Reflections of an Aspiring Educator

Last week we talked about analyzing data. I created this "Sketch Notes" of the things I learned. Overall, the most important things I learned are that 1) Coding is important to reduce bias, draw out themes, and help the researcher come to a deeper understanding of the data. 2) There are many different coding techniques. Researchers often will find a good one that works for their research and stick with it for most of their career. Knowing all the different types of coding isn't important. Knowing where to look for your coding techniques, making sure you cite your sources or explain your methods clearly, and using the right kind for your research are important. This current week we reflected on what we'd learned throughout the semester. When asked, "what is research to you?" at the start of the semester I responded with this image:   I thought of a person, at a desk, on a computer, crunching numbers. I thought of people talking and collaborating. I...

This week we learned about different types of research. Here are some things I want to remember for the research project I am doing in this class as well as my master's research project:  ~Transcribing things yourself is really good and can help you delve that much deeper into the data. If you have lots and lots of data it can spare you a lot of time to have someone else help you transcribe. ~In our master's project we will probably use several different methods of research and use triangulation to validate our data ~In observations as well as interviews it's important to record things that might create an additional bias--like if the person you're interviewing is having a particularly bad day that is leading them to feel more negative towards the topic, etc. ~In observations, lots and lots of detail is really important. Describing the classroom set-up, how people are dressed, etc. is important Here are some things that are just good things to remember about rese...

This week we created our qualitative research proposal. Reading about how to plan a research project is one thing, and thinking through your research project and planning it is definitely another thing! I was placed in a group of three amazing classmates and together we created a research proposal and presented it. Here are some things things that stood out to me! Be specific!! This is probably the biggest thing that stood out to me. One of my teammates did the literature review while the other teammate and I created the methods section. The two of us who worked on the methods section worked very carefully and tried to include as much detail in our plan as possible. I was pretty comfortable with what we had done. As part of our research proposal, we were also asked to look at the proposals of our classmates. This was incredibly eye-opening on a bunch of levels. First of all, I realized that although we had been pretty specific in our "context", "positionality",...