Oakley on quantitative vs. qualitative methods

Brief biography: "arguing about who does what in terms of methods doesn’t help the work (of social science) get done in the most efficient and appropriate way."

Lovely quote about qualitative vs. quantitative methods from Ann Oakley's biography. Nit-picking the advantages and disadvantages of both forms of research doesn't help get the research job done. Worth remembering!

Is testing too testing?

England young 'among most tested'

Interesting article which raises questions about the way in which schoolchildren are tested in the UK... but it also raises questions about the way in which qualitative and / or quantitative testing affects those within the system. The more measures and standards there are in place, the more testing there is in place to generates the numbers needed. But quantity of education, as another related report notes, is not the be all and end all and it doesn't generate the quality of results desired: "The Primary Review, taking an overview of the evidence, suggests that there is no clear link between quantity and quality in education." (BBC, 2008).

It's a fascinating area. Does insisting that quantitative analysis must be able to be performed in education damage the quality of that education in the long run? Is everyone encouraged to become complicit in a system that just isn't working in the interests of the participants? Would I want my children educated in the UK as it currently stands? Not really...

Fostering the research community

e4innovation.com » Blog Archive » Fostering the research community: "We want the students to “experience” e-learning research, for them to become members of our research community. This fits very much with Wenger’s Community of Practice ideas and his views on identity and constellations of practice. So instead of “dry content” and our views on what e-learning is about, we have designed the course around a series of seminal research papers which encapsulate some of the key features of e-learning research. We want the students to get a feel for the changing nature of e-learning as a research field, the predominant educational theories and perspectives which underpin it and examples of methodological innovation. But many of the students who are likely to take the course will be researchers or practitioners in the field themselves. So we want to ensure that we can capture and build very much on their expertise as well. Soooo to the role of blogs in the course. We will be asking each of the student to keep a reflective research blog as they work through the course and will be encouraging them to read and comment on each others blogs. We want them to experience the role of blogs in a research context and for them to reflect on their own views of how blogging offers a valuable, alternative communication channel for academic discourse."

Poop! Now I wish I was doing the above course to complement E891... ah well!! Worth keeping an eye on this blog to see how the course progresses and whether learning research through experiencing research and reflecting on that experience is a better way of understanding it than the more dry, for want of a better expression(!), E891 traditional-style OU approach.

Facebook asked to pull Scrabulous

BBC NEWS | Technology | Facebook asked to pull Scrabulous: "Facebook has been asked to remove the Scrabulous game from its website by the makers of Scrabble."

Eeek! You mean I might actually have to do some work when I'm online?!?!?!

Web icon set to be discontinued

Web icon set to be discontinued: "The browser that helped kick-start the commercial web is to cease development because of lack of users.

Netscape Navigator, now owned by AOL, will no longer be supported after 1 February 2008, the company has said.

In the mid-1990s the browser was used by more than 90% of the web population, but numbers have slipped to just 0.6%."

Not really that sorry to say goodbye to something which kind of got its legs tangled in the web of the late 1990s and never quite moved on... but it was the first browser I used and was my first experience of the web. I definitely don't use the web in the same way I did back when Navigator effectively was the web for many people (I no longer have to go make a cuppa cha and pile my way through other work while a 1 meg file downloads for a start!) and it's interesting to think how rapidly and how far it's come. And how relatively easily a hu-u-u-u-uge name can become a blast from the past. And no-one even really notices it's gone.

The web's a strange old place, isn't it?

'Medical myths' exposed as untrue

BBC NEWS | Health | 'Medical myths' exposed as untrue: "Dr David Tovey, editor of Clinical Evidence journal, said: 'The difficulty is it is often hard to disprove a theory.

'On the flip-side, absence of evidence does not necessarily mean absence of effect.

'Where reliable evidence becomes really important is in helping people make serious decisions about harms and risks."

Although this article isn't on first look that relevant to E891, it does contain a useful little quote which is worth bearing in mind when thinking about evidence-based education. "absence of evidence does not necessarily mean absence of effect" - and it got me thinking, if you base your practice on evidence-alone then aren't you missing things which are significant in terms of the effect they're having but that don't provide evidence? Dangerous to imagine that evidence-based practice is the only way forward when there's so much we don't know about human behaviour and social / learning interactions. There's an inherent arrogance in evidence-based practice which seems to say we know the problem, we now know the solution... ta daaaa! But who's to say what's really the problem and what are the desirable outcomes we should be working towards? And what happens when the evidence is revised in years to come and it turns out that the right way was the wrong way?!

Absence of evidence does not necessarily mean absence of effect - definitely worth bearing in mind when considering evidence-based practice in education.

League tables only do harm

League tables only do harm | Schools special reports | EducationGuardian.co.uk: "And therein lies the problem. As long as league tables exist, in a risk-averse society people dare not ignore them. Primary schools at the top of the league (which tend to be in the wealthiest areas) have a reputation to maintain; those at the bottom have to try to claw higher. The status of all teachers, governors and parents depends on how their year sixes perform in national tests."

Calling into question whether or not 'evidence' of the type that league tables provide is of any use at all since the qualitative knock on effects don't seem to feed positively into the system... or something along those lines... maybe?!