Philosophical Perspective in Establishing a Research Framework
In EDUC 6013 and in EDUC 6123, you had opportunities to reflect on and locate yourself within a particular research approach (e.g., quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, arts‐based, community‐based participatory research) and identify a research methodology (e.g., narrative inquiry, reflexive narrative, critical ethnography, etc.). You also explored the strengths and limitations of particular methods and considered the researcher’s context and research/er integrity.
This assignment is designed for you to take those previous course learnings and apply them to the research inquiry you intend to undertake in your capstone. You are asked to provide an overview of your intended research inquiry and research question. This is my research question How could interventions be implemented to positively affect the academic achievement rate for those in poisoned in low socioeconomic circumstances?”
Discuss your philosophical perspective (your ontological position). Describe and provide a justification of the methodological approach and methods that best meets your intended research outcomes.
(Important) Your written report should be approximately 2000 words, including references, be in APA (7th ed.) format, and appropriately referenced. This paper requires a title page but not an abstract or table of contents.
Ethical Considerations
Students cannot interview or otherwise engage human participants due to ethical considerations. Any research involving human subjects requires completion of an ethics application, and our seven-week course format does not provide enough time to write a proposal and have it approved. As a result, across all Faculty of Education courses, students are not to conduct personal interviews or use privileged information. Therefore, in the assignments, you are limited to your own experience and what is available in the public domain. At all stages of your research (e.g. discussing your experiences, engaging in critical reflection, or conducting critical analysis) you must make every effort to protect confidentiality and anonymity. For more information on ethics, please see https://tcps2core(dot)ca/welcome.
Rubric
The following rubric has been derived from the University’s Graduate Grade Standards and will guide evaluation of this assignment.
Readings and references to be added and referenced in the 2000 word essay.
Extra Notes to help.
In EDUC 6013: Research Methods and in EDUC 6123: Reflexive Inquiry, you had opportunities to explore various methodologies and methods and inquire into how our lived experiences inform the ways we come to knowledge—just as they influence how we engage with each other and the world. You are asked to re-visit those ideas as you articulate your planned capstone inquiry in this unit’s assignment.
This unit is an opportunity to consider your positionality not only as a researcher, but also as a professional. As Holmes (2020) noted, the term positionality refers to “an individual’s world view and the position they adopt about a research task and its social and political context” (p. 1). Your positionality affects what you decide to research, how you conduct the research, who the subjects are, and how you analyze the results and present the findings. It calls into question the nature of “objectivity” in research and acknowledges the role of the self in the work we do.
Reflexivity is a process of continuous reflection on how you as a researcher influence the research and in turn, how the research influences you. A reflexive approach “supports creativity and innovation by encouraging researchers to discern methodological opportunities in their environments, and to be purposeful in their decision-making” (Attia & Edge, 2017, p. 42). As we’ve explored here and in other courses, being aware of our assumptions and biases is paramount to ethical practice. A reflexive approach can help identify your misconceptions, biases, and values and how they can change over time during the research process.
Your assignment submission this week is designed for you to pull together the ideas first developed in EDUC 6013 and EDUC 6123, refine them based on your philosophical perspective and methodological approach and methods, and present them in terms of the research inquiry you intend to undertake in your capstone. See the Assignment 2 description for more details
Required Content References to be referenced in the writing of the paper and at the end of the paper.
