Conducting Educational Research

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WRITING A RESEARCH QUESTION may be tainted for those same reasons. Your sample may act or respond in a way that they feel you want to see rather than more naturally and truthfully. There may also be ethical considerations. We will explore these more fully later in this chapter. 3. Consider ease of access. Regardless of whether you choose to study your own teaching site or another, consider when you will be able to have access to your sample. For example, if you are going to compare teaching strategies of other teachers in your own building, are you able to do that? Do they teach during your planning period or other times you might have available? Are you just interviewing them? Can you do that before and/or after school? If you will be administering a survey to the staff, can that be done during a faculty meeting? If you are going to study a curriculum used by teachers in a neighboring district, when will you be able to meet with those teachers and see the curriculum being delivered? Can you do that during a prep period or is there a way that you can get release time to do that? Is their teaching schedule different from your own? What kind of paperwork will you need to file in order to gain access to teachers in another district? Don’t set yourself up for failure by choosing to study an issue that will cause obvious concerns with data collection. 4. Do not be too abstract with your question. Rather than being interested in multiculturalism in schools, think about what really concerns you in that area. Are you interested, for example, in policy, instruction, teacher/student or student/ student relationships? Is it how teachers handle English Language Learners (ELL) in their classes or how relationships develop between ELL and the native students in the class? Are you really concerned with what services different school districts offer for ELL or teaching strategies that might be successful in working with ELL? Maybe you’re interested in examining how the ELL in your classroom cope with language difficulties. While you don’t want to be too narrow at the onset, you also don’t want to be so broad as to have no sense of where you want to go with the question. Doing background research will help you in focusing your question, but it really helps to have some basic ideas before doing much exploring. 5. Be flexible. You have to be willing to adjust and refine your question as you progress. You may find after doing a literature review that your question should have a slightly different focus or that you really would rather go a totally different direction than you had thought. That’s ok! There is a point in quantitative research where your problem statement will need to become permanently fixed but you do not need to do that initially. 6. Does your study have any importance? What would be gained by doing this study? Will it help you or others do your jobs better (practical importance)? Will it add to our knowledge about education in some important way (theoretical importance)? Will your study replicate what someone has already done to see if it works in your context? Conversely, if the question has already been rather thoroughly studied, perhaps just reading on the topic would provide you with what you need to know. In that case, it would not make a good problem statement. 23
CHAPTER 2 7. Probably most importantly, you must be interested in your topic. If you plan to study something that you are not so excited about, it will be a chore to get the project done. Working on a topic you don’t really have a vested interest in will not make or keep you motivated to collect and analyze your data, and your findings may be irrelevant for yourself. Research takes time and (as already discussed) provides much in terms of personal and professional development. Invest this time wisely. Given all the other demands on your time, it is important that you feel what you devote to your research project is a good use of this limited resource. 24 IDENTIFYING A PROBLEM AREA If you are having problems coming up with a problem, here are some prompts that may be helpful: − Is there an educational phenomenon you wish to describe (e.g., a move from a middle school to a junior high school; a historical overview of a change in curriculum; effects of block scheduling)? − Is there something you have observed and would like to try and explain (e.g., why some students have trouble with long-division problems; what writing strategies are used by higher achievers; what thought processes do good problem solvers use)? − Do you have a problem you want to try and develop a solution for (e.g., how can I make my students more self-directed learners; how can I get non-volunteers to answer questions; how can I better help my ADHD students to learn)? − Is there a study you have read that you would like to replicate (e.g., check the validity of research findings with your population)? − Have you heard a problem or concern raised at faculty meetings, committee groups, etc. that you would be interested in addressing? − Look at the Review of Educational Research for ideas. − Read the literature and see what the implication sections have to offer. − Look at “hot topics” in current education to see if there is something that really piques your interest (e.g., whole language v. phonics; engineering design; alternative assessments). If you are still stumped, for a few days or a week, journal at the end of each day on what happened in your classes or school. Read your journal. What recurrent issues arise? Can one of these act as the basis for your problem statement? WHAT MAKES A RESEARCHABLE QUESTION? The purpose of your research project is to answer your research question. So, in order to be researchable, you have to be able to answer your question, supported by the data you collected. Questions based on opinion, personal philosophies or beliefs are generally not researchable. For example, you cannot research the question “Should school uniforms be mandated?” This is a debatable question, but not one that is researchable as stated.
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