A Critical Review of Swain and Hammond

Introduction The motivations and outcomes of studying for part-time mature students in higher education (Swain and Hammond, 2011) is an interesting article because it lays out clearly and succinctly its background, aims, purposes and results in a clear and readable way. However, according to the judgement criteria contained in the Open University Course Educational Enquiry, it has failings both in laying out its stance toward the focus of its investigation and in the clarity of the way it treats the notion of ethical treatment of research participants. The purpose of this research is to give an example of how to critically appraise the quality of scholarly work in the field of educational enquiry with the further aim of giving the reader insight into the key terms of transparency, relevancy and validity. This research has two main parts. Part one contains a discussion of important terminology used in educational enquiry, while part two contains an appraisal of how well the research done by Swain and Hammond (2011) is transparent, relevant and valid.