I have now finished the final assignment. It was an interesting process, not least of which as it exposed in the area of research how different people's views of what constitutes a research paradigm, methodology or design. It was good to go back and hone Assignment 1 and surprising that even after the first 2 assignments that the research question still required a substantial amount of thinking to get it right. Which really does reinforce the iterative process of research question development.
I disliked the textbook as Bryman (2012) seemed much more like a how to for PHD students and some things I wanted more of the debate particularly around those ideas such as who decides what a design is and which approaches are counted as paradigms.
Part of the difficulty for me was that my initial approach was that of me as the TL doing the research in the school with the teachers I worked with rather than as an outside researcher. Thus I was initially thinking of ideas such as action research but realised that the approach that needed to be taken for the assignments was the latter. In some ways this is a failing of this unit for although now i have a great theoretical understanding and have designed a research approach to a particular question, as the TL in a school I would not necessarily approach the research in such an academic way but would aim to be more inclusive, reflective and active. Though having said that, if we as TLs need to pursue evidence based research to further our cause then this has been a useful (if somewhat arduous) assignment.
References:
Bryman, A. (2012). Social research methods (4th ed.). Oxford, UK: OUP.
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