Holmes, A. G. D. (2020). Researcher positionality: A consideration of its influence and place in qualitative research. A new researcher guide. International Journal of Education, 8(4), 1–10. https://doi(dot)org/10.34293/education.v8i4.3232
Lyle, E. (2018). Untangling sel(f)ves through a/r/tography. In E. Lyle (Ed.) The negotiated self: Employing reflexive inquiry to explore teacher identity (pp. 1–11). Sense. http://search(dot)ebscohost(dot)com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,sso&db=nlebk&AN=1984256&custid=s7439054
Attia, M., & Edge, J. (2017). Be(com)ing a reflexive researcher: A developmental approach to research methodology. Open Review of Educational Research, 4(1), 33-45. https://www(dot)tandfonline(dot)com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080%2F23265507.2017.1300068
Holmes, A. G. D. (2020). Researcher positionality: A consideration of its influence and place in qualitative research. A new researcher guide. International Journal of Education, 8(4), 1–10. https://doi(dot)org/10.34293/education.v8i4.3232
Choose ONE:
Agostinelli, G. G. (2017). All hat and no head: Fitting researchers as in(di)visible selves. Journal of Reflective Inquiry, 2, 1–8. https://jori(dot)ncsu(dot)edu/publications/volume-2/
Freire, P. (2005). Education for critical consciousness. In Education and conscientizaco (pp. 37–51). Continuum. (Original work published in 1974). http://abahlali(dot)org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Paulo-Freire-Education-for-Critical-Consciousness-Continuum-Impacts-2005.pdf
Other Materials and Resources
Andrews, N., & Bawa, S. (2019). "People come and go but we don't see anything": How might social research contribute to social change? The Qualitative Report, 24(11), 2874–2890. https://search(dot)proquest(dot)com/docview/2322631463?accountid=142373
Berger, R. (2015). Now I see it, now I don’t: Researcher’s position and reflexivity in qualitative research. Qualitative Research, 15(2), 219–234. https://doi(dot)org/10.1177/1468794112468475
Jacobson, D., & Mustafa, N. (2019). Social identity map: A reflexivity tool for practicing explicit positionality in critical qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 18. https://doi(dot)org/10.1177/1609406919870075
Leavy, P. (2017). Research design: Quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, arts‐based, and community‐based participatory research approaches. The Guilford Press.
Piper, K. (2015). A journey of critical self-reflective inquiry. Journal of Reflective Inquiry, 1, 17–23. https://jori(dot)ncsu(dot)edu/publications/volume-1/
Reid, C., Greaves, L., & Kirby, S. (2017). Experience, research, social change: Critical methods (3rd ed.). University of Toronto Press.
Zinn, D., Adam, K., Kurup, R., & du Plessis, A. (2016). Returning to the source: Reflexivity and transformation in understanding a humanising pedagogy. Educational Research for Social Change, 5(1), 70–93. https://search-proquest-com(dot)libraryservices(dot)yorkvilleu(dot)ca/docview/1788993033/8FAA6CC254C14CFEPQ/1?accountid=142373
Establishing a Research Framework
Student Full Name
Institutional Affiliation
Course Full Title
Instructor Full Name
Due Date
Establishing a Research Framework
Introduction
This assignment will build on the research methods identified in EDUC 6013 and EDUC 6123 by applying them to the planned capstone inquiry: What interventions can be implemented to positively impact the academic achievement of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds? In addition to providing an overview of the proposed research question, this essay will analyze the researcher's philosophical perspective (the ontological position), justifying the methodological approach and methods that best meet the intended research outcomes.
My philosophical perspective (ontological position) is that my research position should be informed by reflexivity and that I am charged with the task of being vulnerable and revealing more about my life. I have a personal interest in the research question given that I am a 51-year old heterosexual white woman who, despite growing up in a low-class family, has managed to escape from the status I grew up in and from what society told me should have been. Not only am I a Canadian citizen, but I am also a working and independent upper-middle-class woman with a university education. I have also had my fair share of challenges raising my three adult children as a single mother without any external support. Because I understand what it feels like to constantly prove people wrong and rise above the persistent doubts and challenges, I am interested in reducing the existing achievement gap among marginalized low-income students.
The strengths of the research question (What interventions can be implemented to positively impact the academic achievement of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds?) are: (1) the question addresses a systemic problem in high school education where low-income students continue to underachieve and (2) the answers to the question may help bridge the existing achievement gap among marginalized low-income students. The only weakness of the research question is that there are numerous social and individual factors pertaining to the marginalization of students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds (from income to social supports to school resources to student motivation and chronic stress). Therefore, no single answer can explain why poor students continually underperform compared to their affluent peers.
Overview of Research Topic
Socioeconomic status does not just refer to income but also includes educational achievement, financial security, and idiosyncratic views of social class and status. It incorporates quality of life aspects together with opportunities and privileges available to individuals within the society. Socioeconomic status affects an individual's overall functioning, from physical health to psychological health to even education. Consequently, socioeconomic status is relevant to education research and advocacy. Numerous studies have consistently shown that students from low socioeconomic status record lower academic achievement than their peers from higher socioeconomic status (Thomson, 2018). Destin et al. (2019) argue that "students whose parents have completed more years of education and have greater financial resources are increasingly likely to perform better in school and enjoy the various lifetime benefits of educational success than students whose parents have less education and fewer financial resources."
