Triangulation

1. Triangulation The world is not black and white. The absolute truth lives in every shade of grey. By Tracy Younes

2. Educational research and practice is in that grey area. There is no one right way to teach, a program, or a method, that works best for everybody. There is only research data to back up what people to hypothesize to be effective or ineffective. • We are constantly searching of ways to improve our practice as teachers. • With educational research we have to do our best to prove validity in a variety of abstract topics (such as self-efficacy, motivation and intelligence) that effect learning. • One way to do that is to triangulate your data.

3. Triangulation is… • When “At lease three … different data sources are used to generate the findings of the study” (Falk & Blumenreich p. 13, 2005). • “essential to …substantiate you themes or categories” (Falk & Blumenreichp. 121,2005). • Having at least three forms of data will give you substance to your research and allow you to find more connections that you may not have otherwise found.

4. Why do we triangulate? • “One observation, one piece of evidence, may not be representative of the trend that numerous observations or pieces of evidence might reveal” (Falk & Blumenreich p.121, 2005). • “In, qualitative research, trends and themes need to be confirmed in more than one data source to ensure that the findings of a study are not merely happenings” (Falk & Blumenreichp.122, 2005). • When researching this always needs to be taken into consideration. We may observe something happen that we feel significant, but if this finding is not reflected in other forms of data as well, it may not be seen as significant.

5. Reliability • Triangulation “helps you see things from multiple perspectives and thus adds to the reliability of your findings” (Falk & Blumenreich p. 66, 2005). • Finding multiple pieces of evidence that prove the same idea, further confirm it to be true. • Triangulation is like looking at something through multiple lenses. You want to make sure you can see the same thing through each to be sure that it is valid.

6. Example situation of why triangulation is important • A child is being defiant during guided reading. • One may simply think he is avoiding the task. • What an interview could reveal is that something is happening outside of school to make the child behave this way. • Or the day prior the child could have had a bad experience at guided, but does not want to tell anyone (especially a researcher they don’t know, it would be different if the teacher was the researcher)

7. Is it possible to have bias data even when your data is triangulated? • When observing, even when trying to be as objective as possible, we are making subjective presumptions about what we find. • Being a educational researcher is like being a teacher, scientist, detective and a psychologist all together. • The point of researching is to make conclusions of the data we collect, but I do not believe that it is possible to do this in a truly objective way, for our past experiences impact how we think and react to things in present time.

8. “The hermeneutic framework asserts that’s values permeate every paradigm; that every belief is a human construction and is therefore dependent on human values. All aspects of research- the nature of the inquiry, the choice of instrumentation and analysis modes, the choice of interpretations made, and the conclusions drawn- are affected by human values” (Falk & Blumenreich p. 12, 2005). • So maybe it is impossible to research in a truly objective way. Triangulation is a way to limit subjectivity from permeating the study. The best we can do is to find our version of the absolute truth in what we are inquiring about.