This final part of data analysis is where the circle is completed. You started with a hypothesis or a series of questions. You read around the subject, designed a method of gathering data to enable you to find out more about your topic. You
The authors wrote:
‘Other resource issues included enhanced pay for teaching assistants, money for performance management and an increase in numbers of teaching assistants throughout the school . . . there were comments relating to the need for mutual respect and ensuring that teaching assistants are treated as full members of the school and have access to all facilities. However, respondents were concerned that poor definition of teaching assistant roles and teaching assistants not being resourced to cover attendance at meetings after school were likely to become problematic. Respondents wanted to see the provision of regular, planned and paid meeting time for teachers and teaching assistants, as well as specific training programmes for the latter.’
Source: Wilson, E. and Bedford, D. (2008) ‘New Partnerships for Learning’:
teachers and teaching assistants working together in schools – the way forward’, Journal of Education for Teaching, 34:2, 137–150. Reproduced with permission.
Paid time for planning 40%
Enhanced pay scale for TAs 12%
Shared training 10%
Clear role for TAs 10%
TAs performance managed 8%
Better communication 8%
Cultural change 6%
TAs retain current role 6%
Teacher recommendations
carried out your research. You analysed and discussed your data and identified emerging themes. Now, after a simple and clear restatement of your research problem or questions and your results, it is time to draw conclusions.
You should begin by discussing your findings and relating them back to the problems you identified in the introduction. This should not be a repetition of what you have already written. With qualitative research you should consider whether you can now add anything new, as a result of what you have just found. With quantitative research methods you would make a statement of what has been found. You should consider what the implications are for the wider world. You should also identify any counter-arguments or unanswered questions. You can draw interesting conclusions even from a small study, so long as you remember there is a big difference between generalising about your findings, which you cannot do, and relating ideas to a wider context.
It is also at this point that you should evaluate your research, noting ways in which you tried to ensure it was both valid and reliable. You should also consider any limitations to its design, the effects they may have had on your findings, and areas which need to be explored in the future. You might finish by discussing the implications for policy and practice for you or those who were involved: your workplace or your educational institution, for instance.
Remember to exercise a little sensitivity here, particularly where questions have been raised about working practice or the need for changes in policy.
There are ways in which these can be identified without damaging your rela-tionship with your employer or institution. For example, the teachers’
recommendations to enable them to work effectively with their teaching assistants were summarised in the conclusion, as follows:
Our findings reinforced Dixon’s (2003) assertion that a key issue was the resourcing of non-contact time for teachers and their teaching
assistants to plan together; with a significant number of questionnaire respondents and interviewees stating that their key recommendation would be paid time in school hours for planning and liaison. Several of the questionnaire respondents stated that a funded enhanced pay scale for teaching assistants was a key recommendation they would make to their headteacher or governing body. This reinforced the review of literature where a finding was that the pay differential between teachers and their teaching assistants made partnership difficult (Moyles and Suschitzky, 2003, Parker and Townsend, 2005).
Source: Wilson, E. and Bedford, D. (2008) ‘New Partnerships for Learning’:
teachers and teaching assistants working together in schools – the way forward’, Journal of Education for Teaching, 34:2, 137–150.
References and further reading
Bell, J. (2005) Doing Your Research Project: a guide for first-time researchers in education and social science (4th Edition), Buckingham: Oxford University Press.
Birley, G. and Moreland, N. (1998) A Practical Guide to Academic Research, London:
Kogan Page.
Cohen, L., Manion, L. and Morrison, K. (2000) Research Methods in Education (5th Edition), London: Routledge & Falmer.
Denzin, N. and Lincoln, Y. (eds) (2000) Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd Edition), London: Sage.
Elliott, J. (2002) ‘What is applied research in education?’ in Building Research Capacity, Issue 3.
Eysenbach, G. and Till, J.E. (2001) ‘Ethical issues in qualitative research on internet communities’, British Medical Journal 323 (7321), 1103–5.
Foddy, W. (1995) Constructing Questions for Interviews and Questionnaires, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Glaser, B. and Strauss, A. (1967) The Discovery of Grounded Theory, Chicago:
Aldine.
http://hsc.uwe.ac.uk/dataanalysis/quantWhat.asp – University of Bristol site provides helpful information about quantitative data analysis and many examples to work through.
www.inspiringlearningforall.gov.uk/measuring_learning/steps_in_the_process/
analyse_data/
www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/ – useful papers on qualitative analysis.
Patton, M. (1990) Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods (2nd Edition), London: Sage.
Robson, C. (2002) Real World Research (2nd Edition), UK: Blackwell Publishing.
Stephen, M. (2006) Teach Yourself Basic Computer Skills, London: McGraw-Hill.
Wilson, E. and Bedford, D. (2008) ‘New Partnerships for Learning’: teachers and teaching assistants working together in schools – the way forward’, Journal of Education for Teaching, 34:2, 137–150.