Tuesday, September 4, 2012

My Research Journey

After beginning the reading in Creswell as well as the articles and lecture about journeys into researching, I am compelled to begin my research journal with a reflection on my research experience. The more I read, the more I realize how much formal and informal research I’ve done. I will have to divide this into several categories. The first is my undergraduate coursework and thesis at Smith College, 1998-2003. The second is my work as an executive assistant and then development associate at a small non-profit organization in San Francisco called Legal Services for Children. The third category is my work as an Americorps partner at an elementary school in San Jose, CA (I lived there long before I started at SJSU SLIS!) and then in my work as a teacher both through Teach for America and then independently from Teach for America. I haven’t done much research in my past two years as a teacher librarian, but I hope that this class will inspire me to do more data collection and analysis in my work here.

 My fondest and most substantial (although also a big hazy) memories of research is from my time at Smith. My first experience of research came in my qualitative methods class as a sociology major. I worked in a group to research transgender students’ self-identities. The group conducted interviews, took notes, and we may have recorded the interviews. Then we wrote a paper. I remember that I was finishing my sophomore year at that time, so I often deferred to some of the more experienced students who were seniors. I did enjoy the independent nature of the work, although I also remember a lot of stress. That experience of interviewing and reading became a jumping-off point for my honors thesis project. It spanned almost half of my time at Smith and involved studying high school student activist identities. I wanted to find out what motivated the students to get involved in activism, and also whether their activism in high school would motivate them to do social justice work in college and beyond. I did interviews with kids from a group that was against the new high school exit exam in Massachusetts. The summary of Kuhlthau’s stages of research resonated and stirred up memories of times during my thesis work that I got stuck. I think that I’ve read her work in library school in relation to the search process, but I didn’t think of it in relation to the research process. I guess I should have--it’s ultimately all the same thing. I remember times when I felt really unmotivated to work on my thesis and I would just put it aside and then eventually guiltily tell my adviser what was up. Then he would give me a little nudge in the right direction, I would realize I had been procrastinating out of confusion/uncertainty, and move forward. What a great model!

 My honors thesis is one of my best memories of college, especially the academic parts. I loved working closely with my adviser, and was so touched at the end of the whole thing when he wrote me a card saying that working with me was the best experience he had with any thesis advisee, and he learned a lot from me. It was very hard work but I am so glad that I did it, and I still feel proud when I think of that research.

 The research I’ve done while working in education has primarily been based on the concept of a cycle of inquiry. It’s been called different things at different schools, but the spirit of it has always been the same: look at assessment data to determine areas of weakness in student skills, select a strategy to strengthen those skills, implement them in the classroom, assess to determine effectiveness, and either return to that skill or move on to another skill that needs support. While this is different than the types of research that Creswell describes in chapter one of Research Design, I still consider it a research experience. The data analysis is the most closely aligned with his ideas. Overall, my honors thesis is the most consistent with the type of academic research we are discussing in this class, but the other types of research that I’ve done are also relevant. I look forward to delving into graduate-level research methods and approaches.

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