Sociology dissertation: Help!

Susannahmia

My original question was: How does the immigrant composition of the classroom affect the immigrant child development socially and academically?

Through this question I hope to explore how classroom dynamics affect the immigrant child’s performance academically and their integration. I want to focus more on newer arrivals, preferably children that have arrived within the last year, whose first language is not English, My hypothesis is that both the mix of other immigrant students of the same nationality and their numbers when compared to the national kids will act as variables which either impede or improve the speed and ease of integration and academic motivation.

However I haven’t a clue how to go about this methodology

I was going to do participant observation in a primary school classroom, maybe 2 and semi structured interviews with teachers. However my supervisor says that it will not be possible to get any information on academic achievement from the teacher as it is unethical and just her opinion even if I just focus on effort. She says that I have no way of judging academic or social progress except my own opinion and the teachers one would be biased too.

I am at a complete loss as to what to do now. I have a good bit of work done in preparation for this question so I really don’t want to start completly from scratch. My supervisor is no help she let me go ahead with all this work thinking everything was ok and left it till the last minute to drop this bomb shell.

Can anyone help with getting around the methodological obstacles, maybe suggest workable methods or even help me alter the question to be a more workable one? Please help at this point I’m at my wits end.

m1ke

Seems like your research question is definitely more suited to a quantitative study and I think there are plenty of data available for you to test your hypothesis.

Alternatively, you could switch to a secondary school where you wouldn't need to have access to test scores but you note what stream students are put into (a class, b class etc...) and how many of them take honours and pass for the leaving and junior cert etc...

Susannahmia

Thanks Mike but I've actually decided to just change the whole thing to something much less complicated, was getting way too broad for me to handle. If mods want they can close this thread.