Abstract
This paper contributes to conversations about the funding and quality of education research. The paper proceeds in two parts. Part I sets the context by presenting an historical analysis of funding allocations made to Education research through the ARC’s Discovery projects scheme between the years 2002 and 2014, and compares these trends to allocations made to another field within the Social, Behavioural and Economic Sciences assessment panel: Psychology and Cognitive Science. Part II highlights the consequences of underfunding education research by presenting evidence from an Australian Research Council Discovery project that is tracking the experiences of disaffected students who are referred to behaviour schools. The re-scoping decisions that became necessary and the incidental costs that accrue from complications that occur in the field are illustrated and discussed through vignettes of research with “ghosts” who don’t like school but who do like lollies, chess and Lego.
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Notes
This distinction is not always upheld. Between 2009 and 2013, ARC Future Fellowships were open to clinical medical researchers and dentistry.
Note that this did drop to an average of 55.3 % in 2011 when funding for the current study was awarded. While there has been an increase in individual project amounts awarded between 2011 and 2014, and thus a rise in the percentage of funding allocated per project relative to funding requested, the effect of this increase has been to reduce the number of successful proposals in Education overall (from 19 to 12).
Education and Psychology have been paired in previous considerations of the ARC funding process (see Marsh et al. 2008).
During the period under study the ARC changed from Research Fields, Courses and Disciplines (RFCD) codes to Divisions and Field of Research (FoR) codes. This analysis has therefore compared projects awarded under the parent RFCD Code for Education (330000) and Psychology (380000) in 2002 with Division 13 Education and Division 17 Psychology and Cognitive Science, in 2014.
Given that there are less than 30 behaviour schools in the state, only limited information can be provided about the participating schools. Each was selected on the basis of size, location and willingness to participate. The maximum class size in a behaviour school is 7 students and most behavior schools have only 3–4 classes (or 21–28 students).
Upon interviewing the principals of our case-study behaviour schools, the first author discovered that this was not the case and that students in behaviour schools may have multiple diagnoses, including emotional disturbance, anxiety and autism spectrum disorder.
As we had 96 students participating in this project, assigning individually unique pseudonyms is problematic. Whilst it can be argued that assigning numbers rather than names is dehumanizing, for the purposes of this article I am using the code that was assigned to each new consent form. These numbers held special significance for us as they helped to buoy our spirits during an arduous recruitment process, as well as ensure anonymity for our participants.
14 of 19 participating schools were located in Western or South-Western Sydney. Of these, 5 were located in South-Western Sydney, a 1.5 hr drive from base. A return trip to these schools therefore cost $250 (including RA time, travel and tolls).
Trip 1 to see No. 10 took 4 hrs including travel time, time to set-up, build rapport, and trial which assessments he would do, plus 1 hr on the PPVT. Trip Cost: $245.79. Trip 2 took 5.5 hrs and cost $307.75. Neither of these costings take account of Author 1's time which was contributed by the Administering Organisation.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported under the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme (DP110103093). The views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily those of the Australian Research Council. Ethics approval was obtained from the Macquarie University Ethics Committee (Final Approval No. 5201000654) and the NSW Department of Education and Communities (SERAP No. 2011027).
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Graham, L.J., Buckley, L. Ghost hunting with lollies, chess and Lego: appreciating the ‘messy’ complexity (and costs) of doing difficult research in education. Aust. Educ. Res. 41, 327–347 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-013-0137-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-013-0137-5