Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Research plan

Topic :- DISCIPLINE

Big research question :- What are the methods adapted to create discipline in school and how far is it accepted by the students?

Secondary questions :-
a) What does discipline mean to teachers, students and management?
b) Through what mechanisms is it being created?
c) How do the students respond to it?
d) What is the impact of those mechanisms?

Number of interviews :-
With teachers- Chemistry teacher, English teacher, Physical Education teacher, Art teacher
With students- 8th grade and 9th grade (3 girls, 3 boys)
Management- Head master, Ashrita

Number of Observations :-
1) Assembly 
2) Classroom 
3) Playground- during lunch, P.E. and after school 
4) Skylight

Number of focus groups :- 
1 group of boys and girls (10)
Age group :- 12 to 14 years.

Other research methods that will be used :-
Workshops
Interviews
Readings
Observations

Research Plan

Research Plan -
Topic: EXAMS

Big Research Question:
Schools conduct exams to check on the performance of the students. What is the impact of exams on students and teachers?

Secondary Questions:
Teachers
1. How do they draft the paper?
2. Do they customize for each student?
3. What is the teaching methods they follow in class?
4. Do they have any activities in class?

Stress
Repetition
Performance
Test
Report Cards
Dairy

Students
1. What is their study plan?
2. How do they prepare for exam?
3. Do their friends influence them in studying?
4. What is the stress level during exams?
5. How many times do they revise before exam?


Number of Interviews
-        With teachers- Kannada, Social studies, Padmini Maam, Principal, P.T Sir

-        With students – 8th grade, 9th grade, 5th grade

-        Others- Arshita, Shanti Miss, Elcy.

Number of Observations
-        Where – Interviews, Classrooms, Staff room

Number of Focus Groups  2.  timeline: Stressful months, their future.
-        Age group-  8th and 9th grade.

Other research methods that will be used
Interviews,
Workshops,
Reading sessions,
Classroom observation

Research plan


Research Plan -
Topic:
What is the impact of English education in regional schools?

Big Research Question:
What are the different perceptions of English in the minds of students? ,
How has it affected regional schools while English being considered as a globalised language? ,
What is the scope of growth by learning English and how it can the change the way people think about you?

Secondary Questions:
How is English taught inside the classrooms?
What is the language they use to talk while interacting with their friends, siblings, strangers and parents?
If they have an access to any library?
How do they learn new words?
Are they motivated to learn English?
Is there any fear of learning English?


Number of Interviews
-        With teachers- English teachers,

-        With students – 9th grade, 10th grade – 5 students from each grade

-        Others- Principal, Arshia, Parents (if possible, any)

Number of Observations
-        Where – Interviews, Classrooms

Number of Focus Groups
-        Age group- 14-16 years

Other research methods that will be used
Interviews,
Workshops,
Reading sessions,
Classroom observation


Anna Bagnoli - Response


Anna Bagnoli - Response

I found Bagnoli’s paper very interesting. Firstly I didn’t realize how insightful drawings could be especially when someone is at a cross roads in their life or has to make big decisions.  I realized that on an unconscious level you constantly think about the things that are bothering you whether you know it or not. What I did learn from this article was the importance of having very general and broad instructions so that the participant is free to express whatever they want in whatever manner/form they want. As everybody has different ways of expressing him or herself and if you truly want to understand what they are going through you need to give them more control.
This is how I intend to conduct the next workshop – with one visual method activity with broad instructions. 

Daphna Patai - Response


Daphna Patai - Response

Patai’s chapter in which she talked about artificial intimacy that is created in qualitative research got me thinking about how this correlates with counseling. As counselors we witness people’s pain, empathize with them, and see them grow and change. Patai’s chapter suggested to me that there was a lot of cross over, as researchers also seem to hold a similar equation with their interviewees. People come and unburden themselves, let us into deep aspects of their private lives (one way traffic of sharing) and then we proceed analyze it (their lives/situations) and churn out some kind of data and/or theory to understand where they are coming from and almost to justify what they have said.

Patai advocates that qualitative research is conducted to achieve ‘social transformation’ and empower people.  This connects to counseling where the aim is to help others help themselves. However, maybe counselors provide an atmosphere and/or environment that help people act/change on what they have spoken about. Whereas qualitative researchers act more like a sounding board where people come to unburden themselves and then leave with out really analyzing or internalizing what they have said. Do they feel shortchanged? Betrayed? Breach of privacy? Because it is one thing to go and talk to someone about something personal and have a(n) (‘artificial’) connection with the interviewer, but then once that information gets published how do they feel?









