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WEEK 1 INSTRUCTOR GUIDANCE

A warm welcome to EDU 694: Capstone 1: Educational Research!  Please be sure to review the Week 1 homepage for this course to see:

·         The specific learning outcomes for the week

·         The schedule overview

·         The required and recommended resources

·         The introduction to the week

·         A listing of the assessments

Next, be sure to read this entire Instructor Guidance page.

Overview

This guidance begins with a few words about the importance of reading the weekly Instructor Guidance pages. Next, this overview provides a section about the course learning outcomes and their relationship to the weekly outcomes and program outcomes. The document concludes with helpful information about active reading strategies and academic writing, which will be useful to you for excelling in this course and in future classes.

About the Instructor Guidance Pages

The guidance pages provide an overview of the week, a section with intellectual elaboration written by professors at the University of Arizona Global Campus about the course topics explored during the current week, and additional specific guidance for the assessments (i.e., assignments and discussions) written by the course designers to supplement the instructions provided with the assessments and in the grading rubrics that are located on the weekly unit homepages.

Supplemental resources are also included in the Instructor Guidance. You are encouraged to consider using these resources to support your completion of the weekly assessments beyond using the required and recommended resources provided on the weekly unit homepages and in the consolidated list of resources on the Course Materials page.  Thus, you are strongly encouraged to review the Instructor Guidance each week as part of your study plan. Not only does the Instructor Guidance offer you insight and assistance with the weekly topics and activities, it models effective academic writing, which is expected of you in all of your coursework in this graduate-level course.

The Scope and Outcomes of EDU 694

Through the assessments in EDU 694, you will have opportunities to examine and create original resources you can use as a professional educator. Upon successful completion of this course, you will have demonstrated your mastery of the five course learning outcomes, which are listed on the Syllabus. Review the Course Map on the Syllabus to learn how each assessment in the course aligns to the four course learning outcomes.   

The course learning outcomes guided the design of this course and all align to one or more of the weekly outcomes, which are more specific about what you will do each week and are listed on the weekly unit homepages. If you have questions about the scope and outcomes of EDU 694, please contact the instructor. Next, please continue reading to learn about active reading strategies and the importance of academic writing in this graduate-level course.

 

Active Reading and Academic Writing in EDU 694

Each week in EDU 694 you will complete a significant amount of reading from the Mertler (2017) textbook and other resources related to Action Research. It is strongly recommended that you start using strategies for active reading now if you do not already as part of your study routine. Review the Tips for Active Reading (Links to an external site.)  tutorial to learn more about active reading. The tutorial is approximately ten-minutes long and explains the concept of active reading and practical strategies for active reading. This tutorial will be especially useful for you as you read the textbook.

 

Additionally, remember that EDU 694 is a graduate-level course. As such, your writing in the discussion and assignment assessments each week is expected to demonstrate your best academic ability, including the area of academic writing. For a review of what academic writing entails, view the What is Academic Writing? (Links to an external site.)  tutorial. Approximately fourteen-minutes in length, this video tutorial explains the fundamental components of academic writing and will provide helpful reminders about academic writing to support your writing in all assignments and discussions throughout the course.

Intellectual Elaboration

The focus for the week is the foundational understanding of Action Research and finding peer reviewed scholarly sources. More specifically, this week focuses in on selecting a topic for your peer reviewed final assignment in Week 6. This is an action packed week, so lets begin by discussing the foundation of Action Research.

   

Thinkstock Image # 81921372 (Links to an external site.)

Education Research

Education research has become a driving force in many decisions being made in education over the past few decades. In fact, some would argue that it is difficult to make serious decisions in public schools without referencing research (Reason & Bradbury, 2008; Stringer & Genant, 2014). Educational research is driven mostly by the need to find solutions to problems. Moreover, the increasing public scrutiny, and the need to professionalize the work of teachers has amplified the demand for Action Research to be use in schools. In fact, many would argue that it is difficult to be an effective teacher or principal without having a working knowledge of the research world (Creswell, 2009).

As you start this course think about the value of research for you? How can you acquire that working knowledge of research? And, most importantly, how can research positively impact your students in the classroom, in your school or in the profession you have chosen?

The Value of Research

Most serious fields of endeavor (medicine and law might come to mind— there are many others) have their own history and traditions. For a long time, these fields relied on the passing of craft knowledge from one person to another on a face to face basis (for a working model, consider an apprenticeship). As time went on, the need for a wider range of knowledge developed. The activity of conducting research filled this need, and science offered the most appropriate models on which to build this knowledge. Now, a would-be practitioner was not limited to those people he or she knew or directly accessed for information, instead we are able to access all types of information on a particular topic. Great advances in medicine, science, and technology followed because of the use of research.

The value of research can be clearly stated—it expanded the knowledge base, made information widely available, and, most importantly, caused people to consider even more and better ways to practice medicine, science, or law. The results of engaging in research are tangible—we have the longest life expectancy (up 25+ years over the last century), as well as, the greatest science endeavors, and the greatest technological advances in human history (Ma 1999, 2010).

Education, however, lagged behind in medicine, science and law. Education research, apart from the work of a few like Dewey, Vygotsky, Skinner were really not a serious presence in the education world until the mid 1960s  when a research data-base, the Education Information Clearinghouse (ERIC) was formed. While the big theories developed by Dewey and others held sway, there was still plenty of work to be done.

