Pam Sammons is Professor (Emeritus) at the Department of Education, University of Oxford and an Emeritus Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford. Previously she was a professor at the School of Education, University of Nottingham (2004-2009) and a professor at the Institute of Education University of London (1993- 2004) where she directed the International School Effectiveness & Improvement Centre (ISEIC) 1999-2004. Her research over more than 30 years has focused on school effectiveness and improvement, school leadership, teaching effectiveness and professional development, and promoting equity and inclusion in education. She has a particular interest in longitudinal studies and the use of mixed methods research approaches. She has provided research advice to inspection agencies in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Sweden and engaged in the development of educational effectiveness studies in Cyprus, Germany, Norway and Sweden. Pam headed the MSc in Educational Research Design and Methodology at Oxford for five years. Pam has been a governor of a rural primary school in Oxfordshire and was Deputy Chair of governors for a secondary school academy in the city of Oxford. She is currently a governor of a secondary school in North London.
Mixed Methods approaches and their Application in Educational Research: Maximising potential and minimising pitfalls
This keynote will present research to illustrate the use and potential of mixed methods (MM) approaches and their application in educational research. It will explore some of the defining features of MM studies and draw attention to the way both quantitative (QUANT) and qualitative (QUAL) data can be collected, analysed and integrated to link findings and to support new understandings and meta inferences that go beyond the findings and interpretations that might be achieved using only one methodological perspective. Examples will be given of the use and integration of both systematic observation schedules and qualitative field notes in classroom research. The ethics of conducting such MM research in classroom contexts will also be discussed.
A framework to aid the researcher/student researcher in understanding and evaluating the quality of MM designs and published MM studies will be discussed as a guide for designing future MM research and conducting MM analyses.