Pedagogical Practices of Mathematics Education for Young Children in England and South Korea - Report Example

Article Critique-Methodology Introduction Siraj and Nah aimed at comparing the pedagogical practices in earlyyears of education. The authors focused on mathematics education in England and South Korea. Pedagogical practices deal with the theory and practice of education. Pedagogy is concerned with the theory and practice teaching to achieve exceptional results. The authors conducted research in pre-school settings in the capital cities England and South Korea together with their suburbs. The sampling method used was maximal variation sampling. The research instrument used was interviews consisting of 6 questions that were responded to by practitioners. The authors also observed classroom activities and examined documents related to the planning and implementation of mathematics of education. The findings from the study revealed that pre-school mathematics teaching in England is more structured and more learner-centred than learning practices in South Korea. The implications and recommendations of the research suggest that diverse interactive activities should be integrated in early year’s education, and that practitioners should pay more attention to learners’ individual differences. Regardless of a few instances of methodology that that can be subjected to criticism, the authors’ research design was effective to their research study. Research questions The research questions focused on the differences in the pedagogy of teaching mathematics between Korea and England. The authors used simple and precise questions; the interview questions were relevant to the study because they concentrated on the theory and practice of education. The research questions also sought to investigate how best teachers can handle young children in order to give them the best background of mathematics. During the pilot study, the researchers prepared 17 questions. These were reduced to 11 and finally to 6 after the pilot study and refining. Refining was necessary because it reduced the unnecessary wide focus of the study such as contribution of the parents and the community to the pedagogical practices of maths teaching, which could not contribute to achieving the objectives of the study. According to Vogt (2011), research interviews should be precise and focus only on the aims of the study; this is meant to avoid doing research that is not in line with the topic of the research. The researchers used semi-structured interviews based on the questions concerning the pedagogical frame, mathematics teaching method and external learning environment. There were also no overlaps between the questions, which could result in difficulties at the analysis stage. Robson (2011) and Sekaran & Bougie (2010) believe that asking questions that explain the reasons for the phenomenon seem to be better than the descriptive questions. On the other hand, general semi-structured interview questions enabled the researchers to collect more details during the interview because they provided interviewees with opportunities to express their opinions. The researcher, therefore, could observe the reactions of various respondents, which greatly contributed to achieving the aim of the study. If the researchers had used structured questions, the respondents would give only yes or no answers, or some forms structured responses, which would not help the researcher understand the actual pedagogy (Flick, 2011). The Sampling Strategy The researcher used maximal variation sampling technique to choose the study population. This is a purposeful sampling strategy where a researcher selects a small population with the aim of maximising diversity (Kumar, 2011). The researcher selected England and South Korea to participate in the study since the two countries have almost similar religious and cultural backgrounds. Thus, their education systems could be characterised by some similarities. The researchers selected a range of English and Korean pre-school settings for study. The researchers used 12 settings in England and Korea. Such a wide choice ensured that respondents originated from diverse backgrounds to ensure validity. Research Approach The researchers adopted a qualitative research strategy. Qualitative research strategy is used in social sciences and other research contexts (Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2013; Jha, 2008); the strategy aims at gathering an in-depth understanding of human behaviour and the reasons governing such behaviour (Fowler, 2014). The researchers could not use quantitative strategy in this study because some respondents might lie in their responses while filling in questionnaires (Sahu, 2013). Qualitative approach was used in this study because it was useful in studying a limited number of cases in depth. Additionally, qualitative approach enabled the researchers to conduct cross-case comparison and analysis. In qualitative strategies that employ interviews, researchers use related questions to seek further clarification, thus ensuring respondents give accurate and consistent responses during interviews (Flick, 2011). Although qualitative methods do not give quantitative values of the phenomena under investigation, consistent findings can confirm the presence of a given phenomenon in the area of study (Kothari, 2009); this could be generalised to similar contexts. Using quantitative research would be costly and time consuming since the researcher would be required to prepare questionnaires and disseminate them during the process of data collection. Quantitative data methodology could also lead to difficulties in obtaining sensitive data through structured data collection instruments. The theoretical foundation of the study was Vygotsky’s socio-cultural constructivism (Vygotsky, 1978). Research Design The research began with a pilot study. A pilot study is a small-scale study resembling the real research that is usually carried out before the actual study (Kumar, 2011). The pilot study also acted as a preliminary study conducted with the aim of evaluating time required, costs of the study, adverse events and effective size with the aim of instituting proper mechanisms for overcoming the problems that may arise during the actual study (Welman, Kruger& Mitchell, 2005). It is through this pilot study the researchers were able to reduce the research questions from the unnecessary 17 to crucial 6 to avoid diverting from the actual aim of the study. The researchers also used observations. According to Bernard (2013), observations constitute attending to the activities of the research participants to see the actual happenings in the field. Doing non-participant observations is vital in research because it provides accurate information about the research study (Vogt, 2011; Robson, 2011). In England, the researchers observed three classes, while video clips were made of two age groups