THE COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS OF ETHNOGRAPHIC DATA IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

Abstract

Educational research has long attended to quantifying dependent variables as a way of describing learning outcomes. It is in the domain of the independent variable, or the interactions and characteristics of the classroom and the teaching‐learning participants as a casual factor, that we have been weakest. Techniques are emerging which can help to identify independent variables. What are some of these, and how can they be applied to gathering the qualitative data important to the identifications of such variables?