What Is Research?

For some of you the word research may evoke images of scientists in lab coats using sophisticated equipment and complicated statistics to discover knowledge that no one knew before. True, that is research, but it is not the only kind of research.

The Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research> defines research as an active, diligent and systematic process of inquiry in order to discover, interpret or revise facts, events, behaviors, or theories, or to make practical applications with the help of such facts, laws or theories. The term research is also used to describe the collection of information about a particular subject.

The key ideas in this definition are that research is "a process of inquiry" in order to learn some new idea or application, the collection of information. In this sense we are all researchers as we are commonly involved in inquiry. Why does he do that? What would happen if I did this? What is the rest of the story? How can I learn more about this? How can I make this happen? We problem solve our way through each day, using our innate curiosity, storing up little epiphanies that we incorporate unconsciously into our theories of the world.

If we do this in some kind of systematic fashion, this inquiry becomes research. In this course we will consider research from two angles — one is the theoretical foundation upon which we ask and answer questions about children's literature, the other is the more practical concern of devising methods to guide systematically our inquiry.