While reading through Writing and Teaching to Change the World, I believe that an issue that I will encounter in this class can be found on page 5. "For example, each of the authors positions herself to perceive unfairness, injustice, and openings for change, but the authors don't assume they know what they will find or what kind of change should take place in response." (Jones, 2014, p. 5) My main difficulty will be to try to identify issues without determining what kinds of changes will be needed before the research is completed, or even started. When dealing with issues in our classrooms, or issues that we or our loved ones deal with in everyday life, I feel that most people what to jump to a solution to try to fix the perceived injustices that we encounter. However, forcing myself to take a step back and analyze the entire situation before jumping to conclusions will be important in actually fostering change for students.
Chapter 1 of The Power of Questions brought some familiar names in Piaget and Vygotsky which every undergrad education student has become well acquainted with, and Falk and Blumenreich covered the theoretical basis for classroom research. The more engaging aspect of the chapter came on page 3 when they discussed that systematic investigation can be used to identify issues such as figuring out what to do with students "who disrupt your class," or "how to engage the parents of your students who just never seem to participate in anything", etc. (Falk & Blumenreich, 2005, p. 3) This started to make me uneasy as deciding what I will focus my research on seems to be a nearly impossible task at this point. It is very premature to begin thinking about that, but I know that within a few weeks we will be developing research questions.
I felt that the discussion in chapter 2 about research approaches and different paradigms helped to ease some of my worries about research and bias. "Rather than attempting to control one's biases, a researcher who works within a hermeneutic paradigm instead tries to be upfront about his or her biases." (Falk & Blumenreich, 2005, p. 12) I feel that this is the approach that I am eventually going to take because working with interpretation and analysis feels much more comfortable to me. Of course this is going to be dependent on the subject of my research, but after reading that section, I felt much more comfortable that I would have a path forward that would not involve completely shedding the context of my current placement. While reading these chapters helped me to understand what to expect for this class, they opened up many questions for me as well.
Benjamin,
ReplyDeleteI share your concern about the natural tendency to jump to afore made conclusions and the difficulty with bias. I think they are often related to each other. Our biases lead us to predict outcomes and preferred solutions. Falk & Blumenreich suggest being upfront with our biases, as you mentioned in your blog. I wonder that that looks like in practice. Is it valuable to try to identify one's biases before the research begins, before the lesson planning begins, and before every interaction with a student, family member, or colleague begins. I think, ideally, the answer is yes. But determining how to accomplish that is bound to be complicated. I wonder if a self survey could be designed that could help teachers and researchers identify their biases. What would that consist of? And once we have identified our biases and brought them to the fore front of our minds, how do we set them aside or manage their influences on our thinking and conclusions. Being upfront about our biases doesn't keep us from being influenced by them in a way that skews our thinking or conclusions. I would be interested in the classes thoughts about this.
Deborah
Hi Ben,
ReplyDeleteI also found more comfort in the discussion about types of research and how the hermeneutic paradigm calls for researchers to acknowledge their bias upfront. It was easy for me to imagine myself preforming research within that paradigm -- I would maybe even go as far as to say that *all* research should be done in that paradigm. Deciding a research question will even depend on our biases and assumptions. What does it mean to "disrupt class" or "engage parents"? We probably all have different existing opinions on these topics and different ways we would approach each of those questions.