Whats an Ethnographic Study? I Don't Know, But I'll Soon Find Out

Week 3. The main theme of this week was me collecting my thoughts to try and formulate a coherent response as to what my project was about. Last week I discussed how my project was going to be within the realm of educational sociology, but I did not know what exactly about this field I wanted to look at. I knew/know that I was interested in looking at the social factors that influenced academic atmospheres, but I was not sure of what angle I wanted to take to examine these situations. After some contemplation (and lots of ideas from the class during my presentation), I have determined that I want to narrow my research by focusing on the social interactionist perspective of educational sociology by looking at how different social factors contribute in creating a successful academic atmosphere.  I am still unsure of how exactly I am going to do this (luckily I still have time for that), but I envision myself spending a lot of time in classrooms observing student-teacher and student-student interactions to look at how a high-achieving academic atmosphere develops. Anyways, this is not the main focus of this blog post, so I am going to move onto the different components, or subtopics, of this project.

So when I first read that the focus of this blog post was to list and explain my project’s subtopics, I was a little concerned, because I am not even 100% sure what my exact focus is yet. However, after some beautiful scribbling with a pen and a sheet of paper, I have a basic break down of the different parts of my project.

1.     The first subtopic that I will need to conduct substantial research on is about the field of educational sociology. Currently, I have a basic understanding of what educational sociology is, and what the different sub genres of the field are about, but I need to really delve into the field to understand not only the fundamentals of the subject, but also the history and developments that have been made. This is really crucial to my project because a solid understanding of sociological theories will allow me to provide a lot more insight when it is time for me to conduct my own research.

2.     The second area of focus that I will need to research is about what creates a high achieving academic atmosphere. Although this is the question that I am trying to answer, it is important to understand what past research has said in order to find the gap and make my own contribution.  To help answer this question, I plan on doing a lot of reading on classroom dynamics and popular teaching methods or techniques to understand what generally does or does not work.

3.     The third subtopic which I am going to look into is on cognitive development and learning in children. Although my project is going to be sociological, and not psychological, I still think that it will be helpful to read into how children learn and their cognitive skills develop. This is because when I am observing classrooms, in order to understand how successfully the material is being conveyed, I need to understand how children learn to see how effectively the material is being conveyed. Also, an interesting point of inquiry may be to see if successful academic atmospheres accelerate a child’s cognitive development.

4.     My fourth subtopic is about BASIS itself. Being that I am most likely going to be conducting most of my research at BASIS, I believe that I am going to need to learn as much about BASIS as possible. This includes looking at its philosophy, curriculum requirements, demographics, student and teacher retention rates, teacher selection methods, test scores, etc. I believe that in order to determine what is successful (or not successful) about BASIS, I have to look at anything that I can get access to about BASIS.

5.     My last subtopic, which ties into the previous subtopic, is about ethnographic studies. As Mrs. Haag mentioned, my project is most likely going to be a mini-ethnographic study about BASIS and why it promotes a successful academic atmosphere. Although I currently know nothing about ethnographic studies, I plan to read up on what they are, as well as for the techniques I can use to draw meaning from large amounts of data.

Anyways, at this point, my word count is at almost double the required number, so I am going to stop rambling on, as most of you have probably lost interest by now.  If you did read this far, then you are awesome. Lastly, sorry about the lack of memes this week,  I will try to do better next time. Anyways, adios amigos. (word count: 788)

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.
(Word Count: 507)

Research Reflection 1

Going into this class, I did not know what my goals for it where going to be.  When I signed up, I knew that I wanted to finish what I had started and complete the AP capstone course, but after that I was not sure. After reflecting last week about what I wanted the class to be like and what I wanted to accomplish, I realized that my main goal was to complete a project that was meaningful to me, impactful to the community, and most importantly, something that I am proud of.  I know that last year in seminar, especially towards the beginning, I was unhappy with how I went about completing the projects, and was not completely satisfied with how they turned out. This year I really want to focus on doing my work in a timely manner, and hopefully that way I won’t have any nights where I am up until 3 am to finish a project!

As of right now, I am not sure of what exactly I want to do my project on yet. As I had mentioned in class, my two leading ideas were either trying to intern at a start-up, or do something within the realm of science education. Although I am most likely going to pick one of those two topics, I still have a lot of other ideas that are bouncing around my head.  For example, two other ideas that I have also considered potentially doing are something with either my dad’s DJ business by looking at the logistics and work involved with owning a small business, or with the Phoenix herpetological society, which is an organization that I volunteer at that cares for and educates the public about reptiles.

Although I have all of these other ideas that I am contemplating, my first choice is still probably doing something within the realm of science education because I have thought about this topic the most, and have also done the most introductory research about it. The primary problem that I have so far with this topic is the level of generality that surrounds it. When thinking about all of the different routes I could take with the project, I was able to make a list that was almost two pages long. Some of these questions included the age group I would focus on, whether I would research public schools or private ones or BASIS, what specifically about science education would I want to research, etc. With all of these different options, I am definitely feeling overwhelmed with how to narrow my research. With that being said though, my final concern about this topic is that I have not found a lot of research yet pertaining specifically to science education, especially in Arizona.

Word count: 461