Week Four

The lecture for this week was again engaging us as a professional educator within a community as a researcher. It gave us an insight into how to achieve correct results for reporting and collecting data for research. I found this very useful as I am concerned as how I am going to achieve the collection of data that is required and how I am going to justify it as qualitative information. It is my understanding that useful research does not need to be correct or right it just needs to build on relevant data therefore concluding if the initial goal was right. I believe it isn’t to prove something wrong or right, but you need to make connections between your own research and others.
The workshop was very interesting as we were given the chance to discuss data collection tools. We engaged in a jigsaw activity and found each other’s interpretation of each tool. I found we were quite similar in many respects. The discussion turned towards the actual project and how to collect data during the project (observations, anecdotes, surveys etc). This was when a rather heated discussion occurred about how we as pre-service educators have not been given enough information (by the uni) to achieve the best results for the project. I was not in complete agreement during this discussion as I believe at this point in our careers we need to be far more proactive. It is the responsibility of us as future educators to research, investigate, report and engage with information. We need to do this now and learn how to do this otherwise when we become teachers in the classroom an un-proactive nature will transpose onto the students we are teaching. There was also a complaint with the amount of workload that is being evoked upon the current cohort for the duration of the internship. I was on the opposite side of this opinion also as I believe as educators the workload will increase far more than what we are currently engaged in. By the response in the workshop this week many disagree with me and I am in a minority with my current work ethic (a worrying thought).

Project progress

This week I have managed to make a fair bit of progress on my project. As mentioned in a previous post I found that I am a very visual person. I was having difficulty seeing were pieces of the project were going and how many parts to it there were, mainly which software to include. I decided to create a mind map to achieve the structure and organisation I require to start creating tutorials and surveys. I will also create a digital version of this, so watch this space. It has helped immensely to work out what questions I need to ask and realise that the project is an Action Research project and will need to continuously evolve and change. This will be at the request of the educators, students and school community’s needs. This has been a very good and productive week in regards to the project. I need to now finalise my proposal for submission hoping I am on the right track.

Cheers for now

Al