(The Purpose of Education) Just imagine your conducting the research following the instructions bellow.You/I don’t have to do actual research, just provide a plan of how you would do the research) in which you should set out the background to the study, the question you seek to answer and then the data collection process you propose in order to answer the question.
A university is prepared to fund a research project that:
• Your topic covers
• Collects quantitative and/or qualitative data
• Runs for NO MORE than 6 MONTHS
• Can be completed by four undergraduate students
They want a plan for collecting data that will enable them to develop understanding of policy in your topic area.
The format of the assignment is a research proposal in which you should set out
(1) the background to the study,
(2) the question you seek to answer and then
(3) the data collection or generation process you propose in order to answer the question.
(4) You also will need to consider research ethics of the proposal.
As both funds and time are limited you should consider the following limitations when writing your proposal:
• The project must run for no longer than six months
• The university are prepared to support the project by meeting all reasonable fieldwork costs (travel, participants expenses) and
supplying all necessary equipment (e.g. computers, recorders, cameras etc.).
• All of the data collection and analysis must be done by four undergraduate students within the six-month time frame
(You need to think carefully about issues such as sample size and field work capabilities)
*********You are expected to reference both the substantive and methodological literature throughout your work (i.e. refer to the literature when discussing the advantages and disadvantages of different methods).
VERY RELEVANT TO INCLUDE METHODS REFERENCES AS THIS IS A METHODS MODULE.
*************Please Follow this structure and word count for each section:
1. Introduction: (approximately 100 words)
Here you would need to provide a brief introduction to the research topic, its justification, importance and topicality. This section needs to answer, “what you will research and why”.
2. Literature Review & Research Questions: (i.e. about 400 words).
Here you should discuss the academic literature and how it relates to your research questions in a concise and straightforward way. This section will answer “what we know about the topic so far”. When discussing the literature, you could consider:
• What has the research literature told about the topic? (For example, education vary by age, gender, social class, qualifications, knowledge, place, time and so on)
• How has the literature explained these differences?
• Why do these differences matter? Reducing injustice is a legitimate end in itself but it may be that there are other reasons – economic or environmental, for example – that also relate to your particular topic.
When writing this section, don’t feel compelled to slavishly follow the three bullet points given above and format your review as a paragraph on each.
3. Methods: (around 1000 words). **Most Important****
This is the major section of the proposal. In this section of your project the goal is to describe “how the project will answer the research question” stated in the previous section. The aim is to come up with an overall plan to answer your research question. In order to do that this section should clarify:
• The research design: Your research question needs to work as a blueprint for decision making related to methods. The description of the research design should detail what is the overall research plan (cross-sectional, case study, longitudinal, experimental and comparative)
• Data collection/generation strategies:
Here you should describe the actual data collection or data generation strategy (interviewing, surveys, observation, digital data, etc.) that will be used in the project as well as other details such as the sample, the research field, and so on.
• Ethics:
You will need to consider research ethics in this proposal.
4. Conclusion: (i.e. about 500 words).
This section should summarize the previous sections and show how the methods used can answer the research question set out in the opening sections You should also reflect upon the ways in which the methods you selected shape the kind of understanding/knowledge you could hope to gain from the research. Try not to simply rehearse ‘strengths and weaknesses’ of the method but try to show your understanding of the ways in which the proposed approach to, and understands of, the social world. Here you might reflect on the extent to which the proposal really does lead to a richer understanding of the topic and on whether the method used might offer “quality” results.
