9337
Adult educators’ reflections on MEd projects which they had undertaken
Peter Watson, University of Leeds
Aims of the study
The theory of curriculum development tells us that we should evaluate our courses[1]. If we took a systematic approach to this we should assess our students before the course and then again after the course to examine what and how much development had taken place[2]. We rarely do this systematically for practical reasons.
However I wanted to look at some aspect of evaluation with our MEd course for Adult Educators which has now been running for ten years. While the taught components have changed substantially over these years, the Research Study has remained basically unchanged, so I decided to examine that.
Another idea that is behind this project is that we try to develop in both our students and ourselves the ability to work as reflective practitioners[3]. Part of this entails that when we have completed something we ought not just to rush on to the next task which confronts us but we ought to stop, reflect on and evaluate what we have done and what we can learn from it.
A project to evaluate an educational course could approach the course from several angles but in view of the last point I wanted primarily to obtain from the participants of the current study reflections upon their experiences.
Background: the course
To put the study into context, an outline of the course will be useful. Typically three-quarters of it consists of taught strands, the other quarter being a research project, although a student may opt to do half the course as taught components and the other half as a larger research project. The latter procedure is however rare.
The taught component originally consisted of a series of year-long options. However from October 1988 the course has changed and students now chose six term-long modules. This gives them an opportunity to study a wider range of subject matter, but usually in rather less depth. By coincidence, roughly half of the students in the study took the course under the old format and the rest have studied under the present format.
The adult education modules are a small number in a very large number of modules provided across the Faculty of Education, most of which are aimed at school teachers. Adult education students are at liberty to take some of these other modules, though traditionally they tended not to, with exceptions I shall mention below.
Adult education modules are provided by a small group of tutors who tend to provide courses on general topics, such as the history of, or policy of adult education etc, rather than, for instance, courses on teaching specific subjects such as science or music. Occasionally students have opted to study a school-focused classroom module, such as language teaching or to study the research methods module provided primarily for the schoolteacher students.
For the majority of the ten years we have provided an optional non-assessed series of seminars for adult education students. These have included seminars on research methods and also presentation of research projects. However most adult education students are not formally taught research methods.
The student usually takes some taught components, then chooses a research topic and is allocated a member of staff to supervise the research study. Students may be local authority tutors or FE lecturers but equally they may be vicars, trainer-tutors from the armed forces, police, or paramedical professions. We also have a few students from overseas, mainly Chinese. The vast majority are part-time students.
Method
The nature of the project, involving 80-plus students, with limited time and resources, indicated the use of a questionnaire. Considering the usual balance between a long detailed questionnaire which might provide a lot of information but a poor response rate, and a brief questionnaire which restricts the information returned but might produce a better rate of return, I chose the latter.
After piloting, the questionnaire was sent with a stamped addressed envelope to all the students. It could be returned anonymously or otherwise. A summary of findings was offered to any respondent who wanted one. In a few cases the questionnaire was followed up with an open-ended interview.
Questions and expectations
Often in research a survey of the literature leads to questions and a set of hypotheses. Here, with limited background literature I shall just indicate how I got to the questions, and rather than hypotheses, I shall merely note a few possible outcomes.
I am interested in what motivates professionals to undertake continuing education[4] and considered that here, concerning these research projects, motivation would be evenly split between interest and vocational utility. As this survey is conducted by a tutor (ie me) not an outside researcher, the results might be contaminated – for instance a person might out of politeness mention one of my courses as being useful. We know that supervision varies[5]. I expected very mixed views about supervision.
Returning to my opening remarks about reflective practitioners, questions I try repeatedly to get students to consider, near the end of a study, are what difficulties did you have? and how would you improve your study if you did it again? Responses to these would be, for me, some of the most interesting comments. I consider that a lot of useful work is done in MEd studies, but that unfortunately not enough is done to disseminate it. Finally I expected that a person’s future research would be related (in content or method) to their MEd research.
Results: responses to the questions.
Q. 1: What influences a person in choice of research topic?
As this MEd is being taken by people who are working, one would expect that a majority would be motivated to do something related to their work. In fact over 50% said they were equally motivated by both interest and usefulness for work. Only a few mentioned use for work by itself. About a third said they were motivated mainly by interest.
Q. 2. What courses most influenced the choice of studies?
The courses cited as most influencing the studies, by a large margin, were Psychology and Continuing Education for the Professions. The only others mentioned more than twice were Philosophy and our introductory overview course, Policy and Practice. As I teach psychology and CEP, there is possible reason, as mentioned earlier, to be cautious about this result. On the other hand as the majority of students had indicated they wanted to do something related to their work, these two courses are among those most easily applicable.