A learner's literacy competency is directly associated with his or her home literacy environment. Therefore poor households with fewer learning materials or experiences that encourage positive literacy put the students at a disadvantage. Beyond material and financial deficiencies, low-income learners encounter chronic stressors, including unsafe neighborhoods. These parents are divorced or separated, living in overcrowded and unstable homes, parents who are making a minimum wage which often results in unmet basic needs, and feelings of a lack of acceptance from peers (Li & Qiu, 2018). Thomson (2018) states that "the inequalities imposed on children by their home, neighborhood and peer environment are carried along to become the inequalities with which they confront adult life at the end of school." As a result of these stressors, it is not unusual for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds to struggle with concentration and behavioral issues.
A majority of the students struggle with motivation, primarily because of little parental interaction or teacher involvement, and it is not uncommon for these learners to become disinterested in school work and drop out altogether. However, school conditions contribute more to poor academic achievement among low socioeconomic backgrounds than family characteristics (Destin et al., 2019). The school systems in low socioeconomic communities are typically under-resourced, from teachers' quality of training and experience to instructional materials, adversely affecting learners' academic outcomes and progress.
Ontario, Ontario, Canada has an excellent high-school completion rate and ranks second among sixteen peer countries, including U.S., Switzerland, Norway, Germany, Austria, Finland, Sweden, U.K., Denmark, France, Australia, Belgium, Netherlands, and Ireland. However, although high school dropout rates average between 5 and 14%, they increase to as much as 50% among students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds (Browne, 2019). Every year, thousands of poor students across Ontario, Ontario, Canada do not complete high school because of the considerable barriers to education that adversely affect their completion changes. Many low-socioeconomic students do not have access to educational resources, nutritious meals, financial support, stability, or even transportation to and from school.
As a result, there are some low-income communities where the number of young people between the ages of 20 to 24 who drop out of high school is triple the national average—in several cases, even reaching up to 50% (Pathways to Education, 2020). Some of the ways these achievements and high school completion rate gaps between low-income students and their affluent peers can be bridged are by increasing investment in education for poor children, enhancing school accountability reforms to improve academic and completion rate outcomes for poor children, providing teachers with incentives to teach in low-income schools, over and above, adopting evidence-based teaching practices that cater to the needs of low-socioeconomic learners, as well as expanding magnet and charter schools to serve low-income students better.
Anti-Oppressive Research Methodology
Every social researcher has an ethical and legal responsibility to challenge the inequality and disadvantages experienced by students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Andrews & Bawa (2019) argue that research should not be conducted just for the sake of theory. Rather the investigator must be "accountable to research subjects in ways that help in possibly transforming their lives for the better." Therefore, the research study will be informed by anti-oppressive principles, which are critical to comprehending and responding to the complexity of the marginalization of poor students concerning academic success. The anti-oppressive principles upon which the research will be founded include social differences, linking personal and political power, historical and geographical location, and reflexivity.
The principle of social difference posits that social differences arise because of power inequalities between the dominant and dominated social groups. These disparities are described in class, gender, disability, race, sexual preference, and age. On the other hand, linking personal and political theory asserts that personal biographies are typically situated within broader social contexts. Therefore the individual's life condition should be viewed concerning social systems as communities, peer groups, family, and communities (Humphries & Truman, 2017). For instance, students' underperformance from low socioeconomic backgrounds are not solely due to family or school characteristics but must be understood concerning education practices, policies, and ideologies that currently exist within the social environment in which the disadvantaged student is located.
Conversely, the principle of power hypothesizes that power is a social concept that can be applied to investigate life's public and private domains. Because social work is "innately political and so all about power," it is critical that researchers "understand the effects of power within society, and within the structures in which they work" in order to "successfully challenge power structures that perpetuate oppression" (Jupp, 2019). In contrast, the historical and geographical location principle postulates that personal life experiences and events are situated within particular places and times (Strier, 2006). Consequently, these experiences acquire meaning within the setting of existing social facts, ideas, and cultural disparities. On the other hand, the principle of reflexivity (which will be discussed in greater detail later) involves continual reflection of how values, power, and social disparities influence interactions between people. These interactions must be perceived in psychological te...