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Research Methods in Education

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 Book Reviews
Research Methods in Education (6th ed)
Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison, Routledge Publishers
(part of the Taylor & Francis group), Oxford, UK, 2007, 638 pages,
IBSN 978-0-415-36878-0, AUD80.00 (paperback)

Any research text which has reached a sixth edition must be doing something right and
this book has been an international best seller for most of its history. The fifth edition
published in 2000 demonstrated to readers that the authors were adept at maintaining
currency and were not simply prepared to serve up a time honoured menu of
superficial coverage of the broad range of possibilities for educational research. This
tends to be the dominant model for research methods texts. The 6th edition of this text
is even more impressive and goes even further with additional chapters on analysis; an
extension to the paradigms debate including an introduction to the emergence of
complexity theory (though I feel the paradigms discussion could have been taken a
little further), and an important cross referencing feature which connects the text to a
support companion web site.

Structurally the book is well laid out, and a particularly impressive aspect is that it begins
with a lengthy discussion of the nature of inquiry which is followed by a detailed
discussion of ethics. Given that this text is likely to be used predominantly by post
graduate students this is to be applauded. It is easy for research methods texts to get into
the so called “nuts and bolts” of research too early without laying the ground of the nature
of inquiry and therefore the quest for “knowledge” and the ethics which underpins such
an endeavour. It makes the reader think long and hard about the questions related to:
Why do research in the first place? In the first section, a lengthier discussion on the nature
of uncertainty and the attraction of post-structuralism would have been welcome, perhaps
as a precursor to the section on feminist research, and connected to the discussion on
complexity theory. I am not especially supportive of post-structuralist thought but it has
become a significant feature in the educational research landscape.

An important feature of the book for me is its non-partisan tone. It seeks not to extol the
virtues of one approach over another, rather the authors talk about the purpose of
research and the importance of fit between the research questions being asked, the data
needed to answer the questions and the methods required to gather such data. This is
important as it is easy for research students to lapse into discourses which seek to
marginalize certain types of research often for uninformed reasons. At the same time, the
authors do not simply accept that research, whatever its nature, is unproblematic and in
Part One the authors highlight the more important criticisms of the major paradigms.

The Australian Educational Researcher, Volume 36, Number 2, August 2009 •147
The obligatory sections on validity and reliability and sampling are present and a lengthy
section which details, with considerable precision, the various “styles” (their term) of
educational research. This is followed by strategies for data collection and this section is
full of practical examples and mini scenarios which are particularly helpful. Readers can
get advice from how to construct a questionnaire, to what statistical test to use, to
interviewing techniques. I believe there are two shortcomings in this section that are
worth noting. First, the section on personal construct theory would benefit from a
lengthier discussion on how the repertory grid can be used as a tool to generate
narrative. The grid is widely recognized as a “conversational tool” and there is plenty of
published educational research that has used the repertory grid in this way. Secondly,
the section on discourse analysis is scant at best with only limited attention (by
implication through a reference to Habermas) given to critical discourse analysis with
no mention of the major writers in this area. Perhaps we can look forward to this
addition in the seventh edition.

The final section on data analysis is also short in one or two areas and this connects with
my comment about post-structuralism earlier. For instance, there is no mention of how
alternative data which could be gathered as part of a case study would be analyzed. An
example would be the use of visual images such as pictures, photographs or video
evidence. Additionally, how pictures drawn by participants (such as school children) as
a form of representation could be analyzed to understand children’s school experiences
is also unexplored. In fact, in the section on qualitative data, it is not apparent that
material other than spoken (and transcribed) text can be construed as data. However,
there is plenty of published material in education research journals that has made use of
such data. Again, perhaps this may be part of the next evolution of this book.

I would not want to end this review on a negative note and really my comments above
simply confirm that educational research is an ever-widening field with increasing
legitimacy for diverse methods and forms of data. To their credit, the authors of this book
have shown, as they have with previous editions, that research needs to be thought
through carefully, that there are accepted methods for particular purposes, and that
educational research continues to expand in scope, method and choice of topics. To
cover every nuance of educational research would require a book three times the size
of this one. This is not the authors’ intention. Rather, they want to see a researcher being
well grounded in the discourses surrounding the nature of inquiry and to have a good
grasp of how this articulates with the methods of inquiry. To this end, the book is
exemplary and should be on the reading list of all post graduate students and it would
not be out of place on a research academic’s bookshelf.

