Learning Log

What?
Today in class we learned about Research Strategies which include: Descriptive, correlational, experimental, and action. Descriptive is an easy study to conduct, it describes the situation. Descriptive studies are used a lot for foundational work. The cons for descriptive is that you cannot determine cause-and-effect. Correlational studies is a studies of possible relationships. With this you can make predictions and compare two variables. The cons of correlational is you can gain false conclusions and there is no cause-and-effect. Experimental is conducting an actual experiment. You can draw conclusions about cause-and-effect. The con for experimental is that there are a lot of ethical boundaries that cannot be crossed in a classroom. Action based research is conducting studies in your own classroom with your own student. You can practically do anything that you want. The con is that it is only for you and your class and it takes time and you may have emotional attachment to the students that will cloud your interpretation of the study.

So What?
These research strategies are so important to know and understand. Its important to know what kind of research you are looking at so you know how in depth it is or how accurate it is. Its also important to know because as a teacher I will be able to conduct research in my classroom and I need to understand how they work and the best ways to achieve the best results.

Now What?
Now that I know about the research strategies I can begin to understand how research is conducted and how I can do my own research in my own classroom. I can also read other research that has been done and understand why it was done that way and understand even the results better then I could before.