Critical Reflection EER500 - Assignment 1

Well if I'm writing a critical reflection for one assignment, I might as well do it for another.

Assignment one for EER500 - Introduction to educational research, was different to any other assignment I've had to do. First of all, it was divided into parts 1a and 1b. Our course work also centred around this assignment. (It was so great not to have to keep following course work while also trying to complete an assignment - all lecturers take note!) We had to select a media article to do with an area of interest. Find 2 to 3 journal articles/studies about the area of interest in the media article. Formulate a research question (based on our module readings) and write about how the research question was related to the literature. Next we had to publish our writing onto a wiki.

For part b of the assignment, we had to read all the wiki posts in our section. Select one relevant to us professionally/personally (as well as our own), and read all the articles to familiarise ourselves with the area. Next with reference to our text and other readings we had to identify and comment on strengths and areas for improvement of the draft research question and the statement of how the question related to the literature, and the practical importance of the research question. Whewww! It took me a while to work out (from the forum posts and assignment info) that what we were doing was a type of critical evaluation (in a positive sense) of our own and the other wiki post and to back up any of our comments with references. Thinking of it like that made it a little easier for me to understand how to go about it.

I read alot about formulating research papers and research questions and literature reviews, and eventually managed to work out what was a good research question and how to effectively connect it to the literature. This whole process was a bit unerving for me because the assignment guidelines seemed to be so broad. Tell me to write a critical analysis on an author's view on a certain subject and I'll have no problems but in this assignment it felt like there was so much we had to work out for ourselves (like what is a good research question and so on). I find open-ended stuff so much harder to deal with, probably because I doubt my own abilities so much.

There was so much that I learnt from this assignment though. Like how most research reports give you ideas for further research if you know where to look and how the research question shapes the whole research process so you really have to get it right! The fact that researchers constantly revise their questions and research design. I'm finding that a bit hard to get used to.