¶ … local school district has recently implemented a program designed to assist students that are currently in need of training in English as a Second Language (ESL). Many of these ESL students hail from a country and/or culture that features other languages other than English which puts them at a distinct disadvantage in schools that teach primarily using the English language, both verbally and in written form. What the school district would like to measure is how effective and beneficial the program has been for the students who have used it. Additional issues that the school would like to see addressed by the study include; the impact of the program on English language proficiency, overall student academic progress, and the satisfaction levels of the students, teachers, parents, administrators and other stakeholders.
Research Questions and Hypothesis
The study will be guided by research questions and a hypothesis based upon the fact that the researcher wishes to achieve certain measurements, goals and objectives. Based upon a recent study (Classen, Covic, Idsardi, Sandham, Gildenhuys, Lemke, 2015) which resulted in findings that showed an urgent need for a deeper understanding of a study's results and methodologies, new and creative ways to conduct studies are necessary and (the study suggests) incorporating quantitative and qualitative research approaches would likely result in improved findings and analysis. Employing a methodology that incorporates both quantitative and qualitative data is likely to lead to a comprehensive understanding of the effectiveness of the new curricula as well as documenting the overall student academic progress, and the satisfaction levels of the various stakeholders.
Devers and Frankel (2000) determined that qualitative research is oftentimes used for purposive studies such as the one that is being discussed herein; they surmised that most qualitative research takes place in a real-world context very similar to the real-world of the local school district involved in this study.
On the other hand, the study is also looking to measure the impact that the curriculum has had on the student achievement level(s) and whether any discernable pattern can be distinguished based upon the implementation of the curriculum. Such measurements are not qualitative but are...
Ingham-Broomfield (2014) writes that using quantitative research is a way of testing objective theories through the examination of relationships between variables. The variables can be manipulated and then reexamined in order to determine the impact of the variables on the subject. The subject of the study is of course to discover whether the curriculum is having a positive impact on the grades of the ESL students. Specifically, the paper is seeking to determine whether the Stanford English Language Proficiency test scores of the students involved in the program are positively impacted by the curriculum, as well as the overall effectiveness of the new curricula overall on the students at the first grade level.
This paper is discussing the curriculum that is being used within a school district, that curriculum can best be described as one of the variables. Introducing that curriculum should have some impact on the student's test scores and overall grading process. Measuring the results of implementing the curriculum therefore can be tested using a quantitative analysis.
Hence both the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data will take place and then discussed at length in order to determine the validity of the hypothesis.
Setting and Sample
The setting of the study will be determined by the school district but will most likely take place during normal school hours within the confines of the school classrooms, specifically targeting the students in the ESL classrooms. The sample size of the study will be determined based upon the number of students enrolled in the ESL classroom(s) at the initiation of the study. The study is seeking to determine any changes (improvements) in the grades of the students after a one-year time frame, so the best setting would like include to random groups of ESL first-grade students. One group would receive the curriculum and one group would receive the previous teaching methodologies. Each group would be tested before embarking on the one-year program in order to establish a baseline for comparison.
Data Gathering
Since there are two types of data that is being collected by this study (quantitative and qualitative) there will be two different approaches…
