When I think of Research

     First of all I would like to thank all my fellow colleagues for allowing me to take this journey with you.  It has most definitely been a growing experience for me.    

This course has truly taught me a lot about research.  One of the things that will assist and I am holding on to the paper that showed me was how to find the information I need without reading the complete research paper.  I know the places to look to understand the gist of the paper without reading the whole research document.

     As I was challenged to create a simulation of my own, I began to realize the nature of research and how powerful it is in the eyes of society.  For instance it is very important when doing research to be careful not to generalize and think that because of certain results in a research that it is the answer to all questions pertaining to a certain subject.  Just because one research result suggest that all left hand children will all be good in math does not mean that all left handed children will be good in math.  However research is powerful and there are many people who look to research for answers including myself and some might believe the crazy statement that was mentioned about left handed people.    

     Because research is so powerful, it is important to take into consideration the way that research is planned for early childhood. Things like is it ethical, the setting, permission from parents, is the research harmful to the child or anyone involved in the process are things to take into account.  I also learned that in research it is not one size fits all.  There are different types of design that will work better for certain research questions.

      The challenge that I faced in this course was learning how to narrow down the topic that I was interested in.  I believe I finally learned how to write a narrow topic and the way I learned was by writing it over and over again, along with deciding what it really was that I was interested in learning about.      

     Learning the many different ways that research is interpreted has changed the way I think about research.  The one thing that really has made me rethink the ideas of research is the idea of epistemology.  To think that there are people like you and I out there deciding the theories of knowledge and deciding which beliefs are justified.  That’s kind of scary to me.