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Research Methods in Educational Leadership and Management
This classic guide continues to be the leading Research Methods text that specifically deals with Educational Leadership and Management. The collection boasts an array of high profile international expert contributors, covering a wide range of specialties, and emphasizing the importance of the critically engaged practitioner. Accessible and user-friendly, this Second Edition has been fully revised and updated to take full account of online research. It features several new authors, more case studies and examples, and brand new chapters.
- GenresEducation
400 pages, Paperback
First published August 9, 2002
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September 12, 2016
This book was brilliant, and the updating has "worked": each writer takes us through a research method or approach clearly and gives examples. You don't need to (for the most part) already be brilliant or even experienced to understand what they are saying and they use references well to back up what they say and give you further directions for reading and thought.
Often when they talk about the method, they are very open about the pitfalls and limits as well as the usefulness of the method, the writers refer well to each other's work within the volume (especially writers of early chapters who refer to chapters in the "research tools" and "analysing and presenting data" sections, encouraging the reader to join the dots between the different things that are being said. In this way there is a comprehensive and logical coverage of everything.
The authors in this volume explain things like "ontology" an "epistemology" much better and more clearly than people generally do (note: it is also possible that really it is just that now I have heard these so many times that finally I am getting a proper grasp of them, and that it is not really these authors only that I should thank but the cumulative effect of so many different people finishing now with these authors that has finally shed light for me) and then all the authors use these understandings to demystify the many choices a researcher has to make. It is at once a practical AND a rich book. I am very surprised that in all my studies it has only ever once been on a reading list (two chapters of it were anyway) when it is much clearer than many of the texts that lecturers recommended instead.
I wish I had read this BEFORE I wrote my article, but anyway I feel I will be able to cope with the reviewers heavy criticism because reading this book has made my mind more ordered and confident about what I am doing.
I was worried at the "leadership and management" focus because that is not necessarily my focus in what I intend to research but it was a lovely broad focus. All the examples used came from a "leadership and management" field and most sadly were from a "what works" view of the purpose of research (although many authors did tacitly grapple with the pitfalls of an overly technicist approach).
Another thing I loved about this book is that it put me onto MacLure (via Perryman in chapter 21). Also Fitzgerald's view of Document analysis was useful as were the early chapters on various perspectives. While I am unlikely to use some of the methods in this book (eg large scale surveys) I thought the chapters on them were well written and useful too. In some ways it was a flaw that so many different types of qualitiative and quantitative methods were lumped in together because noone would possibly use them all but I think the authors built a strong case for knowing as much as possible about various methods and their strengths and weaknesses and working between methods in creative yet logically connected ways.
I didn't feel as bound to a single approach here as I often do in research methods books, I felt all the tried and true methods were a springboard for exploration as long as I remember to keep my work authentically engaged with the data and the field it is in. Enough reading, time for some more baby-steps of my own (after work).
Often when they talk about the method, they are very open about the pitfalls and limits as well as the usefulness of the method, the writers refer well to each other's work within the volume (especially writers of early chapters who refer to chapters in the "research tools" and "analysing and presenting data" sections, encouraging the reader to join the dots between the different things that are being said. In this way there is a comprehensive and logical coverage of everything.
The authors in this volume explain things like "ontology" an "epistemology" much better and more clearly than people generally do (note: it is also possible that really it is just that now I have heard these so many times that finally I am getting a proper grasp of them, and that it is not really these authors only that I should thank but the cumulative effect of so many different people finishing now with these authors that has finally shed light for me) and then all the authors use these understandings to demystify the many choices a researcher has to make. It is at once a practical AND a rich book. I am very surprised that in all my studies it has only ever once been on a reading list (two chapters of it were anyway) when it is much clearer than many of the texts that lecturers recommended instead.
I wish I had read this BEFORE I wrote my article, but anyway I feel I will be able to cope with the reviewers heavy criticism because reading this book has made my mind more ordered and confident about what I am doing.
I was worried at the "leadership and management" focus because that is not necessarily my focus in what I intend to research but it was a lovely broad focus. All the examples used came from a "leadership and management" field and most sadly were from a "what works" view of the purpose of research (although many authors did tacitly grapple with the pitfalls of an overly technicist approach).
Another thing I loved about this book is that it put me onto MacLure (via Perryman in chapter 21). Also Fitzgerald's view of Document analysis was useful as were the early chapters on various perspectives. While I am unlikely to use some of the methods in this book (eg large scale surveys) I thought the chapters on them were well written and useful too. In some ways it was a flaw that so many different types of qualitiative and quantitative methods were lumped in together because noone would possibly use them all but I think the authors built a strong case for knowing as much as possible about various methods and their strengths and weaknesses and working between methods in creative yet logically connected ways.
I didn't feel as bound to a single approach here as I often do in research methods books, I felt all the tried and true methods were a springboard for exploration as long as I remember to keep my work authentically engaged with the data and the field it is in. Enough reading, time for some more baby-steps of my own (after work).
Displaying 1 of 1 review