Saturday, March 10, 2012

Beginning a Journey in Research: A Reflection

Research truly scares me as I know it is a commitment that requires time, energy, priority and dedication.  Don't get me wrong, I love learning about researches and find new researches important in teaching; but, conducting them myself is a completely different story.  Nonetheless, I will try my best for I know this is also for my own personal and professional growth.

As a teacher educator, I decided to explore how teacher education programs prepare Early Childhood Professionals for this course's research simulation.  This is a very broad and complex topic so I will focus my study on just 2 teacher education programs in my country.  Hopefully I will be able to study; 1. The University of the Philippines Department of Family Life and Child Development (UP-FLCD) which is where I graduated from and taught in for 7 years, and 2. Roosevelt College Center for Teacher Education (RC-CTE) which is the institution I currently teach in.  Specifically, I want to identify the similarities and differences between the 2 programs especially since one (RC-CTE) follows the mandate of the Commission of Higher Education while UP-FLCD has their own charter.  I also want to explore what courses the graduates from both programs found most useful for their current teaching profession.  In addition, it would also be nice to determine if they (the graduates) found that their programs lacked any course that they think would have helped prepare them as an early childhood professional.

As I constructed my research chart and begun my application 2 paper, I felt overwhelmed.  I found it difficult to choose from the 3 sub topics I determined last week as I am equally interested in all of them.  But as Naughton, et.al (2010) stated, we also have to look at what is workable given the short amount of time that we have.  I hope that the topic I chose can be finished in a few weeks.  Another concern I came across is more personal in nature.  Being 9 weeks pregnant, I have been experiencing great nausea and vomiting that lasts the whole day, leaving me at times incapacitated with lesser time and ability to focus on work and on this research.  I am looking forward to better days... Nevertheless, I am committed to try my best in the meantime...  



      

2 Comments:

At March 10, 2012 at 10:22 PM , Anonymous patricia robinson said...

So your research is a "living project". You are working in the college field and your focus is on teacher preparedness for research courese. This sounds challenging. What data would you use? How are you going to collect it?

 
At March 11, 2012 at 7:04 PM , Blogger ST said...

Hi Elizabeth, all the best and hopefully the nausea will soon pass. Yes, like you I find research intimidating but it is indeed for our personal and professional growth.
The various subtopics can be overwhelming but then we have to prioritise and see which ones are both do-able in the allotted time and which one really intrigues us. All the best!!!

 

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