Research Methodologies

Research Methodologies

Introduction

Research methodologies play an important role in deciding the success of a study. Creswell (2003) inform about various kinds of research methodologies that are qualitative, quantitative and mixed approach. All these methodologies are employed to find solutions to a problem raised in a study. Research methods are chosen as per the requirements of the research. For conducting a study in this paper, various educational studies are selected for analysis. This paper is divided into two parts. First part contains the evaluation of research methodologies adopted by researchers in five selected studies while the second part assesses “A Programmatic View of Portfolios for Urban Teacher Preparation: A Second Look” by Rigoni, Pugach, Longwell-Grice and Ford (2013) in terms of a proposed alternative study.

Part 1

Literature Review

'An investigation of case-based instructional strategies on learning, retention, and ethical decision-making' informs that educators use case-based instruction worldwide but the methods of employing the case-based instructions by different educators are unknown. The researchers of the work have analyzed two case-based instructional strategies that are 'elaboration' and 'self development of narratives'. The researchers involved 104 graduate students from various disciplines who were asked to describe a provided case, provide their self-created case, describe their self-created case and define a 'control condition'. Every student was assigned a different task. According to the conducted research, the performers who described the provided case and 'control condition' appeared better than those who created the cases themselves and described them. According to the researchers, strategized elaborative based learning is advantageous for case based instructional learning (Bagdasarov, et al., 2012). This research was quantitative as researchers collected quantifiable data from the research.

Considering the significance of portfolios in the teaching and learning phases of teachers, Rigoni, et al. (2013) conducted a research on exit portfolios of students who were registered in urban teaching instructional program. The number of participants was forty seven. The research evaluates the portfolios in order to assess the participants' teaching activities based on evenhandedness and multiplicity of portfolios. For analyzing the teaching activities, five aspects were employed that are 'asset/deficit perspectives', relationships with families, societal justice, elevated anticipations for student knowledge acquisition and contextualized training and knowledge acquisition. According to the assessed portfolios, three groups were formed labeled as 'principled practice', 'mixed practice' and 'limited practice' (Rigoni, et al., 2013).

'Interdisciplinary curricula in the middle and high school classrooms: Case studies of approaches to curriculum and instruction' informs that interdisciplinary instruction is quite old as various researchers have worked for conducting different kinds of researches related to the subject. However, this study involves eleven interdisciplinary teams from New York and Carolina and the research is conducted with the help of the petition for nominations, internet search and telephonic interviews. The researchers tried to settle on the characteristics and strength of interdisciplinary programs. According to the study, student accomplishment does not depend on interdisciplinary coursework, and it includes a lot many transactions at the school site (Applebee, et al., 2007).

In 'Reporting practices in quantitative teacher education research: One look at ...