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ASSIGNMENT 1
Research article:
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.
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
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
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
primary students were excluded from the interviews due to the students’ “vulnerability and
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
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 &
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
(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;
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
students’ school attendance is well supported by the analyses of quantitative data and the
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
question. Improvements in terms of the issue of bias and presentation could have been
REFERENCES
Baxter, L. P., & Meyers, N. M. (2016). Increasing urban Indigenous students’ attendance:
Östlund, U., Kidd, L., Wengström, Y., & Rowa-Dewar, N. (2011). Combining qualitative
doi:10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2010.10.005
Lecture given on the 13th March, Unit 102096, Researching teaching and Learning
Parada, R. H., (2018b). Reading & Understanding Common Statistical concepts used in
Educational Research. Lecture given on the 20th March, Unit 102096, Researching
Shank, G., Brown, L., & Pringle, J. (2014). Understanding education research: a guide to
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