Doing Your Early Years Research Project : a Step-by-Step Guide / Guy Roberts-Holmes.

CW748

Includes bibliographical references (pages 226-233) and index.

1. You Can Do Research! -- Your feelings about doing research -- Myths about early childhood research -- An inclusive approach towards early childhood research -- Your research project within early childhood studies -- The professionalisation of early childhood studies -- The importance of your reflective practice -- Principles of high-quality early childhood research -- The research process within early childhood studies -- Everyday research skills -- 2. Your Research Story, Methodology and Research Questions -- Reflecting upon your personal story -- Methodology -- Some research stories -- Your reflective diary -- High levels of motivation -- Professional motivations -- Focusing on your area of interest -- The overall research questions and field questions -- Getting your research questions right: breadth and depth -- Doing a pilot study -- 3. Ethical Issues in Early Childhood Research -- Legislation and the participatory rights of children -- Sociology and the participatory rights of children -- Children's participation and protection -- A reflective impact assessment of research on children -- Your emotional vulnerability -- Informed consent -- Informed consent, confidentiality and child protection -- Informed consent leaflet for children -- Socially inclusive and respectful relationships with children -- Informed consent is an ongoing process -- Negotiating access with the gatekeepers -- 'Feedback' and closure of the research -- Ethical dilemmas are hard to resolve -- Ethical checklist -- 4. Designing Your Research -- What is research design? -- Two research approaches -- Quantitative research -- Qualitative research -- Sampling within your project -- Triangulation and validity -- The quantitative and qualitative approaches: an example -- Action research -- Action research belongs to you -- Case studies -- Small-scale qualitative surveys -- Broad and deep research -- Justifying your methods -- Your research proposal -- 5. Observation: Looking and Listening -- Why do observations? -- What is observation? -- Interpretation -- Being open in your looking and listening -- Knowing the context of your research setting -- Unstructured observations -- Structured observations -- Tally counting -- Observation schedules -- Event sampling and running records -- Video observations -- Observational diagrams -- Participant observation -- 6. Creative Listening with Young Children -- Developing cultures of meaningful participation -- What is creative listening? -- The Mosaic approach -- Cameras and ethics -- Children's photographs and walking tours -- Children's drawings -- Children's interpretations of their pictures -- 7. Interviewing Children and Adults -- Types of interview -- The interview guide -- Probing -- The differences between an interview and a chat -- Focus group conversations with children -- Children as researchers -- 8. Writing and Using Questionnaires -- Three ways to administer your questionnaires -- Ethical issues and questionnaires -- Writing your questionnaire -- Types of question -- Writing a Likert scale questionnaire -- 9. Presenting and Analysing Your Findings -- Reducing your data -- Reducing and displaying your data -- Using Excel and NVivo software for analysis -- Inducing and/or deducing the themes and topic codes -- Using a wide range of data in your analysis -- 10. Writing Your Literature Review -- Why you should do a literature review -- Read widely -- Developing your own point of view -- What you should read and include in your literature review -- Using your college/university online databases -- Using the British Education Index (BEI) -- How to read a really useful article -- Synthesising the ideas -- Write, edit, re-edit and re-re-edit! -- 11. Writing up your research project -- The steps before your research project -- Your supervisor -- Your responsibilities -- Your supervision meetings -- The contents of your research project -- Title page -- Acknowledgements -- Abstract -- Table of Contents -- ch. 1 Introduction and Literature Review -- ch. 2 Methodology -- ch. 3 Findings -- ch. 4 Discussion and Conclusions -- References -- Appendices -- Be careful to avoid plagiarism -- Final preparation and proofreading.

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