Towards a Realist Methodology for School Effectiveness Research: A Case Study of Educational Inequality from Mexico

Abstract

Research into factors associated with school outcomes has been undertaken for nearly forty years, during which time it has identified many key factors and influenced much public policy aimed at improving the quality of education. However, the results of these policies have not shown the intended results, especially regarding the equity of opportunities in education. This thesis concerns the development of a Realist methodology to School Effectiveness Research, its application and the analysis of its limits and possibilities. By applying this methodology a second objective is covered: to identify, justify, and test inequity patterns of the lower-secondary education in Mexico and to postulate theoretical models to explain them.

To reach these objectives this thesis engages in the appraisal of the fundamental theoretical assumptions and characterisation of three different research programmes, these are: the dominant School Effectiveness Research programme (SER), a Realist Approach to School Effectiveness Research (RASER) and a Practitioners Approach to School Effectiveness Research (PASER). As a result of this theory appraisal RASER is judged as the programme that provides the most promising tools for taking the field forward by constructing explanatory theories of the mechanisms involved in school effectiveness.

Then, an adaptation of Haig’s Realist Abductive Theory of Scientific Method (ATOM) to school effectiveness research is developed and presented. This adaptation of ATOM is applied using the results of a sample of the students who were finishing the lower-secondary education in Mexico in 2005 in the Quality and Achievement Examinations.

In the light of this theoretically informed empirical analysis it is argued that this thesis makes contributions in three areas: a proposal of a realist methodology that has the potential to advance school effectiveness research; developments in theory construction to explain mechanisms of reproduction of educational inequalities and; the establishment of bases for the formulation of better informed public policies.

Date of Award	1 Nov 2009
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bath
Supervisor	Hugh Lauder (Supervisor) & Anthony Robinson (Supervisor)