ADTED507:

Research is a "systematic process by which we know more about something than we did before engaging in the process" (Merriam and Simpson, 1995 p. 2). Two ways of categorizing research are as basic research and applied research. In a field such as adult education, which is an applied field of practice, most research falls within the latter category: the knowledge gained is intended to be applied in order to improve practice. Basic research, which is most often associated with the "hard" sciences, is motivated by intellectual interest and has the goal of advancing or extending knowledge in a particular discipline (Merriam and Simpson, 1995). Within each of these categories are a number of ways of conducting research, or research methods, which we will discuss as the course progresses.

Most research approaches, whether basic or applied, have several elements or stages in common:

• Identifying a problem or question
• Establishing a conceptual and theoretical framework
• Framing the research question
• Deciding which research method is most appropriate
• Analyzing and reporting results

Later in your master's program, in ADTED 588, you will develop and conduct your own study. (This project is described in detail in Unit 10). Although this later project will not be a "full blown" research study, it will include some of the elements above. However, even if you will not be going through all the steps of a formal study, it's important that you understand them and be able to evaluate them in research studies you will read in your courses, as well as those you read as a practitioner. Understanding the research process will ensure that you are a knowledgeable consumer of educational research conducted by scholars in the field and therefore better able to use such research to help you improve your own practice. It will also give you guidance for conducting research from a practitioner standpoint. We'll talk more about this later.

Your Tasks

Read the Preface and Chapter 1 in your textbook (McMillan and Wergin).

Continue working with your Adult Education Research Critique teams. At this point each member of your team should be reading the articles listed for the critique team assignments on the Course Requirements section of our course Syllabus.

Reference: Merriam, S. and Simpson, E. (1995). A guide to research for educators and trainers of adults. Malabar, FL: Krieger.

The master's paper you will write in ADTED 588 usually takes the form of a critical review of literature and application to practice. (More detailed information about the forms this project can take will be provided in Unit 10.) Selecting a topic for your master's paper doesn't need to be complicated or difficult. You want to identify a topic that is interesting to you, "doable," and that contributes to knowledge or practice within the field. The thinking process around how you might frame your master's paper study is a fundamental and key step in the process of writing the paper. A good way to begin such "framing" is to work with a small group of fellow learners using the Thesis Generator exercise below. (Note: You will not be writing an actual "thesis" for your master's program. The master's paper you write in ADTED 588 will have some of the features of a master's thesis, but usually takes the form of a critical review of literature and application to practice in a particular area.):

For this exercise, please continue working in your same teams to choose a problem or issue (from a list provided under "Your Tasks," below) and to draft answers to the first three questions on the generator. This activity is important practice for you, as your next task will be to use the thesis generator on a topic of your own choosing. You will complete that activity on your own, so take advantage of this opportunity to practice!

How will this work, you ask? For the first half of the week, your team will work through the discussion together in a private discussion forum created for your team. (That discussion forum is a space that only you and your fellow team members can access. I may access it, too, from time to time to see how you are progressing, but you should send any questions you have for me directly to my course e-mail account to make sure I see those.) You may also choose to use the course e-mail or a chat room (Chat rooms are virtual spaces where you can communicate in real-time by typing messages back and forth--similar to e-mail or a discussion forum, but everyone "chatting" has to be logged in at the same time. Chat rooms are available in the Communicate link. I will be looking in on the various private team discussion forums to see your progress. If you have questions for me at any point, you should e-mail me directly. During the second half of the week (no later than Monday morning, please), you will share your team's "final" answers with the entire class through a whole-class discussion forum.

You will have one week to work on this activity. Since your communication with one another will be asynchronous (i.e., time-delayed, unless you use a chat room) you should get started early in the week to allow time for your interactions. Likewise, plan on checking the discussion forum several times during the week in order to keep the communication going. Throughout the exercise, your team should work together to share ideas about the issue you have chosen, as you will submit your team's final "answers" as a single submission. As you work, feel free to expand on the problem/issue statement to clarify your ideas and approach. In fact, we'd like to see a lot of different ideas and approaches. What interests you about this situation? How would you be likely to conceptualize the problem? What would you want to find out?

We will be coming back to this exercise as we move through the next several units to explore different research methodologies. You should think of this exercise as a brainstorming activity rather than a search for a final product at this stage. This assignment will not be graded. However, your meaningful participation will count toward the overall "Class Participation" grade for the course. For specific directions for this assignment, see "Your Tasks" (below).

Your Tasks:

To complete the Thesis Generator Activity, follow these steps:

Your team will work together in a private discussion forum assigned to your group (the discussion forum will be called Unit 03 - Thesis Team X, where "X" is your team's number). (Within your team you should select one individual to serve as the leader for this assignment.)

Review the list of "Problems/Issues for the Thesis Generator Exercise" and select, as a team, one problem/issue that your team will address. You may want to review the thesis generator examples included as a resource at the end of this section.

Based on the problem/issue your team has selected, each team member should then individually attempt to formulate the first three steps in the Thesis Generator and then post it to your assigned Unit 03 - Thesis Team discussion forum. The most difficult part of this task is Step 1. Sometimes it is easier if you turn the problem statement into a research question. Focus on making it clear and "doable" with a research study.

Read your teammates' initial thesis statements and give them feedback on items such as:

Review the feedback you receive from your teammates.

