1.26: Introduction to course

We spent tonight talking about the structure of the course, the major assignments, and the text books and how we will use them.  You did some writing and talking about what kinds of ideas you were interested in exploring/researching and what kinds of approaches to research you might do to "work on" those projects.  In theory that conversation was going to lead us back to a discussion of particular methods you could use to work on your projects, but while we did have a discussion that  introduced the ideas and language that we will be using for the course, we kind of got sidetracked defining research, and discussing what it meant to conduct research from the perspectives of different methodologies or research paradigms..

Defining research
We had an informal discussion about what made research different from other kinds of exploration after some conversation we had a list that identified research as:

• having a purpose (hypothesis or a focus) = some outcome in mind
• gathering/recording data in systematic ways
• subjecting the data to some kind of analysis or interpretation that leads to
• conclusions or generalizations relevant to the purpose 

That's pretty good considering we haven't read the book yet!

Methodologies

As we continued to talk, we observed that the same study could be carried out with different assumptions about what counted as a "fact" or "the truth," about how to decide which "truth was right " (if there was more than one), and so on.  We talked - briefly about critical approaches to Literature as different methodologies -assumptions, values and beliefs that form the basis for defining what is true, what counts as evidence, and the "right" ways to conduct research.   


For research methods, the approaches have been classified into four general groups.  Methodologies in each group have approximately the same assumptions about:  the nature of reality, what counts as knowledge, and the right way to conduct research .  You might try filling in the assumptions about reality, knowledge and conducting "good" research for each category. Also - see if you can give some examples from your experience with critical approaches for each group.  For example, Feminst and Critical Pedagogical approaches are example are in the Transformative group.  The more "approaches" we can name and classify  - the easier it will be for you to recognize and classify methodologies in the example essays.  

Research methodologies     
Postitivist

Constructivist

Transformative

Pragmatic


Blogs!
You spent the rest of class creating your blogs.  It was particularly frustrating since many of the computers blocked access to the Blogger site.  I will look into what was going on - and if the computers present us with on-going problems, I will look into getting another computer lab.


I have posted your links to the right - and will be watching for your first post.


For next class:

Read:  Griffin: Introduction, p. 1 -16

Blog 1: Use what you learned from the reading to write a definition of methods, methodologies + skills

In class we will continue to use and talk about ideas introduced by Griffin (make note of any questions, confusions raised in the reading), and then hopefully make some connections between these new ideas and your research agenda.  We will review the methods studied in this course - and I will give a more in-depth presentation on the particular methods - and the essays we will read as "examples" of those methods.  

Thanks for your good work tonight, and see you next week.