Educational Research

I will begin by putting out my first fundamental question

What is EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH?

We talk about Educational research as Empirical, the kind of research that makes not only the investigations based on the theory (books) but also takes the experience on the field of study. These experiences can be collected by interviews, surveys, observations and your own experience. This kind of research mainly focuses on things that really happened in that context and time

When we observe our educational practice or other teacher’s educational practices it is so difficult to be unnoticed by others and not interfere on the real interaction or the real environment of the class. That makes it so difficult for researchers to have an accurate observation of the realistic situations happening on the class.

As we talked in the first class, the research, in education particularly, is not a SOLO research but more of a continuous dialogue with others. That can take place in different forms. It is not just observation, but more the interaction with all the actors in the process.

In this context, the conversation that we create in our daily life with other teachers and educators can be a very rich research source. Colleagues’ conversations are a very useful tool for educators; we can exchange information, new ideas, things that have had a great result and things that might be useful for someone else. We also find judgmental opinions either towards our students or the educational system. This can be a reflection of what is really happening in our classrooms or outside of them. Also, they can be a very good start point in order to make changes, improvements or educational readjustments.

Some teachers really don’t realize the importance of these conversations. My objective in this appreciation is not to criticize teachers, it is an invitation for teachers to take advantage of these moments and for principals or educational participants to be able to organize the agenda, and give to colleagues’ interactions a very important role. If we do this, maybe we can know what we really should be doing and what we, as educator, should be aiming to do.

But HOW WE TRANSLATE THIS IMPORTANT INFORMATION TO REALISTIC DATA, SO WE CAN ANALYZE IT?