Q. 3. Having chosen a topic, what were students’ views about their preparation for their study?
A sizeable minority suggested that courses on methodology, statistics and/or computing would have been beneficial. While some said the supervision they had was good, some said theirs could have been more challenging; as one student said, ‘less chat and more rigorous stuff’. A couple were quite critical.
Q. 4. Getting into the study, what were the main difficulties encountered?
Considering the normal steps taken in any research project, there will be for each step, a student who finds that step difficult. However the theme that came up most frequently was the limited time available. Another difficulty which came up in different forms was that the student had ended up with more data than was usable, with the resultant problem of how to handle it. On a different tack, a problem noted several times was a feeling of isolation. This is when the student, who previously has got into the student group/support atmosphere of a taught class, suddenly finds him/herself without this support.
Q. 5. What would they do about these problems if they were to rerun the study?
Obviously the ideas of taking a longer time, starting earlier, etc, came up. Also there were suggestions to focus on one issue, or a narrower subject. Of course, there were conflicting ideas. One said ‘I wouldn't use a questionnaire again but would have more interviews’, while another suggested cutting down on interviews and using a questionnaire instead. When asked how they would improve their study a few said they would chose an entirely different topic.
Q. 6. What was the feedback to their subjects?
About half said the question did not apply to their study. This is interesting, giving an indication of what proportion of the studies was of each type. There was no significant change in rate over the decade.
Q. 7: Students were asked whether their findings were disseminated.
I should first note that at Leeds, as at many places, a copy of the research study report is kept in the departmental library, and so, in that limited sense, the findings are available. However otherwise most respondents said they had either given a formal verbal presentation of their study at college or workplace or had presented a written report to their Management or lodged a copy of their report, for example, in their college library. Very few said they had presented their findings at a conference and in even less cases had the work led to a publication.
Q 8 What consequences did participants see their studies as having?
Before considering the replies to this, I must remark that the question, as asked, is a leading question. However, to the question as asked, about a third said their study had no consequences. There was an overlap between these people who said the project had no consequences and those who said they were motivated mainly by interest in answer to question 1. Respondents who did note some consequences can be sorted broadly into those who noted consequences for themselves as individual teachers,
and those who indicated wider-ranging consequences. From the first group, we find the study might alter a person's teaching – for example a teacher's attitude to students – or the study findings might enrich the content of a syllabus. In a few cases the teacher did a detailed content analysis of a syllabus of a training course, getting for example responses from practitioners concerning the value of specific items, and this led to syllabus changes. Some people reported that their experiences provided a model when they later were supervising their own students. More generally some studies were reported as leading to student self-development, e.g. in terms of confidence or increasing the person's self-awareness.
Among the other group, there were consequences wider than the students’ immediate work: for example a study might be influential in institutional policy changes, or lead to a regional or nationally adopted scheme, or, for example, a study of student motivation led to recruitment changes and increase in institutional student numbers. Three respondents noted that following their MEd they changed jobs. While one indicated that this was influenced by the subject of the research-study, the extent to which the study and degree were influential in the other two cases is unclear.
Q .9: Did students follow up their work with further research?
Concerning question 9 about later research, we must recall that for some, the MEd may include their first experience of research and obviously it is interesting and important to see whether this is followed up by later research. In answer to this question about a half said they had not undertaken any further research, although a few indicated they were intending to. Of the rest who had undertaken further research, the vast majority reported some similarity in their new research and that of their MEd study.
Q. 10. The final question gave participants the opportunity to make other comments about their research study.
An oft-repeated comment was that while the study was arduous, the person enjoyed it; indeed, one said it was the best part of the course. Others said it was a very valuable learning experience. On the other hand a few students said they were disappointed in the little they had achieved in their project and again there were a couple of further criticisms of supervision received. Finally a person considered, now in hindsight, that the research-study findings were publishable, but commented that this had not been suggested.
Brief comments
The research study is generally seen as a useful and enjoyable exercise. While some supervision is good, some could be improved. We should all, for example, encourage any student who appears to be doing otherwise to restrict the study to a manageable size. A methodology course ought be available. We should encourage some students to present their work at conferences or publish it. It would be useful if SCUTREA published each year, say in Scoop, a list of titles of MEds completed that year and available for consultation in the various Universities. Further results are noted and a wider range of implications is discussed at the conference.
[1] ES Henderson (1978), Evaluation of Inservice Teacher Education
[2] eg, P Watson (1975), Pioneering at Parklane. Special Ed