Instruments’ Development And Validation For Contextualized Educational Research

The recent years have unveiled significant research interest in bridging the gap between secondary and tertiary level education with a specific focus on English language teaching and learning, and Oman is not an exception. However, since both types of education obviously differ in pedagogical situations and environment, it is crucial for researchers to carefully adapt and/or develop research instruments for such a mixed research setting. Using the example of a study aimed at examining the construction and dynamics of Oman’s English language education, this paper takes a closer look at the process of instruments’ design and validation for contextualized educational research. While focusing on the issues related to the transition from high school to college and the importance of bridging the gap between secondary and tertiary education in the country, the researchers were engaged in a systematical search for related empirical studies on the instrumentation process, its validity, and reliability in a contextualized setting. Here, the emphasis was on the instruments’ design to be appropriate for both secondary and tertiary levels of education to target different groups of research participants, namely language educators and administrators involved in curriculum design, supervision of teaching, and assessment. Advantages and limitations of a variety of instruments, including survey questionnaires and in-depth interviews identified as the main tools for data collection, were examined, and some important prerequisites of instruments’ development, including the concepts of instrumentation and validation, were reviewed. The review reveals that appropriate selection and careful preparation of the research instruments provide support for the project as a whole, connect it to a wider context of research both on local and global levels, and thus contribute to future explorations of mixed research settings.