Follow the instruction on the file.
ACTIVITY #2 research in education OBJECTIVE This activity should help education students understand how teachers can advance knowledge of teaching and learning through their own research. The more teachers know about research, the more they can use their classrooms for finding new and better ways to help students learn. Such classroom-based "action research" is a powerful way to try out new methods and to discover and then share ways to help students. Knowledge of good research practice can also make educators intelligent consumers of the vast amount of information and success claims they will see. BACKGROUND and KEY CONCEPTS There are many ways to conduct research, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. The primary forms of educational research are descriptive, correlational, and experimental. The form a teacher chooses should be based on the sort of question she or he wishes to explore, and what is possible within the constraints of the setting. It is almost impossible, for example, to conceive of a classroom situation in which a true experimental design could be used. Developing a research orientation to classroom experiences can, though, make teachers far more effective in their work. DIRECTED OBSERVATIONS/REFLECTIONS (reading the "research" pages that follow will help you with this activity) 1. Identify a question you have about the effectiveness of a practice you observe in your field work, (or have observed in classrooms at an earlier time) and describe that practice and your question about it. 2. Describe methods you could use to investigate the effectiveness of those practices. After you read the entire "Research" insert in this workbook, you should concentrate on the Action Research section, which will help you with how teachers can/should do research. 3. Discuss strengths and weaknesses of the method/s you have chosen. Write your answers to these questions, and reflect on why teachers will serve their students and their profession well by seeing themselves as researchers, on a page you insert directly after this one. Far more than with any other activity, there is a lot of reading in this section to help you with posing a research question. You will serve yourself well to read through the material, and to save this material for future reference. There will be classes in your future that require that you understand the basics of doing research. Types of Education Research There are two basic types of education research: descriptive research and experimental research. Each answers different research questions and uses different research designs. DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND DESIGNS Descriptive research is used to answer descriptive research questions: What is happening? How is something happening? Why is something happening? Examples: -What is the average number of staff development hours/year for teachers? -What is the association between student-teacher ratios and student achievement in the state’s elementary schools? -How does instruction differ among teachers who receive different amounts of staff development? -Why do teacher qualifications influence instruction? Descriptive research designs include the following types: ▪Simple descriptive ▪Comparative descriptive ▪Correlational A simple descriptive design is used when data are collected to describe persons, settings, or phenomena. For example, a researcher administers a survey to a random sample of teachers in a state to describe the characteristics of the state’s population of teachers. With a comparative descriptive design, the researcher describes two or more groups of participants. For example, a researcher administers a questionnaire to three groups of teachers about their classroom practices. The researcher chooses the three schools because the schools vary in terms of the amount of professional development that they provide to teachers. A correlational research design is used to describe the statistical association between two or more variables. For example, a researcher measures the student-teacher ratio in each classroom in a school district and measures the average student achievement on the state assessment in each of these same classrooms. Next the researcher uses statistical techniques to measure whether the student-teacher ratio and student achievement in the school district are connected numerically; for example, when the student-teacher ratio changes in value, so does student achievement. The researcher can then use the student-teacher ratio to predict student achievement, a technique called regression analysis. When there is more than one predictor variable, the technique of multiple regression analysis produces a multiple correlation that is used for prediction. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND DESIGNS Experimental research is used to answer causal research questions: Does something cause an effect? For example, does a low student-teacher ratio cause higher student achievement? Experimental research designs include the following: · True experimental (randomized trials) · Quasi-experimental In experimental research, the researcher manipulates or varies an independent variable and measures its effects on one or more dependent variables. In a true experimental design, the researcher randomly assigns the participants who are being studied (also called the subjects) to two or more comparison groups. Sometimes the comparison groups are referred to as treatment and control groups. Participants in the treatment group receive some type of treatment, such as a special reading program. Participants in the control group do not receive the treatment. For example, at the beginning of a school year, a researcher randomly assigns all classes in a school district to have either a low student-teacher ratio (small class, the treatment group) or a normal student-teacher ratio (large class, the control group). At the end of the school year, the researcher measures each student’s achievement using the state assessment and compares the average achievement of students in the two sizes of classes. In this example, class size is the independent variable because class size is being varied or manipulated. Student achievement is the dependent variable because student achievement is being measured. (Note: Researchers conducted a similar experiment in