Educational Research

WHAT?

Who knew there was so much to know about educational research. I learned that through the four types of educational research you can usually find out what you need to know so that you can improve your classroom. The four types of research that we learned about are descriptive, correlative, experimental, and action research. They are all different but work well together.

• A descriptive study is used to describe a situation. It is the what, how or why something is happening. "How many students in the class have brown hair? There are 12 students in the class with brown hair".
• A correlation study compares two different things and tries to find relationship between the two. "Is there a connection between hair color and reading level? There is a numerical connection between hair color and reading level".
• An experimental study is done to find out if one variable causes the other. "Does having brown hair increase reading level? Brown hair does not increase reading level".
• Action research is research done by a teacher or school representative after observing a situation or problem in their classroom/school and coming up with a new plan to fix those problems and analyzing the results.

SO WHAT?

Research is very important in education. It must be constantly changing to meet the needs of the students, teachers, and community. What works well for one school or area may not work as well in another. Using different types of research can help improve education in general and also help in your own students.

NOW WHAT?

I need to learn more about the educational research that I have access to and also who the lead researchers are in my content area. Knowing what I have to work with and learning what research I need to do on my own will help me a lot. As a teacher I will use educational research in my classroom. I will find research that has been done on areas I am concerned about. I will also use it as a base to help me set up my classroom. I think that as a teacher I will mostly use an action research study method to improve not only my teaching ability but also the understanding and success of my students.