When I think of Research...

This course seemed a bit intimidating at first.  I loved how things were broken down week by week, though.  The layout of the course made a big project seem very doable because it was presented in small steps.  One challenge that I encountered during this course was restating terms in my own words during our weekly charts.  It seems like such a silly, easy thing but once I have read a definition it is often hard for me to think of a new way to say the same thing.  I tackled this problem by trying to give concrete examples of the terms each week.  Not only did this help me to define terms without simply quoting a book definition, it also helped me to remember the terms more easily.

One way that my perception of an early childhood professional has been modified is that I have realized that all teachers are researchers.  We may not all have 12-page essays with research companions to show our work, but we all conduct research on some level.  Putting a child on a behavior sticker chart and keeping track of their progress is one way we do research.  If we notice the data is staying the same and there is no improvement we know to move on to the next technique.  Teachers are always trying new things and keeping track of their successes and failures to work towards reaching all learners.

When planning a research project, I realized that there are many decisions to be made.  Every little aspect of a research project involves major thinking and many choices.  The nature of research is that each person is looking to find different information and goes about it in a different way.  I struggled a bit with this in the beginning because I tend to be a very black or white type of person.  It seems that there are no real “right or wrong” answers in research.  Your decisions shape your research and while some choices might be better than others there are no real cut and dry rules.  It caused me to do a lot of critical thinking!

I have gained many new insights from this course.  One invaluable lesson that I learned was how to read a research article.  Without the first week and the documents provided in this course I would have felt very overwhelmed.  I was so pleased to find that there are many aspects of a research article you can skip over.  Practicing the method of what to skip and what to read (and re-read) has helped me to become a better student and a more knowledgeable early childhood professional.