in South Korea. Although the inconsistency in the data collection methods could produce unreliable results, gathering and recording data using diverse techniques was critical because it would provide a wide array of data for analysis and comparisons. According to Oleary (2010), a researcher doing the participant observation is expected to work and live within the settings being studied. However, Siraj and Nah (2014) did not live within the communities under study, but they would go to the field during the research periods only. Data gathering would be easier if they had stayed within those countries throughout the two years of study. Another criticism with the researchers is that they interviewed practitioners, while the children’s voices are neglected. The authors stress the importance of learner-centred education, but failed consider the learners’ opinions. Children are participants in the teaching activities, which guarantee them to present their views in the research (Clark, Flewitt Hammersley & Robb, 2014). On the other hand, it could be argued that children under this study aged between 3 and 5 years, who had not developed any understanding of pedagogical practices. However, the researchers could have developed simple questions such as why they like their maths teachers, what they like doing in class during maths lessons, or if they like working in groups. Their responses would be compared with those of practitioners and observations in order to establish consistencies. Data Collection Method The methods used to collect the data were interviews, observations and a review of related literature. In order to have a better understanding of each setting, the researchers participated in workshop sessions during the research period. The researchers attended two practitioner workshop sessions on the new curriculum. During the workshops, participants also informally discussed the mathematics education format with the staff members from diverse settings. The interviews took place in tandem with the observations, and were conducted with the practitioners doing the teaching. The advantage of conducting the two activities in parallel is that the practitioners can explain their teaching methods and observations can be used to confirm the responses (Donley, 2012). However, the answers from the individual interviews were not included in the text for the reader. Thus, the origin of the results might be in question. In England, the researchers observed the classroom activity and recorded their notes in journals. However, in South Korea, the research assistant conducted the observation using a video recording device. The researchers and research assistant conducted the research in each setting independently, and so the findings could be affected by the imposition of personal viewpoints. However, research ethics illegalises presentation of inaccurate data (Urdan, 2010). Assuming the researcher and his assistant were ethical, they could not have presented inaccurate data although this cannot be proved from the article. Data Analysis and Presentation Data analysis was both simultaneous and iterative. Simultaneous data analysis was necessary because it ensured that the researchers considered and evaluated all datasets at the same time. Iterative analysis was also necessary because the researcher repeated the same study over a period of 2 years (2008-2010). Siraj and Nah (2014) believed that compiling, segmentation, and coding of data with meaningful labels ensured that findings from the research were properly organised and easy to read and interpret. Although the conclusions comprised the major factors, the methods the researchers employed to compile the disaggregated data and code the data is not clarified in the study. The text only states that the researchers labelled the data and arranged it into thirteen categories, and then coded it purposefully to demonstrate similarities and differences. The research in South Korea was recorded in the form of a video and then translated into English; the gap in the language translation is mentioned as it has implications for the accuracy of the data. The accuracy of the findings could be guaranteed if the researcher used more than one source of translation (Steinberg, Lam, Joffe, Olshansky, Ott, 2011). This would be expensive, but it would help guarantee the truthfulness of the translated information. Reliability and validity Reliability establishes the extent to which a measurement of given results are consistent (Fowler, 2014). The primary aim of validity is to investigate whether a research study is able to scientifically answer the questions it is intended to answer (Donley, 2012). When a study is characterised by both validity and reliability, is represents an image of the right. In the current study, the diversity of the school settings was taken into consideration. However, the environments for all the samples were not introduced into this study. The cultural context, as well as facilities and circumstances could affect the data analysis were not considered. For example, a school with relatively poor facilities cannot compare with the school with good facilities, as they are not equivalent. During the research, the researchers observed the teaching activities that took place in the classroom. The duration of the activities suggests the structure and the organisation of the class; this plays an important role in the observation. However, these factors are not mentioned in the article. Although the research took place over a two-year period, the researchers failed to report the details of the observation. In addition, the range of selected schools is very limited; it could be extended to include rural areas in both countries in order to make the result more valid and more representative of both countries (Ardilly & Tillé, 2006). Therefore, the study was reliable since it defined the area of concentration, but validity is questioned since the findings cannot be generalised to non-urban settings of the nations. Conclusion The methodology section highlighted the research methodology with respect to data collection methods, time horizons, research strategies, research approaches, research philosophy, and ethical considerations in the research study. Siraj and Nah (2014) aimed at comparing pedagogical practices of mathematics education for young children in England and South Korea. The researchers used applied maximal sampling strategy to select the respondents from diverse backgrounds. The research adopted a longitudinal horizon since the study period was two years. Using semi-structured interviews enabled the researcher to collect actual data from the study to enhance the accuracy of the study by asking clarification questions. In addition to interviews, the researchers observed classroom practices and documents related to teaching mathematics to establish consistencies in the findings. 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