Fall 2024
Instructor: Dr. Matthew S. McCluskey
Final Grade: A
Course Description from Syllabus:
This course satisfies the requirements for the basic research methods class in the
Department of Education, offering an introduction to basic principles, methods, and standards for educational research. This course will assume a broad and cross-curricular perspective for research as we explore both historical and contemporary considerations of trends and issues in educational research. We will consider research in the domains of expertise and interest of those enrolled in the class.
Because research has such a profound effect on policy and practice (i.e., classroom instruction), educators at every level must be savvy, knowledgeable consumers of research. Graduate students should know how to locate, understand, evaluate, synthesize, and talk knowledgeably about research that uses a wide range of research methods. Throughout the class, we will examine questions such as “What is research-based instruction?” and “What is scientific research?” We’ll also interrogate and deconstruct the well-worn, discussion-stopping phrase, “Research says...” We will build a shared understanding of educational research and design through lectures, in-class activities, video, whole group and small group discussion, assignments, and presentations.
Course Reflection/ Impact:
This course was my last core class that I needed to take. When seeing that I had to complete a course in research, I was very overwhelmed by the idea since I have not done a deep dive into research since my undergraduate degree. Even through the anxiety of a course on research, I was excited to learn how I could utilize it within my classroom in order to complete action research as well as how to navigate research for my own personal life.
One of the first projects we did was on different ethical practices within research. I did my project on the brown/ blue eye study that was originally conducted in 1968 in Iowa. In this study, Jane Elliot divided her third grade class by their eye color. In order to teach the class about racial injustice, Elliot allowed one group to have extra privileges while the other group did not. There was also different rhetoric put out to make one group feel superior to the others. On the second day, the roles were reversed so each group could feel the effects. The study found that the students in the inferior group performed lower than their counterparts in the superior group (Frontline PBS, 2013). I was fascinated by this study as it was conducted in a school and was amazed by the behaviors the children exhibited under different conditions. It was very evident that it was an unethical study due to the lack of informed consent, avoiding harm of the children involved, and that the study was very discriminative due to its guidelines. This opened my eyes to what can and cannot be done in studys in order to keep the participants safe as well as give informed information based on the results.
Along the same lines, I was also intrigued by my assignment where we had to do some digging on popular research. This was the idea of finding a new article that included the line "according to research..." and then back tracking to find the actual research articles it is based on to see if they were reporting actual facts, or if it has been twisted for the media to make a better story. I found an article that was regarding how teenagers brains "aged" due to the COVID-19 lockdowns. I was interested in this article since I started teaching during the height of the pandemic and I wanted to learn about its impacts after time has passed. The article mentioned "how disruptions to daily routines may have contributed to behavioral problems, an increase in eating disorders, anxiety, and depression in adolescent girls and boys" (Martin, 2024). Through digging through the news article, as well as the original research, I found that the news article was pretty true to the findings other than a few small changes. For example, there were discrepancies between what ages participated in the study. The news article mentioned that there were children ages nine to nineteen years old but the study said it was only seventeen year olds involved (Corrigan et al., 2024). When we had our class, there were many classmates who found that there were big discrepancies from their news article and research. It made me step back and want to take a more critical eye to what I read that claims that it is according to research and to do my own digging through credible resources instead of believing anything I see online.
The big project that I completed in this class was my action research proposal. This included creating an annotated bibliography based on the research I had to sift through in my preliminary phases. My proposal was focused on if homework made a difference in academic achievement scores for middle school students. This has been a topic that I was interested in during my undergraduate degree and did some fact finding on my own, as well as my own interest as a classroom teacher in hopes to improve understanding and retention. From what I found, there is research to back that small assignments in moderation based on the students ability and age may be beneficial for short term retention, but not many studies have been done for long term memorization. For example, there were studies completed in elementary schools that showed that there were short term to medium term retention benefits to additional practice in reading and writing, but not for math (Dolean & Lervag, 2022). I have not had the time to carry out this research project, but I would be interested in doing it with future classes to see if it made a difference in students academic scores.
Overall, this course has taught me to have a more critical eye when examining research, but has also given me tools to understand research studies. This will be useful for me as a teachers since there are many groundbreaking research studies regarding education and it is important to be up to date so I can improve my own personal practice. I now feel confident in reading different types of research and be able to decipher their results as well as any bias. Since I have a better understanding of qualitative versus quantitative research, I am able to decipher the results as well as know what type of research I may want to conduct within my classroom in the future. I also feel like I am being more skeptical about articles that say "according to research" and I am now teaching my students to go back and find the original study so they can be more informed and knowledgeable about what they are reading and researching,
References:
Frontline PBS. (2003, January 1). Introduction. FRONTLINE; Frontline PBS. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/introduction-2/
Martin, P. (2024, September 9). Teen brains “aged” during Covid lockdowns, new research suggests. NBC News; NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/covid-lockdowns-teen-brains-aged-prematurely-rcna169966
Corrigan, N. M., Rokem, A., & Kuhl, P. K. (2024). COVID-19 lockdown effects on adolescent brain structure suggest accelerated maturation that is more pronounced in females than in males. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(38). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2403200121
Dolean, D. D., & Lervag, A. (2022). Variations of homework amount assigned in elementary school can impact academic achievement. Journal of Experimental Education, 90(2), 280-296. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/00220973.2020.1861422