Hands on a Camera Stuff: (I'm not 100% sure if this is the kind of thing that we're looking for here.)
Problem Statement: Research proposes to examine BYU students' awareness of community in relationship to their participation in service learning.
Research Questions:
1-How do the BYU students feel about the Provo community in general? (Before the service learning experience)
2-How do the BYU students interact with the greater Provo community, outside of BYU? (Before, during, and after the service learning experience)
3-How do the students at the Hands on a Camera schools represent the community at large?
4-What are the BYU students' motivations for becoming involved in Hands on a Camera?
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I'm going to just take a second and talk about nothing related before I move into this week's reading. Please bear with me...
So, I'm currently sitting in Cedar City, chaperoning the High School Shakespeare competition, and this day has been nothing but a reminder of why I absolutely love my job. I have the chance to work with the most amazing people; these kids are just so wonderful, and they are such a blessing to me. I think that it's absolutely insane that there are teachers out there who don't appreciate the joy that can come from fully investing yourself in these people. Really, what's the point if that isn't it?
As I've been observing over the past few days, I have thought about this particular group of young people, and how interesting it would be to do an ethnography of children, ages 14-18, who choose to come to this thing. I mean, seriously, Shakespeare? For FUN? That's a very particular group, and it'd be interesting to take a closer look at it. But, that's more last week's reading...
This week, as I read, it made perfect sense to me why action research is of particular interest to those interested in teaching practices. I am of the opinion that if you are a good teacher, you are constantly striving to improve your pedagogy and find more effective and engaging ways to educate, and according to Berg, that seems to be at the core of action research-a desire to improve something.
Like the other research methods we've discussed, whether generally or specifically, this must be systematically planned out and executed and it must be reproducible. But unlike some of the other methods, I love that one of the main ingredients in your action research is the actual stakeholder. From the reading, it seems that with this research there's no real question of needing to "maintain a value-neutral position" or worrying about "becoming invisible" simply because everyone's in on it, and the ultimate goal is improvement. Did I interpret this correctly, or am I being naive here?
As I read about some of the basic information about action research, I kept thinking about something that has been going on at Lehi High for the past year or so--accreditation. Now, I know that the accreditation process probably isn't a full-blown action based research project, but every few years, schools are asked to gather data and compile information regarding various aspects of the school community in the effort to make improvements over the next few years. This is that progressive spiral of continuous improvement that shows up on page 23 of Glori Smith's thesis. Many of the underlying objectives are the same, I think.
And then there is research using case studies. I can see the value of case studies, especially in that it often opens up opportunities for discovery or the development of new theory. I can see how easy it would be, however, to make broad generalizations based on one specific case study, and I agree with Berg when he says that we need to be careful not to do just that. Can we make other hypotheses based on our findings? Sure. Berg makes the very valid point that "human behavior is predictable" and therefore, this type of research does have scientific value (330). But we can't make any conclusive decisions based on one person/situation.
Overall, I really do like both of these methodologies for research. I think that they would be highly interesting as well as informative, depending on the situation. As we learn about the different methodologies, it becomes more and more evident why we have to be so meticulous in our research design so as to be the most effective in meeting our objectives.
1 comment:
It is interesting that Berg says that we cannot make total generalizations based on a simple case study but I do have to admit you have an interesting question: Can we make other hypotheses based on our findings? To me, that’s what a case study really comes down to – direction of thought. I believe that a case study, in its microcosm, can allow for “conclusive decisions.” It is much like action research in that it usually only discovers something that will help the specific situation, but if a case study is done just for the sake of a case study, without any conclusions to gain from the experience, then what’s the point? Something I’ve learned is that sometimes you have to make educated guesses on a small bit of information when making a decision. It has been proven that lots of information about a decision doesn’t necessarily make the decision a better one. Instead, just the right amount of the right information helps to make a good conclusion and thus a good decision. In your classroom, you can’t and won’t have all the information – neither will any version of research that we have studied so far – but, in my opinion, a case study can give enough information to make conclusive decisions.
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