As I come to the end of another
course in “My Venture Into Early Childhood Studies”, I would like to thank and
acknowledge my classmates and my instructor for their invaluable assistance and
clarification.
Building Research Competencies was
not an easy course for me, as I waded through unfamiliar territory. Some of the terminology and words were foreign
and unknown to me, for example:
·
Deductive and inductive research methodology.
· Quantitative and qualitative research.
· Stratified and cluster random sampling.
·
Reductionism.
· Postpositivist paradigms.
I must admit that the terminology
is still challenging and I continue to muddle my way through with a dictionary
and search engine in hand.
Everything I learned in relation
to research in this course was new, as the extent of my “research” ability was
basically looking up a topic in a library and writing my opinion in the
matter. Never was I asked to
conceptualize a research design from origin to conclusion, and this course was
eye-opening in many respects. If I had any
ideas about the nature of research, I now realise that what I once thought was
research was not research. My education
in conducting early childhood research has begun and now there is a lot of
ground to be covered.
The challenges that I encountered
dealt with coming to grips with so much new terminology and concepts and reaching
a position of understanding and comfort where they were concerned. I am sure that with more reading I will
become fluent in explaining these concepts and applying them to my research
design.
I now realize that being an early
childhood professional executing a research design is not easy or simplistic in
nature. There are so many features,
concepts and principles that must be taken into account in order to ensure a
research product that is beneficial to all stakeholders – the researcher, participants
(children), teachers, funding bodies, and policy makers.
All the best to my colleagues
until we meet again.
Hi, Sheryl! I truly enjoyed having you as a classmate and 'blogmate'. Like you, I too was overwhelmed with the idea of research. I got to realize that I indeed do have a lot to learn still. Nonetheless, I surprisingly enjoyed this course. Hope to see you again in the next few courses we have left! God bless!
ReplyDeleteElizabeth, all the best to you, too.
DeleteHello Sheryl,
ReplyDeleteI love you blog site it is really beautiful, colorful and exciting!!! This week I found out a lot about cultural diversity when I interviewed my father, who could not properly define the term. He was judging the culture of a person based on their race; this teaches me that we need to educate people about cultural awareness and diversity. I cannot wait to read about what your experience was. Great blog!!!
Warmly,
Alice Jones