EDET 636 Impact of Tech Week 2 Blog

EDET 636: Impact of Technology on Student Learning

Week 2 Blog

Essential Question: How is Qualitative Research a good lens through which to view classroom research?

            Researchers might have a different reason or desired outcome from the research and many times these researching perspectives fall in one of the following four categories (Merriam & Tisdell)

·      Positivist- a purpose to predict and control a research. Experimental and survey are the main types of research format

·      Constructivist- a purpose to describe, interpret, and understand. Qualitative is the main type of research format.

·      Critical- a purpose is to create change or empower. Examples of research includes feminist, participatory action research, critical race theory

·      Postmodern- a purpose is to deconstruct, question, problematize, or interrupt. Example include queer theory.

Of these main types or perspectives of research, classroom research seems to fall in the constructivist category because teachers and adults working with students are trying to understand student learning, then describe and interpret student learning so that they can become better teachers. The main way to conduct a constructivist perspective research is to take a qualitative approach to the research.

            Merriam and Tisdell explain that qualitative research gives a chance for a researcher to step into the world of certain situations and circumstances. There are methods and guidelines to help someone who is interested in viewing things in their natural habitat and attempts to interpret these things by looking how others bring meaning to the topic or thing being researched. Qualitative research does not look at the frequency of a happening but rather tries to interpret, decode, and share the happening by looking at experiences of people connected to or affected by the happening. (2016)

            In order to have more of a guideline or direction of qualitative research, Merriam and Tisdell provided four main characteristics of this type of research. They are listed below. (2016)

·      Focus on meaning and understanding: “The overall purposes of qualitative research are to achieve an understanding of how people make sense out of their lives, delineate the process (rather than the outcome or product) of meaning-making, and describe how people interpret what they experience.” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016)

·      Researcher as primary instrument: The person who is doing the research should be doing all of the data collecting and analysis so that the researcher can be flexible in which way they want to continue by analyzing the data as the research is moving forward.

·      An inductive process: The researcher does not start with a theory rather the researcher uses the data to build concepts and create theories off of the analysis of the data.

·      Rich description: The data needs to consist of words, pictures, videos, etc instead of numbers.

These characteristics of qualitative research convince me that this method of research is a great way to conduct classroom research. Teachers are constantly looking at and considering personal student experiences and the students’ meaning of the experiences. As a teacher, I consider the qualitative type of data more than just the numbers part of student data. I understand if and when students understand the concepts being learning not because the assessment shows me they passed but because the students’ meaning of the material is evidence.

Resources:

Merriam, S. B. & Tisdell, E. J. (2016). Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation. San Franciso, CA. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.