Week 2 of Research Methods in Education

Well, having come to the end of yet another week, I have found that things are starting to make sense... The first week was hard in that there was a lot of terminology... but this week has been hard for me, trying to come to terms with many of the concepts and issues in research...I came to a point in which I needed a time line of these 'thinkers' in the history and philosophy of science.... It is amazing how much of a visual person I am...so I looked up any sites that would give me a good look at all of them in relation to one another…
One site (very simple, I know): http://timelineindex.com/content/view/2031

1. Some of the people I have befriended this week...
Plato...Aristotle...Kant...Hume...Popper…. hahahaha
Actually, it was really good to get some perspective on these guys…

2. Also, I have started to get an idea about what goes into making up good research, but I am still at the very beginning... The readings in module 2 helped, but there were just so many questions (especially in the last reading: Gay, 1992)...and I will need some time to digest the information and sort out what I think...

3. One idea that came out while I was reading the module 2 readings was the idea of allowing time to synthesize and formulate other perspectives and reflect on data (Goetz & Lecompte, 1984). I've often thought to myself, that given enough time between tasks, I am bound to come up with major improvements to whatever I am working on. (That reading kinda consolidated it in my own mind ~ each subsequent revision can slowly give more and more clarity). I try to encourage my writing class students to do exactly that – leave time to reflect. They are often (like many of us) in too much of a hurry to finish things, that they rush through something and not give themselves much time to just sit back and mull things over...

4. I also like the idea that a researcher should say to themselves, “So what”? I think that whenever I start working on something in my teaching job (say some internet based activity), I often get so excited in the task at hand (more so than the students sometimes), that I end up forgetting to answer this fundamental question. What purpose is there in what I am doing, and when much of myself is invested in the project, how much do I wish to be critical (or skeptical) of what I am doing? Am I willing to ask myself, if there are any other ways or even more scope to the approach I am taking? As a researcher, can I afford to be so personally involved in the project? How hard is it to take a step back, and distance myself from the undertaking, so that I can be more responsive to data (or text)? Am I able to modify and possibly change my initial work, if the applications of my initial generalizations yield strange results? I hope that I can be flexible enough to do so…

I hope that we all can…
Steven Mondy

Goetz & Lecompte, (1984) Ethnography and qualitative design in education research, Academic press, Orlando.