I am also with Timbre in that I'm not entirely sure exactly what I'm being asked for. That being said, here's my refined research question (that still seems to address an ethnographic model):
Research Question: How does the BYU student's own sense of community engagement change during Hands on a Camera?
- Follow up research questions: How do BYU students describe their sense of community engagement before the project? What does community engagement mean to them before the project? During the project? After the project?
Okay, now to Action Research and Case Studies.
As I said at the beginning of my post, I realized as I was doing the reading that what I really want to do is an Action Research Study. It seems to me that the lines between Critical Ethnography (an ethnography stemming from a desire for advocacy and with the intent to change a situation or challenge existing research) and Action Research are fairly thin. Then, when I really started thinking about it, it seems like the lines between all these models are fairly thin; isn't an ethnography a form of case study? At the least, all of these have some methods in common (observation, collecting documents, etc.), which leads me to believe that designing a research project is a little bit like making a documentary film (or any story really, but we're talking about documentary modes in my class so I'm addressing them here): there are lots of modes, and some documentaries are more one mode than another, but in reality all documentaries are generally a mix of one or two. We might design a project that is mostly action research, but it's going to borrow a little bit from ethnography. The best method is to know and understand all the tools at your disposal and design a project that best suits your research need.
I really like the idea of action research because (as was clearly demonstrated in Glori's thesis) it stems from the desire to better a situation--to improve practice, to help others. I also like that even though research needs to happen prior to the project, you don't go into the project with the goal of proving a hypothesis. Yes, Glori hoped that doing a blogging project would help her students with their English, but she had no preconceived notions of how the blog would transform their behavior; she let the research speak for itself. I also appreciate the fact that action research is about helping one community with one problem, and though the results can be extrapolated (my goal is perhaps to use the word extrapolate in every post), the goal of the project isn't necessarily to institute widespread policy change or to generate groundbreaking new ideas (though these can certainly follow). Sometimes I get intimidated by research projects because I'm not sure that what I do will actually contribute to the field in any way, but if I better my own practice in some way, then the research is a success.
And that is cool.
2 comments:
I think that your last statement is really at the core of action research especially, but for me, I think it's the reason that I'm here in general. It's like you said here-the whole point is to learn how to do this stuff, right? When people have asked me why I've chosen this particular program, I haven't really had an answer other than "it was the right decision." But, as we've gone through the readings and in our discussions, I am coming to realize that my ultimate goal is to become a better educational practitioner. For me, action research, specifically, and media literacy, in general, is a way of doing that, and I really appreciate that emphasis in today's reading, that it's about getting in there and improving something in one specific area, even if you can't extrapolate it.
I too love the selfish altruism of improving because of systematic research and, if not already clear in my own post, I'm pretty much addicted to action research and continuous improvement. What I really appreciate is that you connected the different forms of research that we have so far discussed and roughly outlined that each has something to offer the other, thus making the holistic approach to research more applicable. About all I have to say now is, "Amen."
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