Hypothesis: Teachers in secondary schools treat white children better than children of different ethnic minorities because white children tend to get better grades than ethnic children

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Zahra Raza 10H1    A study of teacher’s attitudes to girls and boys

A Study of teacher’s attitudes to girls and boys

Aims:

  1. To find out why teachers treat children differently because of their ethnicity.
  2. To investigate how peer groups affect teacher’s attitude to students.
  3. To find out how social class affects teachers attitudes towards students.
  4. To find out why teachers behave differently towards different genders.

Hypothesis:

‘Teachers in secondary schools treat white children better than children of different ethnic minorities because white children tend to get better grades than ethnic children’

        

Primary Research

The aims the sociologist will be investigating with primary research will be:

  1. To find out why teachers treat children of differently because of their ethnicity.
  2. To investigate how peer groups affect teachers attitudes to students.

For Aim 1 ‘To find out why teachers treat children of differently because of their ethnicity’ the researcher will use a closed questionnaire.

For Aim 2 ‘To investigate how peer groups affect teachers attitudes to students’ the researcher will use interviews.

Advantages of Closed Questionnaires

  • They involve minimal effort on the part of the respondents.
  • They save time, closed questions are less time consuming for respondents to complete, and this allows the questioner to ask more questions.
  • They avoid problems of trying to interpret difficult handwriting.
  • Can provide better information because the respondent knows he doesn’t have to write long answers he just has to tick a box.

Disadvantages of Closed Questionnaires

  • Closed questions are only really appropriate when the respondents know the answers and they are clear answers.
  • If the questionnaire is poorly designed then the questions might mislead or frustrate the respondents.

Advantages of Interviews

  • Useful if you want to obtain personal feelings or opinions of respondents.
  • You can understand how individual think and how they feel about certain topic.

Disadvantages of Interviews

  • They can be very time-consuming, interviewing, transcribing, analysing and feed backing.
  • They can be costly

Secondary Research

The aims the sociologist will be investigating with secondary research will be:

  1. To find out how social class affects teachers attitudes                               towards students.
  2. To find out why teachers behave differently towards different genders.

For Aim 3 ‘To find out how social class affects teachers attitudes                               towards students’, the researcher will use books about sociology and education,

For Aim 4 ‘To find out why teachers behave differently towards different genders’, for this the researcher will use the internet to gain qualitative data.

Advantages of using books

  • Reliable source of data
  • Contain facts

Disadvantages of using books

  • Have to look through a lot of books to find the right information
  • Can’t always find relevant information

Advantages of using the internet

  • Contains a lot of information
  • A lot of information and case studies are available from the internet.

Disadvantages of using the internet

  • Can contain a lot of non useful information
  • You have to look through a lot of information for what you want.

The sample the sociologist will be using is the opportunity sample. The sample size will be 20 people, the questionnaires will be given to 5 males and 5 females and the interviews will be given to males and females randomly. The age group will be 11-16.

Advantages of Opportunity sample

  • Its cost effective
  • Its quick and easy to do

Disadvantages of Opportunity sample

  • It’s not representative.

Ethics

The researcher will make sure that they respondents know that they will not be pressurised into filling in the questionnaire and that they can take thay time answering.  Also that they will not need to write their name at the top of the questionnaire, And that all the information given will be entirely confidential and will not get passed onto any second or third parties.

Pilot Study

The researcher has conducted a pilot study to see whether its questionnaire and interview are applicable.

Advantages of pilot study

  • Know whether your questionnaire is good
  • Know whether your interview is good

Disadvantages of Pilot study

  • May not get a definite answer.

Questionnaires

Primary Research

The graphs below link to Aim 1 ‘To find out why teachers treat children differently because of their ethnicity’

P = Primary data, G = Graph , T = Table

Question 1

Please state your gender?

This graph shows that 50% of the respondents were male and 50% were female.

Question 2

What is your ethnic background?

Join now!

The graph shows that more Pakistani students answered the questionnaires.

Question 3

Which school do you attend?

The table shows that more respondents attended public schools rather than a private school.

Question 4

How long have you been attending your school?

The graph shows that most of the respondents were ...

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