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There are three core strands to my current research
interests:
- Understanding young children's
social worlds
- Statistics and quantitative
methods in educational research
- Promoting effective interventions
for children
1) Understanding young children's
social worlds
This strand focuses on the ways in which gender,
social class and 'race'/ethnicity impact upon young children's social
worlds. My research in this area has been largely ethnographic and
has included the books: Racism,
Gender Identities and Young Children and Boys
and Schooling in the Early Years. However, more recently I have
also undertaken a number of larger-scale surveys of children's attitudes
and identities. Within this I have four key interests:
- the impact of racism and ethnic divisions on
young children's attitudes, identities and peer-group relations;
- the ways in which gender, social class and
race/ethnicity impact upon young children's experiences of and
attitudes towards education;
- methodological issues in researching the experiences
and perspectives of young children; and
- how sociological and psychological theories
can be meaningfully combined to help understand young children's
social worlds. My most recent work in this area has been exploring
potential links between the work of Pierre Bourdieu and that of
Lev Vygotsky and sociocultural theories.
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2) Statistics and quantitative
methods in educational research
This strand is concerned with the role and uses
of quantitative methods in educational research. Within this I am
particularly interested in:
- demystifying statistics and developing educational
research capacity, as evident in relation to the recent publication
of my new textbook: Quantitative
Data Analysis in Education: A Critical Overview Using SPSS;
- exploring how quantitative methods may be more
appropriately used in the study of inequalities in education;
and
- developing approaches to evaluating the effectiveness
of educational programmes and interventions, particularly in relation
to the critical use of randomised controlled trials in education.
In this regard I am currently working on a book entitled 'Randomised
Controlled Trials in Social Research'.
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3) Promoting effective
interventions for children
This strand of work is concerned with the contribution
that research can make to the design, delivery and evaluation of
programmes and interventions that can improve outcomes for children;
particularly those from marginalised and disadvantaged backgrounds.
This work involves a multi-method approach that seeks to draw together
indepth qualitative and ethnographic methods with the use of large-scale
baseline surveys and randomised controlled trials and other rigorous
evaluative methods. A distinctive element of this research is the
emphasis that is given to locating the work within a strong children's
rights perspective.
My current work in this area falls into three
main areas and further information on each of these can be found
on the Current Projects page
of this website:
- NFER at Queen's Centre for Educational Research
- The Queen's Initiative for the Promotion of
Effective Interventions for Children
- The Joint Learning Initiative on Children and
Ethnic Diversity
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