Research Seminar for

Educational Sciences

Prof. Dr. Chang Zhu

Department of Educational Sciences

Review

A short review

What we’ve learned in the 1st

semester

2

Review

What is educational research?

What are the main types of research?

How to identify a research problem?

How to conduct literature review?

What is APA writing style?

How to develop questionnaires and interview

questions?

How to collect data?

What are the components of a research

proposal?

Idea

Research

question(s)

Conceptual model

& hypotheses

Data needs

Data collection

Methodologies

Theory should

inform all stages.

Review

# Step How

1 The problem area; the research

idea

What’s important? What is relevant?

2 Identify a researchable

problem, specify the research

questions

Researchable, Manageable, Significant

3 Conceptual basis (theory) &

develop hypotheses

Literature, state-of-art, present

knowledge What can the proposed

research add to the present

knowledge? What can be predicted?

4 Identify data needed to ‘test

hypotheses’ or to answer your

research questions

What are dependent and independent

variables?

5 How to collect data? Sampling, data collection methods

6 How to analyze your data? Statistical methods, thematic coding,

etc

Review

# Step How

7 What are your findings? Organization of results and

interpretation

8 What can the findings

inform us?

Discussion of results. Can you compare

the results with your expectations, the

theoretical hypothesis, and previous

studies?9

Conclusions Summary of main findings,

significance

10 Writing the

thesis/research paper

Including step 1-9

Review

Reflection

• What you have gained/improved?

• Strong points?

• Weak points?

• Problems?

Good research

What makes a good research?

Contains information about the above steps

Has consistency between the steps

Good research

• Each research is different but the following

factors are common to all good pieces of

research:

• Sound rational

• Clear aims

• Relevant and clear theoretical basis

• Well-defined research questions

A good research idea

• Choose something you are interested in, think it fascinating, relevant for your future work,…

– You’ll need that personal motivation to pursue the studies.

• Relevant, and in need:

– useful to someone, such as policy makers

– more motivating to work on

– help in a broader research project

– other sources

Good research questions

Choose/formulate right type of questions:

• Description

• Relationship

• Descriptive-Comparative

• Causality/impact or affect

• Causality-Comparative

• ………

Good research

• Clear structure

• Appropriate and well-defined methodology

• Good research can often use a combination of

methodologies, which complement one another.

• Contributions to the topic/significance (Social

and practical relevance)

Good research

• Good education research is a matter not only of sound

procedures but also of beneficial aims and results;

our ultimate aim as researchers and educators is to

serve people’s well-being.

• For their research to be deemed good in a strong

sense, education researchers must be able to articulate

some sound connection between their work and a

robust and justifiable conception of human well-being

(Hostetler, 2005)

Typical mistakes/weaknesses:

• Too much on:

– background

– other studies

• Too little on what the current research is about:

– Specific objectives of the current study

– Research questions (not specified or not clear enough)

– Methodologies (not specific, e.g. missing info about specific methods, instruments, samples, procedures…..)

• Weakness regarding feasibility or scope of research:

– Research questions and hypotheses not specific enough

– Covers too much – “is this feasible?”

• Quantitative vs. qualitative research

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddx9PshVWXI

Examples

• Examples quantitative research articles

• Examples qualitative research articles

Group discussions

Work with example research articles:

Which research methodologies are used?

How the research questions are formulated?

…..

Questions

• Questions about your assignment of 1st

semester?