Two weeks down. A lot
more to go. Although that comment might seem kinda pessimistic, I'm feeling a
lot better about where I am at now than I was last week. As I rather formally
indicated in my last post, I was floundering around looking for a topic as I
went back and forth trying to make a decision between focusing on science
education and a start-up company. Fortunately, somewhere around the middle of
the week, I picked my topic and decided to go with science education. At that
point up until earlier today, I wasn’t particularly sure on what I wanted to do
with science education though (refer to meme 1 for a visual representation of
my thoughts at that time). I had a bunch of ideas buzzing around my head, and
as a result I just kind of read a bunch of different articles about science
education looking for inspiration. My leading idea at that point was to analyze
school curriculums and look at their effectiveness through an analysis of
standardized test scores.
Not long after I
scrolled through a 200,000 column excel spreadsheet of standardized test scores though,
I realized that my intended area of focus was not going to be as interesting as
I thought it would be. From then on, I continued to look at other articles as I
tried to hone in on a particular topic of interest, until today, when I found
inspiration in an unlikely way. While I was laying around doing nothing (one of
my favorite past times) I remembered hearing during the week about a senior
project done within the field of sociology. I sort of understood what the field
was about, but being that I wasn’t doing anything, I looked it up. After
reading a few links, I eventually stumbled upon the sub field of sociology of
education, which focuses on how schooling, social settings, and one’s
experiences affect their education. Before this discovery, I had thought about
doing something along the lines of analyzing the social atmosphere of the
classroom environment, but I did not know that there was an entire field of
study that focused on what I wanted to look at.
As of right now, I have
focused my area of study within the field of sociology of education to look at
how social situations affect one’s potential to learn. I plan to focus my
research primarily still on these effects on math and science classrooms, since
these classes have specific skills sets which can be analyzed. Being that I
finally found a solid topic to focus in on, I haven’t read too much into the
topic yet. With that being said though, from what I have seen, there is quite a
bit out there for me to peruse to help limit my scope. For now, I expect a lot of
reading in my near future, but at least no more colossal excel spreadsheets. For
all of you who made it this far, I’m gunna reward you with one last meme. I hope
you like it.
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Brian, first of all you're a comedic genius -- your use of memes and parentheses is ON POINT!
ReplyDeleteSecond, I'm SO glad that you stumbled upon an entire field that specializes in what you're interested. I want you to start to look at what's been said, so you can figure out what new, nuanced project you can do that would contribute to the field. I would look through recent journals pertaining to that field of sociology to see what's new and hot (okay, maybe not "hot," but new, for sure).
ALSO! Ms. Hanlin has done ethnographic research that talks about the lives of children as well as education, so she might be an excellent person to approach to gain feedback, insight, and focus.
DeleteHey Brian!! Your memes made much more sense and were much easier to follow (cough Ashwath), so good job on that. (Did you make those memes?) My favorite was the last one. Very nice. Great success. Much research. Such wow. Also good job on choosing a solid topic that you feel interested in and realizing that you don't want to be studying/doing research on excel spread sheets of standardized test scores for the rest of the year.
ReplyDeleteJust be careful with that topic because people have probably done research on it before, so like read some stuff and find a gap on the research, or just limit your scope a lot to like BASIS or something idk what you’re thinking about. My question would be do you think you're going to focus on like a specific school, like BASIS or like a type of school like charter school/public schools? Like how are you going to limit your scope beside science and math classes, which is a good start. Are you going to limit it to maybe a grade level or like elementary school/high school or something?
Unfortunatley Brian I have to critic your meme skills (Mrs. Haag is too much of a noob to pick up on the mistakes here) The seal of approval was pretty good, the I'm confused was average meme. The salesman has to be a fresh meme, and fresh memes are creative not actual memes.
ReplyDeleteSkipping that meme rant, I find it refreshing that you realized reading through SAT scores wasn't the right play for you. However you'll probably be doing that for at least part of your social research. The idea of research is fine, but that's why its not unique right now. You need an angle that's new. The scope needs some limiting and the end game needs some fine tuning. Limit yourself to younger children because their background has a smaller influence on them when compared to high school students (all speculation prob need to confirm it yourself). So ask yourself why is analyzing education in the math and science field going to benefit society? Maybe you could take a seminar angle and rat out the government.
I'm crying at your analysis of the memes. That should be your research project...
Delete"Rat out the government." Ashwath, you're slaying.
Delete