You are in a funny place when you
observe others in their natural setting. The very fact that you are
present means the setting is no longer their natural setting. It is their
natural setting plus you. And they know why you are there and they are
self conscious about your presence. They will act differently because of
you. In addition, as a human being, you will have human reactions to the
things people say and do that may be irrelevant to the study you are
conducting, but that will nonetheless feel important and significant to
you. Here are some of the things you need to do/consider as you engage in
observation research.
When you observe, you are a part of the
situation, but you are not normally there. What people say and do in your
presence, therefore, may be different from what they would normally say or
do. For instance, if a classroom teacher knows you are interested in
student engagement in mathematics she may be more likely to teach toward
engagement when you are present than she normally would.
Psychologists call this the Primacy
effect. Your initial impressions of a scene or person can have a distorting
effect on later judgments. Stick around long enough to get over these.
3.
You will have an emotional response
. . . to the person
or people you are observing. If your initial response is to like or
dislike a teacher you are observing, you will be inclined to judge all other
aspects of that person's performance either positively or negatively. So,
for instance, a teacher who is caring is perceived to also be effective
in teaching mathematics. Don't fall for that inference.
Sometimes people you hate are actually pretty good at what they do and kids may
like them too.
Often observers are impressed with
particular moments they observe-- student insights, perhaps, or clever teacher
moves. These moments are special, and they are real, but they may not be typical
or representative of what normally occurs in that classroom.
5.
You cannot assume the events you observe are similar to those you don't see
You may observe, say, a reading lesson
or a math lesson, and assume that what you see typifies how things work
throughout the day. Or you may schedule all your observations on Monday,
not realizing that students behave differently on Mondays than they do on other
days of the week. To be sure your interpretation of events makes sense,
you need to sample events across different times, subjects, schools, teachers,
or whatever dimensions are relevant to your study.
6.
You will succumb to confirmation bias
One of the most difficult aspects of
human nature is that we tend to seek only evidence that confirms our own
prior ideas. This is called a confirmation bias. The
secret to good observational research is to seek out counter-examples. If
you expect, for instance, teachers to take a custodial point of view, make an
effort to find instances that defy this expectation, so that you can learn more
about when they do and when they don't behave in certain ways. If you
expect them to represent a subject with a particular bias, search for examples
of an opposing bias.
7.
You are always missing something important
Understanding classroom dynamics
requires you to follow the main story line. However, it is easy to become
distracted and miss important cues. For instance, you may be focusing on
one student while the teacher is focusing on another one, so that you will
likely misconstrue the teachers' behavior or intentions. Or events may
happen very rapidly, and you will miss an important detail.
8.
You will change your own focus over time
As you spend more time observing, you
will begin to see things differently than you did at first. You may
attend less to events that you consider routine, and more to unusual
events. Or you may become interested in new questions. When this
happens you will discover that your early observation notes are inconsistent
with your later notes, making it difficult for treat them equally during
analysis. Plan on such changes. Devise a method for tracking
your own thinking. One strategy frequently used is to write memos to
yourself, or to write new hypotheses regularly. Be sure to date these,
because later, when you try to analyze your data, you may realize that all the
notes you took before a certain revelation won't contain evidence about that
idea because you hadn't thought to look for evidence about that yet. Or,
conversely, perhaps those earlier notes will provide a test for a hypothesis
that you didn't think of until later on.
For help on how to manage observations
and make them as fair as possible take a look at my page on controlling your Self and also my page on labeling the things you see and tips on observing.
© Graduate Researchers, 2006
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.