Book: Learning to Do Research

October 28, 2023

Challenges for Students and teachers
Rosemary Hipkins
NZCER Press : Wellington

New Zealand Council for Educational Reseaerch

2006

ISBN: 18773981444

Introduction

Pg 12

The potential scope of research activities

Depending on the overall purpose for which the research is intended, the act of research can encompass:

learning skills related to selecting relevant and good-quality information;
shaping a question to guide the process of information selection;
learning new (for the student) aspect of a topic area;
practicing critical-thinking skills (for example, by selecting amoung conflicting sources of information, or by synthesising information from different types of sources);
working independetly or as part of a small group;
organizing and expressing information in forms appropriate to the questions asked, and/or ot the purpose for which the research is being carried out;
planning for and gathering types of primary data that are important in a sugject area (for example, by using various sampling, interviewing, or surveying methods);
processing data (whether provide by the teacher or gained during an earlier research stage) to show trends and patterns;
interpreting information or data patterns in the light of the question; or
reporting to others in various ways.

Chapter 1: Students’ experience of “researching” in a range of subjects

pg 17

Why student research is an important issue

…People who write about important outcomes from 21at century school education often focus on the necessity to help students become “lifelong learners”. This certainly sounds good, but what does it actually mean in practical terms?

…Bryce and Withers (2003) identified five key elements of learning programmes that focus on lifelong learning:

ownership of the need to learn and its content are given to the individuals;
learning is about learning how to think rather than what to think;
teachers are mentors and models of lifelong learning more than dispensers of knowledge;
the purpose of assessment is to assist and encourage futher exploration, rather than to categorise or merely relate students to some concept of a ‘norm’; and
learning should be viewed as an enjoyable and integral part of one’s life )Bryce & Withers, 2003, p.2)

pg 19

How do students feel about doing research?

pg 28

…there were some interesting differences in the types of experienerence…

The following comments provide a snapshot of the positive aspects of research that students identified:

The library has really good resources and the librarians are so willing to help. I got really excitied about my topic.
I learnt about INNZ (Index New Zealand Online) and how to use it. It’s got really good stuff.
Research is like an enjoyable thing. Without research you wouldn’t know where to go to get information.
English teachers do it the most. They’re really good.
It’s good how it progresses with research. In level 1 you got guided heaps, by the time you get to Level 3 you can work without guideance.
Research is a good way to learn about subjects. you get to evaluate your information.
It’s cool to find out different things about each subject as you go.
How can it get taught in too many subjects.

Pg..21

Not all students experienced research as something for which they received sufficient support. many of the negative comments highlighted this dilemma:

I can’t do that. I don’t understanding it.
another student replies: Neither do I. I just copy it in my own words.
I just can’t be bothered, because I’m going to fail.
We do research topics and they don’t tell us what to do to get the information.
They are all things I knew how to do anyway, like the Internet and looking things up in books.

…

Haven’t had a lot of focus on it. It takes a lot of time to do a research project properly. Quite a few subjects will have their own research topics. I am not sure why. It really is the same thing.
It’s more that they give you the research assignment alongside the rest of the word you have to do. It’s not really the research skills, just another assignment.
They are a bit pedantic about quoting or how many full stops you need.
Last year we did a course on research that was wroth two credits, but it took a whole term.
Credits for research differ across subjects. In economics you write 3000 words for two credits, but in other subjects you do less work for more credits.

What do students think “doing research” entails?

Many of the focus-group students, regardless of the type of course they were taking, seemed to view research as a process of information retrieval and repackaging, in which the major challenge was that the material had to be written in their own words:

Learning how to find stuff fast on the Internet. You can find anything once you have learnt how to do it. Copy and paste.

Copy and paste.

It’s more about reading the information and then putting it together in a way that makes sense.

In history and physics it is more like getting facts. In English it is translating what you have found into your own words and stuff.

Getting information out of books and putting it in your own words.

Pg 25

In accounting we have to go out to a business and stuff- -it’s not actually research.

What students say they have learnt from doing research

The focus-group conversations identified a range of skills that could be gained from doing research. These included:

• using different searching strategies for different sources;

• asking questions and shaping focusing questions;

• conducting interviews or surveys;

• writing findings “in your own words”

• structuring a research report;

• constructing a bibliography;

• preparing a presentation;

• evaluating the research process;

• strengthening time-management and organisational skills;

and

• practising communication skills.

This list leans markedly towards generic skills and fact retrieval. As already noted, some teachers seem to assume that students need to learn such skills only once. Contrary to this perception, there were students who saw benefits in carrying out research projects in more than one subject. The range of reasons they gave is revealing. For some, repeating research was just another chance to pick up NCEA credits:

Because they all have assessments and that sort of thing.

Are research skills caught or taught?

While most positive comments related to the learning benefits of research, negative comments often related to the conditions under which research was carried out. As the following comments show, many of the students perceived that they were expected to develop their research skills as they carried out the research- that is, the skills would be “caught” rather than taught:

I don’t think the skills are really taught to you. It’s like ‘Here’s your assessment. You need computer access at the library’ and go to it.

You don’t ever get taught how to write in your own words. They just say, ‘Write it in your own words.’

Teachers become “baby sitters” when you have your own projects. Relievers, mainly, and a few other teachers.

Another student replies: My teacher in [name of subject] does that.

We just work out of our books each period. He just sits there and marks tests.