Tony Rossi
The University of Queensland

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 BOOK REVIEWS

Educational Leadership – Key Challenges and Ethical Tensions

Patrick Duignan, Cambridge University Press, Victoria, 2006, 176 pages,
ISBN: 13 978-0-521-68512-2, paperback, AUD49.95

Another book on Educational Leadership – Yes, but this is different! Provocative and
thought provoking, this book provides an exposition of the challenges and ethical
tensions faced by educational leaders in the current Australian context. Based on a three-
year research study, Duignan establishes the key challenges and ethical tensions that
often keep educational leaders awake at night and provides a comprehensive overview
of roles and ethical considerations as educational leadership deal with these tensions.

In the substantial literature on the topic of educational leadership, this book addresses
aspects of the educational leadership themes outlined in a resent article published in
Australian Educational Leader, that is, Current Issues in Educational Leadership: What
is the Literature saying? (Cranston et al 2007). In this article the authors cite nine
themes focused around the following:
• Paradoxes and tensions inherent in educational leadership;
• The activity of leadership;
• Relationship between educational leadership and context; and
• Leadership competencies, standards, qualities and capabilities.

Whilst the book explores aspects related to each of these four focus areas, the author
centres the work on what he describes as the basic challenge of educational leadership,
that is, the need for sound ethical and moral standards in how organisations are led and
decisions made. The author goes on to state that it is the:
Ethical and social responsibility of educational leaders to create the type
of learning environments in their schools that will assist students to
develop a healthier balance between their individual interests and the
common good. (p. 3)

The author spends considerable time exploring what he believes are the real issues
around schooling and hence challenge for leadership, that is, the over emphasis on
individual interests to the detriment of the common good. He argues that:
leaders need to regard it as their ethical responsibility to promote and
support policies and practices in their schools that better prepare students
to be faithful and responsible citizens who will not just accept the world

•149
 as it is but will help transform their communities into havens of hope,
promise and living witnesses of the common good. (p. 11)

This challenge, he believes requires authenticity in leadership, authenticity based on

a value-driven vision, authentic relationships, leading people in complex, messy and
emotional organisations. He argues that more than ever before there is a need for
leadership which builds hope and trust and translates vision into daily practices of
work. However, drawing on a three-year research study, Duignan found that the key
challenges are tensions where values and ethics are contested. The real challenges,
he argues, are those that keep leaders awake at night and result in leaders retiring
early, for example, common good or individual good; care and rules; service and
economic rationalism; and loyalty and honesty.

In a response to these challenges and tensions, the author develops and explains a
framework for analysing these tensions, the decisions often having to be made in
situations of paradox and tensions. A method for contextual based ethical decision-
making is provided for educational leaders to assist them in the process. He also puts
forward a view that such decision-making is assisted when leadership is shared,
indicating that there is “wisdom in the crowd” (p105). There is a need to build
organisational cultures that promote and support greater sharing and distribution.
Such cultures enable principals to engage in dialogue with other key stakeholders and
as such listen to diverse viewpoints. However this approach to “sharing wisdom” does
require a rethink by educational leaders and educational communities of what
educational leadership actually means and involves.

Duignan then explores the need for educational leaders to develop capabilities to
enable them to lead wisely, effectively and ethically in uncertain times. Capable
leaders, Duignan claims, are authentic leaders, in terms of their values, intentions,
practices and accomplishments (p127), that is, those that help infuse educational
practice with a higher purpose and meaning. This requires the promotion of core
values as well as focusing on ethics and morality in actions and interactions. Authentic
leaders help create conditions in which teachers and students take considerable
responsibility for the quality of their own teaching and learning (authentic learning).
He offers measures for leadership authenticity and presence. He teases out an
authentic leadership capabilities framework, based on personal, relational,
professional, and organisational capabilities that form the basis of a professional
development framework for principals, illustrating how this framework can be used
to assist in development of aspiring as well as experienced principals.

So apart from providing a comprehensive overview of Educational Leadership for

Australian school contexts, the book is designed as a learning tool. It is jargon free,

150 •
 BOOK REVIEWS

clearly written and encourages the practitioner/reader to relate the concepts and
issues raised in each chapter to his/her context by providing a section: Key ideas for
Reflection. Unlike much that is written on Educational Leadership, Duignan’s work
leaves the reader with thoughtful insights into the field of Educational Leadership.

Dorothy Andrews.
University of Southern Queensland

Reference
Cranston, N., Ehrich, L., & Morton, L. (2007) Current issues in educational leadership:
What is the literature saying? Australian Educational Leader, 29(2), 10-13.

