So How Am I Going to Do Any of This?

Hey everybody! Looks like it is time for another blog post again. Since the last blog post, we all did our methods assignment and made some pretty big steps in determining how we planned on conducting our primary research. Because of this past project, which we turned in yesterday, and us starting our research proposals, today’s blog post is going to be all about the methods I intend to use for my project.

For those of you who are not familiar with my project, I intend on analyzing a high-achieving charter school to determine what characteristics make the school successful. In determining these traits, I will essentially be performing a mini-ethnography on the school that I will be studying to try and gain as comprehensive of an understanding of the school as I can. On the largest scale for my project, I intend to compile all of the different theories that I have read in the literature which focuses on the components of a successful charter school, and create a list which I will systematically evaluate to determine which quality is important and which is not (no big deal, its gunna be super easy right?)

Anyways, in order to determine which of these characteristics are actually important, I intend to use a combination of surveys, interviews, and classroom observation to understand the personal components behind what makes the school successful. Additionally, I have a source which provides a form of the necessary information that should be obtained about a school when it is being studied. This will be useful when trying to gain a comprehensive understanding of the school.

Although it may seem like I know what I am doing, there are still a lot of unanswered questions that I have. The first issue that I have is that I still do not know which school I will be studying. I would like to be able to study BASIS Scottsdale, since it is the highest ranked school in the state and I already have easy access to the school and its students and teachers; however this raises some ethical issues. Because I go to this school, I already carry some bias and preconceptions about the school, and so it might subliminally affect my results. If I can follow strict research methods, though, which allows for as little interpretation as possible, then I might be able to limit this bias.

Another problem that I would have to overcome would be obtaining access to school records and student profiles. Since most studies within my field use demographic information to contextualize the study and student test scores to determine the school’s achievement, obtaining this information is a vital component of my research. Again, there are ethical implications involved with disseminating this information to me, especially since the information will be about my peers.

My final problem is determining which grade to study. I would like to focus on BASIS’ upper school, because not only is the upper school highly ranked, but there is also more testing data to work with for these students. This is because the lower school only has state standardized tests which can be used, whereas the upper school also has AP, SAT, and ACT scores which can be used in my analysis. Once again though, there are ethical implications involved in studying a group that I am already familiar with.

Alright, enough problems. Although I still have a lot of work that I need to do, I am feeling pretty good about where I am at right now, especially since the methods assignment helped me a lot in actually figuring out what I want to do. Right now I just need to focus on solving these big couple problems; however, after that, I am hoping that my project will be smooth sailing. Anyways, that is all. Cya next week!

Episode IX: Return of the Blog Post

Hey everybody! This last month and a half since the last blog post I made seems like it has gone on forever. To put how long it's been in perspective, when I wrote my last blog post, the second presidential debate hadn’t occurred yet, people still weren’t stressed about November 1st college application deadlines, and I was still only working on my outline for my literature review. Obviously, a lot has happened since then!

    In this time, I went from a line of reasoning, to a fully completed, peer edited literature review. Although the refining and writing process was full of roadblocks, redbulls, and revisions, in the end, I’m proud of the finished product.

To me, it is crazy how much I have accomplished in less than four months of being in AP research. I know, that for the first few weeks of the class, I felt as if I was floundering around when I did not know what I wanted to do for my project. However, after I figured out that I wanted to research the components of successful charter schools, I found that this resulted in greater motivation and a better quality of work.

    After talking broadly about what I did this past trimester, I am now going to discuss what I did in a little more detail. After determining what my general topic of inquiry was, I then read most of the important literature surrounding charter schools, how they perform, and the theory behind their origins. As I read each source, I took notes on the important details and compiled this information on both a google document and in the spreadsheet. After reading my sources, I was then given the task of writing the annotated bibliography for the 20 or so sources that I had read on my topic. Although it was a significant task, I found that it was really beneficial for me because it made me think about the connections between my sources and the implications of such. As a result, this was really useful in helping me to construct my line of reasoning.

    Throughout this process, the line of reasoning was probably the most difficult part. Although I had the annotated bibliography to help me out, the line of reasoning is what requires the most brainstorming and thinking. That is because it is during this time that the connections and organization for the paper is created. Although it is not a very fun task to do, this is the segment that determined how good my literature review is. After that though, I found that the most difficult part of the actual literature review was cutting it down. For me, my sentences are often very verbose, and so it was somewhat of a struggle to not only cut out unnecessary information, but to also make my phrasing more concise.

    Now that the literature review is done though, it is time to move onto developing my research methods. I know I have mentioned this in the past, but this is still something that I am somewhat apprehensive about. As I stated in the past, I am still unsure how exactly I plan on going about designing my independent research; however, the fact that I now get to dedicate time to focus solely on answering this question is comforting.

    I look forward bringing back the blog posts and keeping everybody up to date on what is happening on my project. Until next week!