This academic year will encompass a lot of changes: firstly my role and then inevitably the educational landscape. After stepping down as HoD, I have had a change of direction towards educational research and getting back to proper teaching and learning. I am a teacher-researcher: 'Teacher Development Co-ordinator' Basically using research to inform T&L and using my classroom as a pedagogical laboratory where we test and evaluate successes and ideas before opening out to the teaching body.
Today marked the first of a string of meetings and discussions about my final MTeach report. Thankfully participating in the MLDP through the national College I have been able to carry across credits which has reduced my word count to 10,000. I am thinking that this may not be the blessing in disguise that I had originally thought it would be with the nature of my study.
My focus, but not my research question, is on the use and development of SOLO taxonomy in the classroom to raise results. My focus group will be a middle/ mixed set of year 11s and the data will be a mixture of qualitative through questionnaires, observations and feedback; and quantitative with mock results and regular assessment data. So already I have decided on the research design and the data stream I want to access.
As for the literature review which has to come first before anything else occurs, I want to use a blog to be a source where I can ramble, or sprinkle ideas. I have no illusions as to the academic nature of my rumblings, but it will at least act as a diary of what I find and the ideas I may have.
On the sly I'd also like this to be a form of open documentation where I am feeding around (as opposed to backwards, or forwards) and the research process is disseminated and openly shared. What I do find to be a little disheartening with other dissertations or research documents is that they are arduously written, beautifully bound and then placed into shortage in a back office for only a few to see or to be pulled out at annual launch meetings. Hopefully with an online medium, my research
(for want of a better name) can be accessed by a wider audience.
And so, it begins...