Now, of course, education research is a big deal—and a big business. Grant funding is available. Schools of education support research, and some people make careers of being education researchers. And they research everything you could imagine connected with education—class sizes, self-esteem, math groupings, most effective science methods— the entire gamut of topics. This, in turn, creates value for the educator who chooses to take advantage of this avalanche of knowledge.

Accessing the Knowledge

Probably the beginning point for the would-be educator/scholar/researcher is ERIC. ERIC is an online data base that permits access to information well over 1 million research articles, journal articles, and books about education. Begun in 1966, ERIC is the one-stop shop for education research. Many articles are available full text (especially if you have access to a subscription service), and all have abstracts.  Suppose you wanted to study charter schools. Simply typing “charter schools” into the ERIC data-base yields over 3000 hits—more than you would ever want to know about the subject.

Another data-base worth knowing about is the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Data Base. This data-base (The Ashford Library has a subscription to this data base) has full text access to over one million dissertations and theses, about all sorts of topics.

Conducting Scholarly Searches

What does it mean to conduct a “scholarly search”? Scholarly searches involve search engines and databases that filter search terms that have been peer-reviewed and come from reputable sources. The internet is full of information. Not all of that information has been based in research or evidence. Without some sort of review process in place for a site or article, there is no guideline for verifying the source.

Utilize the tutorials on the University of Arizona Global Campus Library Website  (Links to an external site.)

For this week, especially take the time to review:

Why Can't I Just Google (Links to an external site.)

Scholarly and Popular Resources (Links to an external site.)

Database Search Tips (Links to an external site.)

Internet Research (Links to an external site.)  

Closing Remarks

Obviously, the information is there. But how to learn to use it to its fullest? Well, this is where this class comes in. Here you will learn some basics about education research, learn how to review a basic study, and learn much, much more about the fascinating world of Action Research.

Assessment Guidance

This section includes additional specific assistance for excelling in the assessments for Week 1 as a supplement to the instructions and grading rubrics. If you have questions about what is expected on any assessment for Week 1, or any other week, contact your instructor before the due date.

Discussion 1: Post Your Introduction

The Post Your Introduction Discussion is your first opportunity to make a positive professional impression on classmates and the instructor.  Discuss who you are and how your graduate program has supported your career goals. How the Course Learning Outcomes have made you rethink a professional elevator or cover letter. Remember to follow the Guided Response prompt for all Discussions. Doing so helps to create a more robust discourse, which will lead to increased learning opportunities for everyone.

Discussion 2: Topic Selection

For the final assignment in this course you will be assuming the role of a peer reviewer of an education research proposal. When an article is submitted to a peer reviewed journal, the editors send it out to other scholars in the same field (the author's peers) to get their opinion on the quality of the scholarship, its relevance to the field, its appropriateness for the journal, etc. You will learn more about the peer review process later in this course. 

For this discussion you will be choosing a topic to use for the balance of this course including the final assignment. When you select a topic, think about how it supports your current or future professional goals. Think back to previous work done in your program; this previous work can inform you in this class and beyond.  Remember it is highly recommended that you read the final assignment [A2] for this course, before selecting a topic.

Assignment: Finding Nemo? errr Research

The Week 1 assignment is an opportunity to demonstrate your ability with the course learning outcome: Evaluate research articles for scholarship, relevancy, and ethical neutrality using current and emerging digital tools.

In this assignment you will conduct an Internet search analysis using key words from your research of the first five entries that come up. Then go to the University of Arizona Global Campus Library and, using the same key words, identify the first five entries that appear. Then select two sources that match the criteria of currency, credibility, authority, and academic integrity, and write a summary of the articles. Remember that you should be searching with the key words Action Research, and your chosen topic from Week 1 Discussion 2 such as (testing and assessment, educational standards, educational technology, literacy strategies, culturally- and linguistically-diverse students, safe classroom environments, disability research in general, AD/HD, autism, emotional/behavioral disturbance, intellectual disabilities or learning disabilities, etc.) and the grade level of your current or future professional goal using Google (Links to an external site.) , Bing (Links to an external site.) , Yahoo (Links to an external site.) , or any other major search engine.

 

References

Creswell, J.W. (2009) Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. Sage Publications.

Education research information clearinghouse. Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov

Johnson, L. (2013, November 11). Tips for active reading [Video file]. Retrieved from lisajohnsonphd on YouTube: http://youtu.be/WoCrKa-rm1w (Links to an external site.)   

Johnson, L. (2014, September 2). What is academic writing? [Video file]. Retrieved from lisajohnsonphd on YouTube: http://youtu.be/Zn8Ja92b3ZI (Links to an external site.)   

Library La Trobe University. (n.d). Why can't I just Google? [Video file]. Retrieved from http://library.ashford.edu/ (Links to an external site.)  

Ma, L. (1999, 2010). Knowing and teaching elementary mathematics. Teachers understanding of    fundamental mathematics in China and the United States. New York: Routledge

Reason, P. and Bradbury, H. (2008) The SAGE Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice (2nd edition). London: SAGE.

Stringer, E.T. and Genat, W.J. (2004) Action Research in Health. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice-Hall.

University of Arizona Global Campus Library. (n.d). Database search tips. [Video file]. Retrieved from http://library.ashford.edu/ (Links to an external site.)  

University of Arizona Global Campus Library. (n.d). Internet research. [Presentation]. Retrieved from http://library.ashford.edu/ (Links to an external site.)  

University of Arizona Global Campus Library. (n.d). Scholarly and popular resources. [Video file]. Retrieved from http://library.ashford.edu/