Interviews and Observations in Education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4250 words

Interviews and Observations in Education - Essay Example The objectives in the third section deal with the similarities and differences between the two methods: interviews and observations. First of all, through the process of reflecting on different research, the writer must determine how similar the two methods are. Next, also through the process of reflecting on real research, the writer must determine the main differences between both methods with regard to: sensory, and participation. The aims of the fourth section deal with the different types of interviews and observations that can be conducted in different situations. First of all, the writer discusses both structured and unstructured interviews. Next the different ways of conducting observations in different places and for different purposes are discussed in detail. Finally, the aims of the fifth section are mainly to sum up the research paper. In this section, the main points of the paper are summed up and the main points drawn from the use of interviews and observations are discussed. Also, some recommendations for researchers in the field of education for the best use of data collection methods according to the different purposes of the research are included. The interviews and observations that were chosen for the purposes of this paper were selected based on their academic quality and overall relevance to the topic. Interviews and observations are solid methods and topics to discuss with regard to data collection in the educational field because of the quality of the data that they produce. The data is collected based on these methods because it is both primary and direct in nature. Therefore, it yields highly useful information that educational professionals can use to better manage the educational efforts that they participate in and perform on a daily basis. In order to select the specific interviews and observations that were discussed in the context of this particular paper, a basic Internet search was performed using the Google search engine. It is key to note that only the academic resources that were returned in the hit list were utilized. Common books and journal articles were chosen from the search string that was returned. Any potential resources that were determined to not be of solid academic quality, yet were returned in the hit list, were rejected for that very reason. In addition to the above method of resource location, a standard library search was conducted in order to obtain materials that were deemed to be of the same quality and standards. According to Inside Higher Ed (2008, pg. 1), "The problem is near-universal for professors who discover, upon assigning research projects, that superficial searches on the Internet and facts gleaned from Wikipedia are the extent - or a significant portion - of far too many of their students' investigations. It's not necessarily an issue of laziness, perhaps, but one of exposure to a set of research practices and a mindset that encourages critical thinking about competing online sources." The same research concept applies to the selection of the content of this paper. Great measures were taken to assure that this problem did not occur while research was being conducted to piece together this particular paper. The Different Research Methods that are Commonly Used for