•151
Organising and Managing your Research: A practical guide for
postgraduates
Renata Phelps, Kath Fisher and Alan Ellis, Sage Publications, London, 2007,
290 pages, ISBN 978 4129 2063 6 AUD159, ISBN 978 1429 2064, AUD44.95
(paperback)

The expressed aim of the writers of this publication is to address a perceived gap in
the research guidance market through a focus on organisational skills, management
strategies and the consequent effectiveness and efficiency benefits for postgraduate
researchers in systematising their practices of information and research. The text
promotes the adoption of well selected, technology supported organisational methods
in order to enhance project outcomes for researchers. The authors acknowledge the
inclusion of a wealth of tips and strategies drawn from the accumulated experiences
of academics, researchers and postgraduate students from universities in Australia,
North America and Europe.

The book is structured for exploratory learning, with well placed graphics, templates,
“screen captures” and reflection heuristics to provide readers with pause points for
demonstration and contemplation. The writing style is succinct, explanatory and
enabling in that it invites readers to understand and take charge of their research
processes. The introductory chapters establish the value of the technical and
organisational systems promoted in the text and explain the concepts and terms used
throughout. Introductory statements in each chapter outline the purpose and content
of the chapter and draw attention to related chapters. These early chapters focus on
the immediate environment of the researcher – personal, physical and digital
/electronic to enable readers to examine and evaluate their capabilities for research
organisation and management and to suggest ways to manage ideas, time and support
systems.

Key audiences for the book are postgraduate students and early career researchers,
however the text is also well suited to support the mentoring and advisory work of
HDR supervisors and academics teaching research methods. The writers emphasise
the importance of postgraduate students being proactive in managing relationships
with supervisors, mentors and peers. A series of well designed self assessment
questionnaires accommodate a diversity of learning and management styles and
provide stimulus for students, supervisors and research colleagues to identify, clarify
and negotiate expectations and partnerships.

In addition the book addresses the organisational circumstances of researchers

applying for grants and the management of the work of project teams with particular

152 •
 BOOK REVIEWS

reference to the evaluation, selection and use of a range of project management

software packages. A comparative table provides synopses of the program features
and licensing requirements of selected software packages which support project
design, proposal writing and the management of financial resources and timelines.

Chapters concerned with researchers’ organisation and management of their literature

promote the systematic planning of literature searches across multiple print and
electronic information sources using critical evaluative approaches to information
seeking and location. The scope of approaches includes using people resources such
as reference librarians, taking advantage of journal monitoring and table of contents
services, and employing selected Web 2.0 tools such as RSS feeds which operate to
seek out sources and information proactively. Strategic web searching and
management of the literature are demonstrated in screen captures of search engine
panels, bibliographic database structures and comparative evaluation of bibliographic
software programs.

The data collection and analysis chapters outline the techniques, issues and
challenges in gathering and recording qualitative and quantitative research data in
multiple media and the importance of selecting data analysis processes or software
appropriate to selected epistemological and methodological frameworks. Specific
support for decisions on the selection of data analysis software – both qualitative and
quantitative – is developed in tables with synopses of program features, licensing
requirements and directions to online information.

Significant value-adding for those who purchase this text is in the additional support
provided in the website: Organising and Managing your Research which is hosted
through Southern Cross University. Supplementary materials via the website include
newly released information and content which is not included in the original
publication, live links to online materials, software and templates for some of the
organisational ideas presented in the book, and an ideas sharing forum with the
authors and research community.

This publication offers pertinent and systematic guidance in the organising and managing
of research using a variety of people and technology supports and is thoroughly
recommended as a practical guide for postgraduates.

Raylee Elliott Burns

Queensland University of Technology

•153
Helping doctoral students write: Pedagogies for supervision
Barbara Kamler and Pat Thomson, Routledge, London and New York, 2006,
173 pages, ISBN 0 415 34684 3, AUD74.00 (paperback)

Have you ever wondered what advice you should give to doctoral students who turn
out “turgid prose, badly structured arguments” or “laboured literature reviews” (p.1)?
Or, are you a doctoral student who is worried about the pending submission of your
thesis and whether your writing is going to be good enough for the examiners? In
either case, Barbara Kamler and Pat Thomson’s book, Helping doctoral students write:
Pedagogies for supervision, offers something for you.

Although the authors clearly target doctoral supervisors as their main audience, they
also cater for doctoral students and, I would argue, for anyone who wants to reflect
on, enhance, and engage in discussion about academic writing. The book begins with
a theorisation of doctoral writing as a discursive social practice. Kamler and Thomson
argue strongly that writing is not a set of decontextualised skills, but that it is an
integral and important part of research. Indeed, their argument is that writing is
research. And, as we all know, academics are represented and judged by their writing
and successful academics have to be able to write well. An important part of doctoral
study, then, is the “text work” that develops an academic or scholarly identity.

