Research Proposal

• First three chapters of your research report• What you plan to study, why, how

Questions all good proposals address*

• What are you going to do• How are you going to do it• Why are you doing it• How does what you are going to do relate to

what others have done• What are the ethical issues involved in your study

and how will you handle them• What is the potential contribution of your work*from Bogdan and Biklen

Pilot study

Deciding on a Problem

Identifying a problem area (from text)• Educational phenomenon• Event you observed and will attempt to

explain• Problem in search of a solution• Replicated study• Listen at faculty meetings, etc.• Look at Review of Educational Research

More Problem Ideas

• Read the literature, particularly implication sections

• Look at “hot topics”• Think of your daily concerns• Keep a daily journal

Example Questions

• What procedures or activities promote or encourage students to revise their writing?*

• How does a writing workshop approach affect the growth of students’ skills in the mechanics of writing?*

• How does a whole language process approach affect a learning-disabled child?*

*Patterson, et al.

More examples

• Of the three professional development strategies practices this year (journaling, intervisitations, and PLC), which one did teachers feel was most useful in shaping their teaching practice?

• How does listening to student voice affect teachers’ self-assessment?

Guiding thoughts

• Be practical• Location of data sources should be convenient• Flexibility of access• Not too abstract/not too limiting• Flexibility of problem idea• Potential significance• interest

Setting and context

• Your own– Ethical concerns– Coercion– Ability to “multi-task”

Setting other than your own

• What do you plan to do• Disruptive• What you will do with the findings• Why us?• What will they get out of it

Format of Question

• Qualitative – special contexts and groupsWhat are the patterns/perspectives of a group

about some topic in a particular setting• Quantitative – collection and analysis of

numerical dataWhat are the descriptions of the characteristics

of a group? ORWhat is the effect of an intervention on the characteristics of a group?

The Problem Statement

Can be in the form of a statement

or

question

Practice

• Work in groups of three and review the assigned questions on the worksheet.

• Start with the assigned number and do a total of 10 statements

Group Question

In a different group of 3, come up with 3 potential qualitative questions we could use ourselves as a sample for.

Writing a Chapter One

• Narrative that lays out a story line• History– What prompted the study? Why did the issue

come to your attention?

• Context– Where is the study taking place. Provide an

overview, including demographics, descriptions, something that lets me see things through your eyes.

– What is the setting

• Theoretical constructs– You may or may not already know this. What is

the theory that frames your study. Generally gotten from doing some background reading.

• Why is your topic important– Tell the reader why this is a worthy study (to you

or the educational community)

• Problem Statement– Write your problem statement in a way that’s

researchable

Researchability (from McMillan2004)

• Should the school day be longer?• What is the relationship between the length of the

school day and SAT scores of high school students?• Do teachers need to have courses in test

construction?• Will the classroom testing procedures used by

teachers who take a course in test construction differ from those of teachers who have not had the course?

• Operational Definitions– Can define as words arise in the narrative or as a

separate listing at the end IF NEEDED

Operationalized

• What does the term mean? How is it measured?

For example: • What do you mean by “looping”• What do you mean by “problem solving”• How are you defining SES levels? What

constitutes low, middle, high?

Overview

• Factors leading up to your question• Who is involved• Why is it important• What specifically is your question• Are there any special terms I should know

For purposes of this class

• Pretend sample/context is the one you would have used if you were doing this study now.

Closure

• How to come up with an idea• Things to consider when deciding on a

problem• Critiqued and wrote some problem

statements• Outlined a chapter one