Staff Reporter
The educational field is gradually changing and shaping every day into new teaching methods and curriculum development to improve learning outcomes.
As a result, academic researchers, educators, and school administrators face the challenge of understanding and adapting to these changes in the industry to stay ahead of the curve and provide students with the best learning and teaching methods.
In this article, we will dive into some of the most promising innovative research methods in education.
The Evolution of Research Methods in Education
In the past, education research has been primarily qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative research aims attention to interviews, focus groups and case studies behind teaching or student behaviour.
Quantitative research, on the other hand, focuses on numerical data, surveys and measurable outcomes of student performance.
However, as the world of education changes new research methods in education are replacing these traditional methods to provide more dynamic, flexible and valuable insight into how education works. We will explore these innovative educational methods.
- Design-Based Research (DBR)
One of the methods of education research is design-based research.
Here, teachers, and educators collaborate with school administrators and other stakeholders to design, implement, and evaluate potential educational changes.
In design-based research, changes are made in the educational sector based on the feedback from participants in the design process.
With design-based research, researchers can provide specific solutions to educational problems that come up.
However, it is usually costly and time-consuming because changes will always be made. Additionally, researchers and stakeholders must be flexible in the approach and the design processes they come up with because, for instance, a new curriculum that is aimed at helping students with leadership skills will have to be refined and sometimes even changed if the feedback is not as good as was expected.
- Mixed Methods Research
Mixed methods in educational research combine both qualitative and quantitative approaches to get more comprehensive educational research.
This combination helps researchers to get a better understanding of an educational issue or challenge and how to tackle it.
The descriptive insights, numerical data, and mixed methods give researchers, educators, and school administrators a clear understanding of how students learn and how any educational change will affect their learning experience.
When using collaborative education research involves researchers, educators, students, parents or even community members working together on a project to bring diverse viewpoints and thorough findings.
The result of this qualitative and quantitative method of research helps them understand the “why” and “what” in any educational outcome that is experienced by students.
- Social Network Analysis (SNA)
In a bid to come up with innovative teaching strategies, the Social Network Analysis (SNA) method of research is used to study and understand the interactions of people within a social network.
When the research is done in a school setting, researchers try to find out the social dynamics of classrooms, schools, or online learning communities.
Social network analysis is beneficial because it gives in-depth knowledge into interactions in school settings which in turn lets researchers know the leaders and influencers in these educational settings.
It also helps to understand how ideas, practices, and innovations are done within these educational communities.
Collecting this data and analysing them can be a challenge and there is also the issue of ethical concerns related to data privacy and confidentiality.
- Digital tools for education research
With the conception of digital technology, new tools have opened up new possibilities to make research easier for data collection.
You can use platforms like Moodle, Canvas LMS and Blackboard Learn to track student engagement and performance.
As technology continues to move ahead, researchers can quickly gather information from a large group of students or teachers with the help of online surveys and questionnaires such as Google Forms to access learning experiences.
Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies are other tools that are now relied on heavily to help in educational research.
You can create immersive and interactive learning environments from anywhere you are to help you research and understand how students engage in classes, their motivation and also learning outcomes.
VP and AR to help them understand the variables and study cause-and-effect relationships in a controlled and safe manner.
They can also come up with better and more innovative ways that students can learn and be taught.
For example, researchers can pinpoint why students go for affordable research paper services instead of writing their assignments themselves and how to make students more engaged in their lessons.
Virtual reality and augmented reality research are not without their challenges. Researchers need technical expertise to use the specialized equipment for VR and AR research.
Since VR and AR are done in a safe and controlled environment it can be challenging to find out if the data obtained is valid and reliable.
- Big Data Analytics in Education
Big data analytics in education is another innovative research method of education that is relied on heavily.
Advanced statistics and computational tools like Python, SGL and R Programming are helping the researcher to obtain large databases more efficiently. It is helpful when researchers, educators, and stakeholders want to study learning challenges, learning outcomes, educational equity, teacher effectiveness, and the need for a curriculum.
With big data analytics, patterns and trends can easily be analysed, which helps researchers gain insight into useful changes that can be made in teaching and learning.
However, to use the big data analytics research method, researchers must be technical experts so that the large-scale educational data sets are valid and reliable.
- Participatory Action Research (PAR)
Participatory Action Research (PAR) is an innovative research method in education that needs collaboration between not just researchers but also students, teachers, and stakeholders to identify and tackle educational problems that come up.
The emphasis of participatory action research is participation, action, and change. This research method is one of the best because it helps researchers to come up with specific solutions to specific educational challenges.
It helps to foster collaborations which in turn improves the educational system. However, participatory action research is not just costly but time-consuming too. It can be difficult to scale up and researchers must be adaptable in their approach.
Benefits of Innovative Research Methods in Education
There are several benefits of using innovative research methods in the educational sector:
- Improving learning outcomes because better learning strategies and curriculums are implemented based on the results of the research.
- Students are more engaged and motivated to learn because the challenges or issues they had have been addressed, which makes the learning environment better for them.
- It increases collaboration between researchers, educators, and stakeholders in the educational sector. Everyone comes together to do the research, give their expert opinion, and come up with good solutions to problems in the educational sector.
- Participatory action research helps students who participate in it to build confidence in speaking out about their challenges and what troubles them, which helps them grow their public speaking and leadership skills, which ultimately helps them to be more confident.
Conclusion
There are so many innovative research methods in education that have been helpful over time. These research methods aim to ensure that useful changes are made in the educational sector so that teaching and learning experiences are better.
Although these research methods are helpful, it is not without their challenges and need for ethical considerations. So, educational researchers must learn how to navigate these research methods well.
