Reflection Assignment 3 for Student Learning Objectives (SLO)
(SED 697 Dr. Rivas)
By Dean Papadakis
In this reflection assignment, I have selected Student Learning Objective #3, which is
stated as follows:
RESEARCH SKILLS by designing and conducting research ethically and
effectively and presenting their findings at a professional level in oral and written
forms.
The assignment I am selecting is the assignment from Dr. Rivas’s SED 697 “Directed
Comprehensive Studies in Science Education”. The assignment that relates to Student
Learning Objective #3 was the action research paper. In this assignment, we had to come
up with a research question that studied the students in our classroom. Here are the
connections to the specific parts of the SLO. I had to design my own research question of
the students in my own classroom, which included determining how which methods of
data collection I would use. I then had to analyze the data and see how it answered my
research question. Along the way, I had to give presentations on each of the five
different chapters, in the form of power-point presentation. I learned so much from this
assignment. Before this, I had very little experience first of all, with using a power-point
program. I also had little experience using the program EXCEL, and this assignment
allowed me to become proficient in the making of graphs to visually represent the data
that was collected in my classroom. The assignment also included hearing others in my
class, give their presentations and this helped me to see what areas were lacking in my
own presentations and to see what a truly professional level report looks like. One of the
interesting ways we critiqued each other was to bring to class our written reports and we
exchanged them with two other classmates. Then each of us had to read the other reports
and write down comments about areas that needed improvement. What was most
interesting to me was being made aware of areas that needed improvement in my reports
that I had just completely overlooked. This showed me that even though I may think of
my self as an expert in a certain area, it always valuable to get another opinion or two
opinions that will help point out this other areas that we ourselves simply can’t see.
One of the books that very helpful to me in writing my paper was the book, A Short
Guide to Action Research (Johnson, 2008). What Johnson did was to give many
examples in the book of various types of research questions, and then described some of
the details of what we should write about in the various chapters. The overall assignment
(writing the research paper) was a lot of work and was very difficult for me, however, I
noticed that once I had collected all of the data and started pondering how the data
answered the specific research questions, the assignment became much more interesting
and I really wanted to find out how things turned out. Even though there were no test
tubes or beakers in this research project, it nonetheless became very excited and I started
enjoying it much more. Another interesting thing that I found out about myself was that I
would get a little nervous before a presentation, even though the audience was comprised
of all of my peers that I had been working with for two years. Also, I am in front of
students on a daily basis, and I don’t feel nervous in that context. Maybe I felt this
nervousness, because I was put into a situation that I was not used to being in.
Additionally, I had a chance to see how I had the control over what data I include and
what data I exclude, and this relates to the part of the SLO that describes doing the
research ethically. I found that it is important to not let the data influence an outcome in
an unfair way. By this I mean that if a certain point of view is reached by what the data
says, I learned the importance of analyzing the limitations of the data and the importance
of mentioning these limitations so that the reader can decide for them-self, if the outcome
stated from the data, is a valid outcome. This also has implications for data collected in a
real science experiment. Researchers must always be aware of the limitations of their
procedures for data collection, and be careful when they are making their conclusions
from the data.
Overall, I learned a tremendous number of new things from this research assignment,
even after all of these 21 years of being in teaching. I also know how I would do things
differently, if I were to ever be involved in another action research study of my students.
One thing I would do is to not wait so long near the end to start analyzing the data. Also,
I would try to get more data (even though this would be more work) or rather a bigger
sample size, so that any conclusions I come up with would have a better chance of being
reinforced by the data.