Quang Huy Do - 18322138

RESEARCHING TEACHING AND LEARNING 1

ASSIGNMENT 1

Research article:

Increasing urban Indigenous students’ attendance: Mitigating the influence of poverty

through community partnership (Baxter & Meyers, 2016)

Student name: Quang Huy Do

Student number: 18322138

Word count: 1064 words

 Quang Huy Do - 18322138

A study into increasing Indigenous student’s school attendance rate and its challenges in

urban Victoria through community partnership is the focus of Lindy P. Baxter and Noel M.

Meyers’s research paper titled: Increasing urban Indigenous students’ attendance:

Mitigating the influence of poverty through community partnership (2016). Baxter and

Meyers present the circumstances that poverty and socio-cultural factors remain a

significant hindrance to regular school attendance. Following these is a study carried out

by the researchers into the targeted strategies and programmes at improving Indigenous

student's attendance rate at Carrington Primary School (CPS), using a mixed method

approach. The quantitative-leading mixed approach allows for a quantitative analysis of

Indigenous student’s attendance rate against socioeconomic indicators, gender and year

level. On the other hand, the qualitative phase attempts to add meanings to the

quantitative results where parents, carers and school staffs were interviewed individually to

learn about perspectives about Indigenous student’s attendance and non-attendance. This

review will discuss the ‘Methodology’, ‘Results’, and ‘Conclusion’ sections of the research

paper, and will critique how they form part of a quality research.

Methods section

The mixed method approach in the research paper was effective in addressing the

research question ‘what causal factors contribute to Indigenous students’ school

attendance?’. Baxter and Meyers did this by exploring the targeted strategies aimed at

improving Indigenous students’ attendance rate carried out at CPS. According to Shank,

Brown, and Pringle (2014, p. 65), the researchers were effective in selecting a purposive

sample where it consists of participants with “unique characteristics” suitable for a closer

study such as the Indigenous students from CPS. This is because CPS was identified as

having “a proportionally ten times more numerous Indigenous students’ population than
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most Victorian schools” (Baxter & Meyers, 2016, p. 213) as well as the employment of a

Koori Education Worker (KEW) to support Indigenous students across the school, make

the school stand out from other schools. Additionally, a range of interviews conducted

individually with the KEW and other staff at the school, including the Principal and a focus

group where parents/carers can provide their opinions allow the research to have a

multifaceted representation of perspectives for which Stefani (2011) asserts that as a

necessary component of a quality research. Ethical requirements were also satisfied as

primary students were excluded from the interviews due to the students’ “vulnerability and

Indigenous status” (Baxter & Meyers, 2016, p. 213; Stefani, 2011).

However, several important features of a high quality research paper were not included.

Those are: “exploration of possible relationships among key variables” (Shank et al., 2014,

p. 28) such as students’ age vs attendance, parents’ income vs attendance. This is used to

increase the validity of their research because Shank et al. (2014, p. 109) asserts that

“validity is a determination of the degree to which what we claim to measure is actually

about what it is that we want to measure” and the researchers only provided a graph

showing students’ attendance rate declined and another table showing parental

occupation band, which to a reader they might not be able to see the connection. In

addition, a hypothesis testing could have been beneficial to highlight the effectiveness of

the strategies carried out at CPS by testing a controlled group at the same time at another

school with a similar proportion of Indigenous population that did not have specific

strategies aimed at improving Indigenous students’ attendance (Shank et al., 2014, p. 28).
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Results Section

The results section provides a balanced amount of data to address the research question,

however, the researchers did not specifically include the literature reviews to support their

arguments, which Stefani (2011) insists is a necessity of research which builds on prior

knowledge and understandings. Baxter and Meyers have also provided a comprehensive

analysis of Indigenous students’ attendance rate “within and between cohorts” (Baxter &

Meyers, 2016, p. 213), which is an important aspect of the comparison type of a

quantitative study, according to Parada (2018b). The organisation of data for the

quantitative section follows the guidelines with data tabulated and interpreted on graphs

(Parada, 2018a; Shank et al., 2014). The results section also only includes data from the

quantitative analyses, which, according to Östlund, Kidd, Wengström, and Rowa-Dewar

(2011) highlight the use of sequential data analysis where qualitative data is used to

explore deeper meanings from quantitative measures and these are discussed in the

‘Discussion' section of the paper. However, the organisation of data for the qualitative

research was quite confusing and often not clear. The methodology stated interviews were

conducted, but the results section did not make clear the participants' opinions rather just a

general consensus. A further inclusion of texts such as quotes from the interview

transcripts would have been more useful (Parada, 2018a; Shank et al., 2014, p. 29;

Östlund et al., 2011).

One other important point to discuss is that the researchers omitted the results of their

findings of the students' attendance in 2010 based on the advice of the school staffs as

there were more cases of illnesses happening at the school (Baxter & Meyers, 2016, p.

216). The researchers accepted that fact without going further to confirm the accuracy of

such assessments and this could have led to the omissions of other important aspects.
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According to Shank et al. (2014, p. 107), such inconsistency can cause less reliable

results.

Conclusion section

The researchers’ conclusion highlighted poverty as the cause hampering Indigenous

students’ school attendance is well supported by the analyses of quantitative data and the

effective inclusion of qualitative data in the forms of interviews to draw connections

between poverty and the students’ ability to attend school regularly (Baxter & Meyers,

2016). The researchers also mentioned other schools similar to CPS but having a lower

attendance rate to show the effectiveness of the strategies implemented but without any

data to back it up, making the claim fallible according to Shank et al. (2014) and Stefani

(2011). However, there were no attempts by the researchers to address the difficulties

they faced in comparing data that was mentioned in the ‘Discussion’ section. This may

lead to some bias as it may lead the readers to believe the conclusion without knowing

there were difficulties in drawing out those conclusions at first by the researchers.

Nonetheless, the statistics and the interviews provided in the research paper all pointed

towards poverty as the main cause affecting Indigenous students’ attendance rate and the

strategies at CPS has tremendously helped to mitigate the issue, effectively answering the

research question.

It is evident that the research paper has been successful in answering the research

question. Nonetheless, Baxter and Meyers could have done more to increase the validity

of their research by utilising researching techniques such as those described earlier by the

referenced source. This research article has employed sound researching techniques and

a successful implementation of a mixed-method approach to address the research

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question. Improvements in terms of the issue of bias and presentation could have been

made to increase the credibility and readers’ engagement.

REFERENCES

Baxter, L. P., & Meyers, N. M. (2016). Increasing urban Indigenous students’ attendance:

Mitigating the influence of poverty through community partnership. Australian

Journal of Education, 60(3), 211-228. doi:10.1177/0004944116664438

Östlund, U., Kidd, L., Wengström, Y., & Rowa-Dewar, N. (2011). Combining qualitative

and quantitative research within mixed method research designs: A methodological

review. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 48(3), 369-383.

doi:10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2010.10.005

Parada, R. H., (2018a). Introduction to Epistemology, Quantitative & Qualitative Methods.

Lecture given on the 13th March, Unit 102096, Researching teaching and Learning

1. Western Sydney University.

Parada, R. H., (2018b). Reading & Understanding Common Statistical concepts used in

Educational Research. Lecture given on the 20th March, Unit 102096, Researching

teaching and Learning 1. Western Sydney University.

Shank, G., Brown, L., & Pringle, J. (2014). Understanding education research: a guide to

critical reading. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.

Stefani, L. (2011). Reviewer Essay: What Makes for a High Quality IJ-SoTL Research

Article? International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 5(1).

doi:10.20429/ijsotl.2011.050136