Last night Adesola, Lisa and I had an online session to discuss
questions about the work we are currently completing.
Both Lisa and myself are currently drafting our Inquiry Plans, but we
were unsure whether we were adding in the right amount of detail. Adesola said
that if a person wanted to come into our classes and do something, what would
we want to know? We said we would like to know who the person is (their
background), how much time it is going to take, what are they actually going to
do, what they are going to record, where the information is going to be used.
As teachers, we would want to know these things to make sure that the person is
coming into our classes is not going to cause and harm to the children or do
anything that in not what we would normally do in our classes. These are
exactly the same things that the university wants to know so that they can
stand behind you for your inquiry and agree that what you’re planning to do is
ethical and realistic. After some discussion about the sorts of things we are
adding, Adesola said that the details need to give the reader a picture of what
you need to do, showing that you have made informed choices, citing reference
where appropriate, to convey what we are planning to do to someone else so it
makes sense.
We then discussed the Literature Review Section of the plan. Again,
Adesola made a comparison to reviewing a show. You wouldn’t review every single
line and scene, you would summarise the whole show and maybe pick out things
that impressed you like the costumes or set. Reviewing Literature is
summarising everything written on that topic, not reviewing separate pieces of
literature, picking out things that are particularly useful to you.
The final part of the session that I found really useful was discussing
the Data Analysis section. Adesola said that there is no point in collecting
data if you do not know what you are going to do with it. You need to say what
you are actually planning to with the data you collect, not what you want to
achieve by carrying out the inquiry. To analyse the data you need to compare it
with your own experience and literature to identify the similarities and
differences, so that you can draw conclusions about what you have found. You
need to collect data for analyses so that you can move forward – there is no
point in just simply collecting the data and just writing what you have found.
After the online session I feel that I now need to do the following
things:
- Look back at my Literature Review – check that I have reviewed all the literature, or just simply written what I have found.
- Check that I haven’t written any unnecessary details – the choices I have made show that I have had a thought process. I do not need to explain every detail.
- Revisit my Data Analysis section – have I actually stated what I am going to do with the data? Do I need to conduct more research into this to help me?
Thanks Jess
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