QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Critique of Qualitative Research Articles

Critique of Qualitative Research Articles

In the article A Year in the Life of an Elementary School:  One School's Experiences in Meeting New Mathematics Standards, Karen Dorgan (2004) summaries a non-participatory case study attempted throughout the course of the 1999—2000 school year.  This study concentrated on the school of an elementary school in the state of Virginia (USA) and its efforts in contending with alterations in the informative measures of discovering for that state.  Dorgan's report shows that she triangulated her data assemblage methods in an ethnographic investigation, using all three primary/principal procedures for data collection throughout the course of her study, namely: “observation, interviewing and data analysis” (Dorgan 2004, p. 1205).  Throughout the study, certain topics appeared from the data which were assembled and coded - these topics are delineated in the outcomes part of the report. 

 

Purpose

The reason of the study is inferred in the abstract and the introduction, and it is apparently and specifically asserted in the 'Method' part of the report.  Here, the investigator states that the reason of the study was “done in an try to realise how, and to what span their [the school and management of this specific elementary school] conclusions about direction were leveraged by the Standards of Learning and the state tests” (Dorgan, 2004, p. 1205). 

 

Questions

In direct relative to the reason of this case study, really, the going by car force behind the study, are two inquiries which Dorgan best features on sheet 1205 of the released article.  Particularly, these inquiries are 1. “What was the result of a political decision… on pedagogical conclusion making?” and 2. “How might the claims of a new checking program sway how teacher[s] educate and how young children are anticipated to learn?”.  It is significant here to note that Dorgan's study was not hypothesis propelled, as would be the case with a quantitative study study.  Instead, the study starts by inquiring questions. 

 

Literature

In qualitative study it is significant to reconsider pertinent publications on the subject of study in an effort to supply a ordered backdrop for the efforts attempted by the investigator in a granted context.  Dorgan does really draw on some applicable publications to contextualize her study, whereas no clear recount, synthesis, or investigation of that publications is evident.  For demonstration, in the introduction to the item, Dorgan mentions to Olson (1999) who posits that by 2000 (the year of Dorgan's research) “every state but Iowa will have not less than one pattern of a statewide test” (Dorgan, 2004, p. 1204).  As backdrop to her study, this is especially helpful in that it presents clues which proposes that an investigation of how such checking sways educating and discovering is needed. 

 

Theory

As asserted overhead, the idea here is grounded inside and emergent from the data collected.  Essentially, the idea can be asserted in periods of an response to the study inquiries put ahead in the Impetus For The Research part of the paper (see ...