England, there is a phonics check to be taken by all 6-year-old children that, rather than being a diagnostic assessment, has become a high-stakes measure, with schools judged on the percentage pass rate on this test. Currently, baseline assessment of children on entry to primary school is likely to be imposed on schools in some form, not only in England and possibly in Scotland but also in the United States. This is in spite of research evidence on the dangers of the assessment of young children by a strange adult on a single test at one point in time, even possibly in a language that is not their mother tongue. The focus seems to be on such tests as accountability measures of teacher competence and children’s progress. With regard to baseline assessment, in a new chapter 10, I will present evidence from an ongoing study at Newman University. The two issues of synthetic phonics and baseline assessment have arisen since the publication of the previous edition of this book, and in both instances research evidence is being ignored by policy-makers.

It is important that we demystify educational research by showing that it can be presented in understandable but rigorous language. My aim is to show that research is understandable and interesting; that it is a continuous process where we ignore past insights at our peril; and that it is, or should be, relevant to policy and practice. I aim to bring research alive for the reader, providing a source book for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on research.

Before turning to the detailed analyses of the researches, you should read the introductory chapters to each of the four parts of the book, which set the scene. You will find that you are frequently addressed directly and encouraged to consider issues raised by the researches. These inserts are in boxes. You may also find it helpful to look at these before embarking on a detailed study of a chapter. My approach is unusual in that you will find both a critical analysis of selected classical studies by others and detailed reports of selected researches that I directed.

The aims of the book

The aims of this book are to stimulate students’ interest in educational research, enable them to critique policies claimed to have a research base, and encourage them to undertake their own research and enrich their own practice with the findings of research.

The following are important features of this book:

•It is addressed particularly to students of early education (interpreting the term ‘student’ very widely).

•It is planned to be of interest to those concerned with children in the age range of 3 to 7 or 8 years of age (at least).

•It presents researches on a variety of topics and with very different approaches, all of relevance to classroom practice.

•It analyses the decisions that were made in the course of planning and undertaking the researches, including who was chosen for inclusion in the sample and who was excluded.

•It shows how the approach and methodology of each study was influenced by its aims and highlights the constraints that each approach placed on possible conclusions.

•Selected findings from each research are cited to encourage students to wider reading on related topics.

•Each research is set in its historical context, with regard to both available choices of methodology and current beliefs and interests.

•The researches are related to recent developments, both in research and in educational policies.

There are real dangers if, because of a crowded timetable, you experience only summaries of researches or brief statements of their findings. If that is your main diet, you may remain vulnerable to claims said to be based on research evidence, provided these appear sufficiently impressive – because of large samples, for example. Alternatively, you may complete your course unwilling to accept what are indeed new insights that are of value for practice. You will find a very long reference list. It seemed important to retain the original references from the first edition; to these I have added many recent references.

I have included a number of my own researches to give insights into the decision-making involved in planning and undertaking researches in education and the constraints that are faced by researchers. Throughout my career, I was not only undertaking research on key issues but was also lecturing to undergraduate and postgraduate students. I was thus able to introduce them to ongoing research, enlist their help in aspects of the research and encourage some of them to undertake dissertations related to my funded studies. I have referred to some of these dissertations, and also articles by my students, in the hope this will act as a stimulus to current students. Each of the researches is set in its historical context, thus indicating why I thought the investigation into each topic was of importance at that time and why I adopted the approach I did.

What do we mean by research?

The term ‘research’ seems to be used in education in many different ways and to refer to a wide range of approaches and types of enquiry (see Mukherji and Albon, 2015). Among others, it may refer to the following:

•so-called ‘pure’ experimental investigations in a laboratory or elsewhere

•surveys by questionnaire on a variety of topics

•interviews of adults or children, open-ended or semi-structured

•descriptive or qualitative case studies of schools or children

•observational and other studies in classrooms and homes

•recordings in homes or other settings

•practical work by students in training.

I have even seen the term used by some publishers in publicity leaflets in support of new materials. Subsequently, I have discovered these were merely tried out in a few schools rather than tested against existing or other new products – so beware. For some educational practitioners and policy-makers, the word ‘research’ has an aura of respectability. For others, it is seen as an academic exercise, undertaken by academics, with findings that are rarely even set in the real world of schools and classrooms or that do not take account of the practicalities and limitations of educational decision-making. Much research is ignored by policy-makers; elements of other research may be used to justify condemnation of what practitioners may feel are educational advances. Likewise, the implementation of a policy, already decided on economic or political grounds, may be claimed to have the support of research. On occasion, there may even be delay in the publication of the findings of commissioned research when these would sit uncomfortably alongside the pronouncements of the politicians!

Professionals should be able to distinguish fact from interpretation. They should not be misled by impressive language in which a research may be reported, by large samples or by elaborate statistical techniques with which the results may have been manipulated.

You should be cautious in accepting the generalizations claimed by the researchers themselves; in particular, be wary of press headlines or brief reports of the ‘findings’. More readily accessible and popular books may contain insufficient detail to allow critical evaluation or replication of the studies. Some of the mystique surrounding research must be laid at the door of researchers themselves. The journals and books in which researches are reported in sufficient detail for a critical evaluation of the findings may be difficult to access, and the language in which they are couched may be too technical for the general reader – it could even be jargon! The web may help you access a wider range of studies, but remember that anything and everything can appear on the internet; it is still necessary to acquire the skills to evaluate and be selective.

Contradictions in findings, or apparent contradictions between studies, may add to the confusion or distrust felt by practitioners and policy-makers. Where insufficient information is provided for replication of studies, it may be even more difficult to assess the importance of the evidence. I was disturbed recently by the unwillingness of a researcher to provide me with the exact questions asked in their questionnaire, thus making it impossible to replicate the stud...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the author
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• PART I Language and the homes of young children
• PART II Research in preschool unitsWhat lessons can we learn?
• PART III Continuity, communication and learning in early education
• PART IV Two contrasting researches on learning to read: Different aims so different designs
• Appendices
• References
• Index