| Some feeling after reading Diana Joseph 2004 article |
[Feb. 5th, 2006|02:30 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  confused | ] |
This is a good article and I learned a lot from this article , including the author's research methods, analysis methods and how to focus research questions, especially the last one.
I think it is very helpful in helping me form myself research questions and philosophy...
But I am not happy when I read for "solve" the problem of time limitation for the passion curriculum , Joseph just simply changed his research context from the former small scaled urban summer program to another "more extended, more intensive context for the activities...(p. 238)".
Also, for solving the problem of flight was a bad choice for a passion curriculum , he just selected another more "attractive" theme---video making to instead....
Although he describe his shift as "The theme choice in interest-based design remains important for future research , but simply chooseing a better theme is an effective short-term solution that premits the project to move forward. (p. 238)" And he explained for his shift about the time issue:"This was another short-cutting venture--rather than pursue a complete investigation of why the several small-case GBSs had not worked, we simply moved away from that tactic.(p.238)" I still can't help to feel disappointed for his choice.
In my opinion, if our filed's researchers just likely prefer to research or study the easier context or theme or topic, like Joseph did, how could we really SOLVE problems in our really practice ? How could our educational research get respect from public and other fileds?
When I read Joseph provide three possible explanations for the disappointing results of the flight curriculum, I felt curious and expected what kinds of solvement or methods he would adopt to solve these problems. I didn't anticipate he will just simply "solve" the first two problems by "change the theme" and "shift the program". Although he tried to solve the third problem: the problem of motivation and he did achieve good production. That is not a plead to flee from the "hard" problems which really need to solve at my view---at this case , the really "hard" and "realistic" problems are the first two: time limitation to foster students' interest , and theme selection.
As my opinion, design based researchers , even all researchers in educational fields, they should focus on problems which could serve for real educational practice. I am not saying that the motivation issues of the third problem are not our practical issues, but there are already many of articles, designs and models about motivation. However, the real classroom still have many practical questions and problems which are seldom touched by researchers, such as the problems of time limitation and theme selection. Because not all schools could have enough time for a sepcific "passion curriculum", on the contrary, it is impossible for most of schools provide enough time for each curriculum. It is the hard part of this research , which was "solved" by using another time arranged program instead. Meanwhile, does "passion curriculum " only focus to solve curriculums which are highly interested by students? If the answer is yes, I am suspicious how much meaning or significance this kind of research has. I think it is much more important or emergent to solve how to make students be more motivated on themes which are originally not attractive or interesting.
Although the author also said "The question of motivational affordances could not be addressed through a local solution-- we simply did not know how to address it. We needed a design theory to proceed , and we surmised that other designers and design-based rsearchers could benefit from such a theory as well.(p. 238)" I am not anticipating there are a lot of researchers who are going to solve these un-solved problems or answer these two questions. The article gave me this feeling: These hard or tough problems will be kept untouched forever because they are far more difficult to be solved as I think.
All these thinking above are just my feeling because I admit that I still have not read enough research cases and have no enough background to comment on a guru's work. But I think I should record what I am thinking in my learning and growing. That will be a good reflective thinking tool when I look back 2 or 3 years later.
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| What is developmental research? |
[Feb. 5th, 2006|06:14 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  frustrated | ] |
To understand it, I should go to find Developmental Research Methods by Richey and Klein. But there are so many papers and books waiting for me to read.... |
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