Assignment Guidance for Alternative Assessment
Learning Outcomes
The following learning outcomes are to be met by the summative assessment:
- Demonstrate and apply critical research methods and skills.
- Develop critical understanding of the needs and roles of different stakeholders in research discussion.
- Demonstrate the ability to identify issues related to an aspect of provision or practice in Early Years care and education.
- Demonstrate conceptual knowledge and understanding of research practice and ethics in Early Years care and education.
- Demonstrate the ability to analyze and interpret research findings and present key issues for discussion.
- Demonstrate the ability to select and utilize appropriate methodologies in the work-based research. This LO has changed to:
- Demonstrate the ability to select and give a critical theoretical discussion of a data collection process
- Engage in a small scale work-based research project and demonstrate ability to investigate in depth one aspect of Early Year care and education.
- Demonstrate the ability to justify personal and professional points of view based on values, knowledge, practice and awareness from a range of sources.
Assignment
The assignment will report and critically discuss the findings of an investigational study of one issue undertaken in relation to an aspect of Early Years practice or provision.
Guidance
The research project will run as you have planned over the year and you will write your introduction, literature review, methods and methodology as we have already discussed.
When you come to what should be the data analysis section, you will write a critical discussion about one method of data collection. You will have covered this more briefly when discussing it in your methods section alongside the other methods you were planning to use, but now you will write about it in much more depth.
An example of this is below:
Observation
In order to acquire this information, observation was a significant method of data collection. I needed to develop an overall picture of the practice, demands and expectations, gaining a first-hand experience of the subtle innuendoes and real life experiences that occur in a setting. Observation allowed me the option of removing myself from participating in activities with the children and allowed me to record freely without becoming engaged in discussion (Stringer, 2013). Dawson (2009) also discussed direct observation, as used by psychologists where no interaction takes place between the observer and observee. I would then be able to record what the actual lived experience is like as opposed to obtaining second-hand experiences of those events from another’s perspective (Cohen et al., 2011). This would enable me to use all my senses to understand behaviours and relationships (Marshall & Rossman, 2010), allowing different types of information to be recorded than would be in questionnaires or interviews. However, I realised that this approach would not always be appropriate for the project, as the curious nature of young children makes some of them want to engage with new adults and include them in their play. Observations can be conducted in a variety of ways and a more interactive approach would be participant observation, in which the observer is part of the activity and all of the relationships and behaviours involved in order to fully embrace the experience, which was much more appropriate. Cohen et al. (2011) and Rugg and Petre (2007) explained how this can be further divided depending on the degrees of interaction between the observer and the participants. In both the initial methodology of action research and the eventual case study approach I adopted, observation was an essential method. I required them to be detailed and to demonstrate what was really happening in the setting, relying less on prescriptive foci and more on recording the natural ebb and flow of an early years classroom (Stringer, 2013). Observation is a natural process we engage with constantly; an experienced observer can engage with this in a non-intrusive manner which does not make staff or children nervous and they are more likely to act in their usual way (Koshy et al., 2010). An advantage to this is the flexibility to vary what is being observed as well as creating an in-depth picture of what is occurring, enabling the observer to gather qualitative data which identifies reactions, expressions and other subtle indicators of what is actually occurring. However, there is also a risk of recording too much information, irrelevant information, changing the way people behave because they are being observed (ibid.).
You can then discuss your findings from the literature review and how it all fits in with your question. In your conclusion/discussion explain issues encountered and how you would change your approach if you were to do this again.
If you have any questions, please e mail me
Jacqui
There are a number of different of observations types, what you can’t do is make it broad and just say you’ll do 30 mins in the home corner, narrow down the focus, chose one child to observe for 3 – 10 minute intervals, long enough for you, how are you going to capture the observation, are you going to video it/permissions.. replay the video, take as long as you like to replay and analyse. More exciting, on google, methods to use, observation, lots of stuff online, time sampling, incident sampling, how many time a child uses a particular phrase or does a certain action. Chose one child or chose several children to observe over a period of a week that a time that’s convininet, might not be the child your looking at but the practitioner or it could be both. Filming interactions, talk about it in ethics form, parents consent, managers consent, practitioners individual consent so they are willing participants. Richness of the data, challenge is how your going to sift through the observations to discuss record.