The teacher would just write up a website. It would be better if he showed you on the computer.

Another student replies: Yeah, and then you get there and ask for help and the teachers say, ‘Oh, you weren’t listening.’ Retrospective exemplars are frustrating. You see what others have done and then you understand what you should have done. It doesn’t help you then.

CHAPTER 2

Information literacy and student research

Pg 32

IS THERE REALLY A PROBLEM

Several years ago Penny Moore researched the views on information literacy held by 40 New Zealand primary teachers from four schools. When she asked them to describe a model or process for researching and using information, she found that:

The few teachers who could describe this process tended to focus simply on finding information, without looking at how it was used in any way…. All the participants were in agreement that information skills are essential to lifelong learning; but at the same time, more than half agreed that these would develop naturally as children worked with a variety of resources. This view implies that there is little need to explicitly teach information skills.

(Moore, 2002, p. 17)

Pg 37

Teaching for information literacy

Moore (2002) says information literacy can be described, deceptively simply, as the “ability to access, evaluate and use information from a wide variety of sources” (p. 12). She also describes it as a “broad educational goal” where:

The outcome of that goal is usually discussed in terms of self-directed learning, complex critical thinking, effective communication, and responsible use of information in educational settings and beyond. (Moore, 2002, p. 13)

Pg 40

Do information-literacy skills need to be taught only once?

As we have seen, there is a lot that could be addressed in the active teaching of information-literacy skills. Can this coverage be made more manageable by dividing the teaching up among subject areas, at least at secondary level? In this short final section I begin a discussion of why I don’t think this is a good solution, although I know it is commonly expressed (Hipkins et al., 2004).

For this, I pick up just one aspect of information literacy-the idea that information sources need to be evaluated.

Pg 45

Building students research expertise: history as a case study

Pg 46

In the previous chapters, I argued that we need to move beyond seeing research as a process of finding out and reporting (no matter how critically the information is evaluated.).

noons to fainlv obvious: being able to read and

first, functional literacy, is fairly obvious: being able to read and write printed text. This is the foundation on which the other levels of literacy are built. The second level is cultural literacy, but this term does not have the everyday meaning of the word “cultural”; it means being able to see a knowledge system (history, for example) as a culture in itself. Gilbert describes this as the ability to use and understand ” the structures and systems through which words achieve their meaning” (p. 180). She goes on to say:

Literacy, at this level, is, therefore, context specific: one cannot just be literate, one has to be literate with respect to something-some aspect of knowledge in a particular culture. Texts can only be interpreted if something is known about the context the ‘ rules of the game’ or the ‘discourse’-within which they were produced, and within which they were intended to be understood. (Gilbert, 2001, p. 180)

Gilbert says that individuals achieve the third level critical literacy when they can actively participate in the knowledge-building processes of the discipline and transform knowledge within it. One way to help students learn the “rules of the game” of knowledge construction is to give them opportunities to do carefully supported research projects that provide a feel for how specialists in a discipline work. In this way they can begin to build cultural literacy, and perhaps even move on to true critical literacy in time. But this is not research as a process of information retrieval, nor can it just draw on generic information-literacy skills.

As the above quotation makes clear, this type of literacy is discipline specific, and needs to be built afresh in every important discipline area.

Pg 55

So how much should students know about a topic before they begin their research? I have already noted that Stahl’s team found that when students “research” to learn content they tend to add little that is new if their first source is informative and easy to understand. In this situation they also ignore conflicting evidence.

For this reason, these researchers recommended that students gain at least an overview of the relevant content knowledge in the area before beginning the research process. From the perspective of research as information retrieval and repackaging, this might seem like a counter-intuitive idea. Learn the topic first and then do the research? However, if the research competencies are as complex as this article has suggested, and if fostering them is seen as the main aim of the research, then the suggestion makes

sense.

Pg 59

Chapter 4

If “research” is the answer, what was the question?

Pg 65

that working within a discipline entails.

Roth and Desautels (2004) explore what “scientific literacy” might actually look like in the context of a controversial community issue. They describe a range of competencies that students need to develop if they are to be able to use their science literacy for democratic purposes in their adult lives. The links to research-as-enquiry are very evident in their list:

• knowing how to make good use of experts and being willing to do so;

• knowing how to find and draw on a variety of resources, including the “local expertise” of involved members of the public;

• knowing how and when to draw on knowledge from many discipline areas, and from the “know-how of everyday life”;

• being willing and able to exercise autonomy in making judgements;

• being able to communicate ideas and positions clearlv and to negotiate over outcomes; and

• coping with situations, and responding appropriately.

Activities that build research-as-enquiry skills with future citizenship in mind help students develop their identities as people who are willing and able to take action when they see this as important. They are people who will care enough to continue to exercise their citizenship rights and responsibilities in the years well beyond school (Davine 2006).

Pg 73

Chapter 5: using socioscientific issues to learn about research

Yoram Harpaz (2005), an Israeli educator who is wi for his work on “thinking communities”, descr questions as “fertile questions” and says they have six To summarise his argument, fertile questions:

1. are open questions that may have several answers contradictory answers;

2. undermine taken-for-granted assumptions and sense” beliefs;

3. are rich in content, and often break up into sub-qu

4. are connected to the lives of students and to societ

5. are charged questions because they have ethical di that stimulate emotions and motivate enquiry; anc

6. are practical- students can find information and aspects of the question.

Alison