Recently I’ve been enjoying some opportunities to ply my wares – my passion for introducing tertiary students to what I consider to be the exciting realm of understanding and applying research methods.  I’ve always found it fascinating that what researchers do is somehow similar to, but yet quite different to what detectives do.  Equally, what researchers do is fairly similar in some ways to what journalists do but there are unique points of difference. 

 

I’m not about to go into those differences to any great extent here but I will note that there are similarities insofar as the assembling of evidence is concerned and insofar as triangulation is concerned but the key point of difference between a researcher, a detective and a journalist (as far as I’m concerned at least) lies in the drive which researchers have towards developing and/or applying theory to their data and vice versa, linking their data to apposite theory. 

 

But enough on that: some Early Childhood Education Students and some Social Work Students from Manukau Institute of Technology (where I am currently the founding Research Fellow in Education) have asked me to make some slide presentations available to them and so I’m uploading a series of quite basic presentations and adding them to the resources to be found within the Research Categories.  There are three presentations in all – the first on what is research, the second about what data to gather and the third on triangulation. 

 

It has to be said that they are hardly sophisticated but I do trust that they will be used by beginning researchers.  To make the most of these three slide shows, visitors should also look at the research resource called On Developing an Understanding of Approaches to Research (the slide show and the associated commentary).  When examined in tandem these two items introduce a more comprehensive account of what research appears to be about.  Visitors to the site might also spend a little time looking at Hansen’s Heuristic Hexagon because that introduces a very simple strategy for beginning to develop a research proposal. 

 

To see the slide shows in the sequence I suggest that they be examined, click on the appropriate numbers which follow:

 

Slide Show One (What is research?).

Slide Show Two (What data should we gather?).

Slide Show Three (About validity, reliability and triangulation) or click here for the accompanying notes.

Slide Show Four (On Developing an understanding of Approaches to Research) or click here to access the accompanying notes.

Slide Show Five (Hansen’s Heuristic Hexagon, i.e. a simple strategy for beginning to develop your research proposal) but you may also wish to click here to see the accompanying notes.

 

Happy viewing and remember to get in touch if you need more help with these matters.  Remember also that on Saturday August 14th, we’re running our next one day workshop on how to undertake your thesis/dissertation/project.  Call us to enrol.

I trust that you will have some informative viewing, reading and thinking as a consequence of examining these resources.

Ka kite


Jens