Reading List - School Dropouts and Motivation

1.     School Dropouts or Pushouts? Overcoming Barriers for the Right to Education, by Anugula N. ReddyShantha Sinha, http://www.dfid.gov.uk/r4d/PDF/Outputs/ImpAccess_RPC/PTA40.pdf
2.     THE INFLUENCE OF SCHOOLING ON COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: A REVIEW OF RESEARCH IN INDIA, http://ebooks.iaccp.org/ongoing_themes/chapters/mishra/mishra.php?file=mishra&output=print
3.     Feasibility of implementation of right to education Act, Pankaj S Jain, Ravindra H Dholakia, http://www.righttoeducation.in/sites/default/files/research-n-analysis/rte-epw_june09.pdf
4.     Right to Education Act: A Critique, Parth J Shah and Shreya Agarwal, http://www.cfo-connect.com/images/article/tt-critique-may2010.pdf
5.     Right to Education Act : A Critical Analysis, http://www.jamiajournal.com/2012/04/24/right-to-education-act-a-cricitical-analysis/
7.     Structural Adjustment, Education and Poor Households in India: Analysis of a Sample Survey, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPOVERTY/Resources/WDR/dhaka/pradhan.pdf
8.     Influence of gender and type of school on environmental attitude of teachers in Iran and India, International Journal of Enviornmental Science and Technology, Vol. 3, No. 4, Autumn 2006, pp.351-357. http://www.bioline.org.br/request?st06044
10. The India Model, By Gurcharan Das,  Foreign Affairs, July/August 2006, http://relooney.fatcow.com/00_New_1704.pdf


Monday, August 20, 2012

Research Plan - Corporal Punishment



Big Research Question:
1. What are teacher’s intentions in giving punishment?
2. What do they want to change in student's behaviors?
3. What is impact of punishment on student?
4. What punishments are considered fair?

Secondary Questions:
1. What behaviours are punished? (Indiciplen )
2. What types of punishment are given?
3. How do students view punishment?
4. How do they avoid punishment?
5. Reasons for getting punished?

Number of Interviews
●      With teachers                       5
●      With students                       10
●      Others                                    2

Number of Observations
●      Where                                    in the class room and around the school

Number of Focus Groups
●      Age group                             10, 12 and 14

Comments on the books and subject I read


Corporal Punishment

Punishment start to students at schools and also at homes by parents and others, useing of abusive language, lack of interest in study or homework, quarrels and adults’ frustrations leading to corporal punishment. The volume of corporal punishment in schools and at homes was found to be identical. The situation regarding corporal punishment, both at private and public schools, was the same. A common phenomenon was that younger children at schools received more punishment than the older ones. 
The two categories of punishment at schools are physical and the psychological.
Education is communication tool. When school communicate effectively, students understand and support what the school is doing, and the process of teaching and learning moves forward and educators can have as much trouble communicating clearly.
Many times have students in a school misunderstood directions or left class with no clear idea of the next day’s assignment and many kids are confused about exactly what behavior is expected, preferred, accepted, allowed, or valued in your school?
Types of punishments: Smacking, spanking, kicking, throwing, pinching, pulling hair, twisting arms or ears, forcing the child to stay in uncomfortable or undignified position, forcing the child to take excessive exercise, burning, giving electric shock and hitting them with different objects such as cane, belt, whip, shoe, broom and electric wire.


Bagnoli

This article talks about visual methods based and arts-based projective technique, the self-portrait, and the graphic elicitation methods. Interviews can also involve participants engaging in creative activities like drawing, collage, creating diagrams, taking pictures or looking. The article argues that applying these drawing methods in the context of an interview can open up participants’ interpretations of questions, and allow a creative way of interviewing that is responsive to participants’ own meanings and associations. The useing photo-elicitation interviews as a qualitative research method when studying aspects of adolescent behaviour and it describes the use of photo-elicitation interviews to investigate and analytical potential of graphic elicitation and arts-based methods, by making reference to the insights that they offered in the contextual analysis with more traditional text-based data.

Patai

This book introduces students to the practices of ‘doing' sociology. This course introduces students to the skill of thinking sociologically and the skill of testing sociological ideas through empirical research. But, throughout this course, we will also apply a critical perspective. Critical perspective means that we will ask questions, such as, how can sociologists prove that they have really found answers through their research? Or, why should anyone believe what sociologists say? The better a sociologist understands along with the strengths of any given method. This course will help to understand of the general difficulties that social researchers face when they are trying to generate knowledge about the social world.

Field notes

During the last official visit, it was an acute nostalgia of the divine "free periods". Me and my teammate luckily bumped into a class where the teacher was absent. So we made them enact a normal day in school. To find out the discipline functions and the measures undertaken by the teachers to keep them on track, we added a condition where a student comes late and another has not done homework. As a reaction we observed a few things:
# They can be sent home as well as whipped.
# The students are amazing actors.
# The teacher and the students have a close relationship where they are comfortable with cracking jokes and having fun together.
# They are not threatened in any manner and are not oppressed profoundly for such mistakes. Some toughness is undoubtedly important to keep things under control.
Workshop
It was important to know their basis of a structured living and differentiation of thoughts; their likes and dislikes, aspirations and expectations from the surroundings and themselves. So we asked them to draw a "good boy" and a "good girl", and write down precisely why did they think their characters were good. Most of them were based on their academic performance, behavior with teachers, elders and a decent dress code. According to some, a good boy or girl is someone who is "smart". Then came the turn for a "bad boy & a bad girl" and write what about them, made them 'bad'. Again it was related to academic performance, code of conduct and shabby looks. One of them drew a fat girl and the reason for her being bad was because she ate a lot! Apparently, this was a very honest and innocent answer because it didn't reflect a statement from his course book, rather something about his experience.
Independence day



All in white (their wednesday and saturday school dress), cheerful faces still maintaining the decorum of the school. They were visited by their friends from other schools and old students, some of who were now studying in colleges and one is now a scientist aiding their paraphernalia like notebooks and other stationeries. After the function was over, they colored each other and there was a swarm of patriots on the street, cheering for the independent India.