1. • Was the problem statement (or research question) clear and succinct?
   • Was the purpose of the study clearly articulated?
   • Did the statement convince you that the problem is worth solving? (Please avoid statements like, "I really like what you did." If you like something, say why! The point of this exercise is learning to analyze and give feedback.)
   • Engage in a discussion with your teammates in your team's discussion forum (or by e-mail or in a chat room) in order to come to a consensus on your team's "answers."
   • The team leader should post your team's final answers to the whole-class discussion forum title Unit 03 - Final Thesis Statements (teams).
   • Each of you should now read the thesis statements that the other teams have posted and reflect upon their postings. Again, the point is to do a critical analysis of other postings.

You have now identified one or more questions related to your own practice or interests that could be answered by a research study. That was the first step in the research process. The next step is to identify a theoretical framework. A framework is simply the structure of an idea or concept and how it is put together. Concepts are words or phrases that symbolize several interrelated ideas. Look again at the questions you generated for the "My Research Question" exercise. How many ideas or concepts are expressed? Concepts might include "teaching," "learning," "persistence," "attitude," "anxiety," "race," "gender," etc. So, a statement of your theoretical framework is an essay that interrelates relevant theories with the concepts involved in the research question.

How do you know which theories are relevant for the research question that interests you? If you have done any reading in the literature related to your problem or question, you may be familiar with the different ways the question has been approached by scholars in the field, some of whom will have proposed theories that help explain the phenomenon or concept you are interested in. Teaching theories, learning theories, communication theories, theories about race and gender, and many others have been proposed to explain different aspects of education.

A theoretical framework or perspective defines a particular point of view from which researchers focus their study. This framework identifies underlying assumptions from which particular kinds of questions are generated. For any particular educational phenomenon, there are many (often conflicting!) theories that might appropriately be applied to a research question. The choice of theoretical framework is based both on the worldview of the researcher and on previous work related to the problem.

Your Task:

Review the brief discussion of theoretical frameworks.

 Begin thinking about what might be an appropriate theoretical framework for your topic.

Before moving on to our next topic of study, I want to get you started on a more personal application of the "Thesis Generator." In following the specific tasks that are outlined below, you will generate a tentative topic for your own master's paper. Please note that this is only a tentative topic--this will not obligate you for your master's paper! However, I hope that it will help you begin to think about that upcoming project, as it is helpful to have at least a general idea of what you'll want to focus on so that you can frame as many of your course projects and activities around the topic as possible. Then, by the time you get to the point of actually working on your master's paper, you'll already have laid some of the groundwork!

You need to think carefully about your research topic and the Synthesis Question below. In the Synthesis Question for Unit 2 I asked you to consider which research paradigm you think would provide the best approach to your topic. If it is the type of question that could best be studied within a conventional/positivist paradigm, the literature that you eventually review and critique for your master's project will probably consist primarily of studies with either an experimental design or a non-experimental quantitative design. If the question lends itself more to the constructivist paradigm, you will probably be reviewing articles with a qualitative research design. We will be studying these major research designs in the upcoming weeks, and you are not expected to know about them now. However, these designs are described briefly in Chapter 1 of your textbook. Reviewing the section on different types of research will help you understand more clearly the distinctions between the two paradigms.

I'd also like you to think about a tentative theoretical framework for your topic. You won't be able to review ALL the literature on a particular topic. Choosing a theoretical framework helps you decide which "lens" you will use to guide the choice of literature to review. For example, will you be applying a feminist lens to the topic? A particular learning theory such as "constructivism," "multiple intelligences," "social learning," etc? A pedagogical theory relating to teaching or course design? An organizational change theory? Deciding on your theoretical framework, which often is driven by your particular type of practice, your values, or your worldview, can help you narrow the search for relevant literature, as well as provide a framework within which to analyze and critique the literature. It may be helpful at this point to review some of the material you learned in ADTED 460, particularly related to the theoretical basis of adult education.

Your Task:

Submit your response (in no more than 750 words) to the Unit 3 Synthesis Question drop box by the end of the next unit (Unit 4).

Note: When you send me an attachment in a drop box, or post on a discussion forum with an attachment, please put your name on the electronic file (e.g., MyName_SQ3. SQ stands for Synthesis Question.) Please also put your name on the assignment when the file is opened up. (Some students make a template for all assignments with their name as a header.)

Please do NOT submit this assignment until you have reviewed the feedback on your group Thesis Generator assignment. My suggestion is to keep your thesis question simple and down to one sentence. Focus on studying something you can easily define. (For example, avoid something like "cultural concepts" which is tough to study since not everyone would agree on the definition.)

Unit 3 Synthesis Question: Identify an issue or problem that is of personal and/or professional interest. For example, maybe you have been wondering why adult students drop out of class after enrolling. Or you may want to examine differences in student outcomes in the online compared to the face-to-face environment. What are you curious about? This question can be the same one you used for your Synthesis Question in Unit 2, or a different question. Look once more at the Thesis Generator presented earlier in this unit and answer the first 3 questions in terms of the topic you are identifying. Please state Step 1 (problem statement) as a research question, taking into account any feedback you received in the "My Research Question" forum and on your SQ for Unit 2. Also, tell me briefly what theoretical framework you think you will use for your project. You might not be able to be specific at this point (that is, you might not know that you want to use "Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences"), but make a tentative choice of the general category, such as learning theories, teaching theories, race or gender theories, etc. (e.g., "My theoretical framework will be based on a theory of organizational change.")