In response to many requests from children to negotiate projects as of late, we have decided to develop our inquiry focus around what a researcher is and the role of a researcher. As we focus on inquiry as a learning approach, investigating understandings of what research means to children is important. We would like to build the understanding of research from a fact finding process around a limited topic such as ‘the sea’ or ‘animals’ for example, into an understanding that research is a narrative, determined by the perspective and evidence provided by the researcher. Research is not just finding out what is already known and re-stating it but is also about creating new thinking.
In order to collect information as to the current understandings of research amongst the children we gave them a very open-ended research question, ‘Research the neighbourhood’. We filmed and analysed the responses of the children. From here we decided to pose a more specific question which incorporated the word story in association with research. ‘There are many stories in this school. Research a story of interest to you’. We wanted to see whether this would create different pathways of research. Again we filmed and analysed the learning. We also offered an opportunity for children who wanted to research a scientific story to do so.
As a result of our research in relation to research and research processes we are building some focus areas to work around and these big understandings are that
- Research needs to incorporate a range of experiences and sources of information
- The use of the computer provides only one perspective
- Research is to create your own narrative and your own interpretations with evidence to support the narrative.
- There is a relationship between truth, perspective and research
Research Inquiry - Part two
We would like to focus on building the understanding of what children think research is. To do this we will be asking each child to ‘Find someone who does research to interview about what they think research is’.
We will be supporting the children by offering workshops on;
- How to find people to question – sources
- Key information – purpose of questioning
- Building good questions
- Interview techniques
- Data collection
We do ask parents to support their child in finding someone to be interviewed either in person, by phone or email.