By conceptualising writing in this way, Kamler and Thomson argue that there is a
need to move away from a notion of writing as “a set of arbitrary rules and matters
of etiquette” (p.7) – and away from the pathologising of individual writers when their
writing seems deficient – towards seeing the potential of “writing-centred supervision”
(p. 9). They use the work of Norman Fairclough to frame the “writing” of a doctoral
thesis – the production of text – within the teaching and learning relationships of
students and supervisors, as well as within the institutional practices of universities
and broader social, cultural and political contexts. The location of writing within those
contexts means that Kamler and Thomson focus on complex processes and open up
discussion about the importance of pedagogical spaces for foregrounding thesis
writing in the student-supervisor relationship.

Using this theoretical frame, the book offers chapters that focus on particular aspects
of thesis writing. One of my favourites was the chapter with a memorable title –
“Persuading an octopus into a glass” (Chapter 3). Drawing on a metaphor used by a
doctoral student to describe the difficult task of “reviewing literatures”, this chapter
provides practical advice about the tricky tasks of doing “literature work” and the
associated “identity work of becoming a scholar” (p. 34). It also teases out Kamler and
Thomson’s rejection of the term “literature review” and their resolution to use the

154 •
 BOOK REVIEWS

pluralised “literatures” in its place. Additionally, it suggests how supervisors might

engage in dialogue with their students about the practice of academic writing and
how they might work to co-construct texts with their students. Many of the ideas in
this chapter resonated with the challenges I experienced when writing my own
doctoral thesis and they have given me ideas about how I might work with the
doctoral students I supervise.

Several chapters (in particular Chapters 5-8) focus on specific linguistic features of
academic texts, particularly those that will enable doctoral students to write with
authority. These chapters provide a pedagogical and linguistic toolkit, with
accompanying metalanguage, that supervisors can use when providing “guidance for
revision” to their students (p.100). Using the systemic functional grammar of Michael
Halliday, the authors identify some useful linguistic tools, including nominalisation
and Theme. Whilst they recognise the panic that some supervisors and students may
feel about the use of grammar and its metalanguage, they guide their readers
effortlessly through accessible and useful explanations and examples. In keeping with
the book’s theoretical framing, these are not presented as decontextualised skills, but
are discussed in the context of the supervisory processes conducted by the authors
with their students.

Much of the book discusses how doctoral supervisors and students might address
issues around writing. The final chapter (Chapter 9), however, moves beyond
“dialogue-based supervision practice” and the relationship between supervisor and
student, and explores how “systemic attention to writing” can be of benefit at the
institutional level (p.144). In looking at the broad context, as per their use of
Fairclough’s model, Kamler and Thomson describe a range of strategies that they have
used in faculty, university and cross-university contexts.

Throughout the book, Kamler and Thomson do their fair share of myth busting,
presenting their concerns and critique about advice that has been offered in
publications about thesis writing. Yet they don’t stop at critique. Their book offers
practical pedagogical suggestions that supervisors and their students can try.
Nevertheless, the authors are adamant that their book is not a “how to” manual.
Instead, they “talk about things” that they have found useful and encourage others to
“use or remake strategies for their own supervision contexts” (p.1). Examples from
their own doctoral students and colleagues, with “before” and “after” examples of
students’ texts, provide effective illustrations of how these strategies might work.

Kamler and Thomson argue that it should be possible “to dip in and out of the
chapters”, rather than reading their book the whole way through (p.xi). They do,
however, recommend that readers look at the first two chapters where they explicate

•155
 the book’s underlying theories. Having read the book from front to back cover, I think
I would have missed too much if I had been selective about which chapters or
sections to read. I know, though, that I will return to particular sections and will use
some as ways of opening up discussions about writing with my doctoral students. The
book’s theoretical foundations resonated with my beliefs about writing and I loved
reading a text that distanced itself from deficit stories about doctoral students who
can’t write well.

Helping doctoral students write: Pedagogies for supervision is not a book that offers
sure-fire solutions to writing a good doctoral thesis. However, it offers ways of
facilitating dialogue between supervisors and their students about “the what” and “the
how” of effective writing practices within academia, as well as suggesting ways of
developing a writing culture within institutional contexts. This is a book that I plan
to revisit.

Robyn Henderson
University of Southern Queensland

156 •

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