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Focus Child Observation

Decent Essays

The methods used to collect data for this focus study include both five observations of the focus child during play and notes from an informal conversation with the focus child’s mother. These methods were used in conjunction with one another as they compliment each other within research. This is because a particular strength of observations lies in the researcher being able to clearly see and identify what the child is doing instead of gaining this information from the child or parent which could be open to interpretation or other modifiers (McDevitt, Ellis Ormrod, Cupid, Chandler, & Aloa, 2013). Utilising the informal conversation in conjunction with the observations ensured that I could still obtain the mothers perspective on her child and was useful as a confirmation of my research question after my initial observations lead me to focus on the general area of C.W’s physical development and play. Deciding to only use anecdotal observations stemmed from McDevitt et al. (2013) that “the kind of observations we conduct depend on what we hope to gain from watching and listening to children” (50) and as the research focus question centres on helping to “identify individual needs” (51) much the same as anecdotal observations I decided they would be the most appropriate research method.

In my initial observations (refer to Appendix – Observation 1 & 2 for details) I noticed that C.W had a particular interest in physical play and mostly chose to interact with others during these

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