R e s e a r c h P r o j e c t - F o l i o - Question Refinement
RESEARCH FRAMEWORK PART 1: Initiating and planning the research
ASSESSMENT CRITERIA FOCUS: P1 Consideration and refinement of a research question
ASSESSMENT CRITERIA FOCUS: P1 Consideration and refinement of a research question
Why should I bother?
Spending time on developing a high quality research question has several benefits:
How do I demonstrate "thorough consideration and refinement" of my research question?
(or, in other words, how can I get an A grade for this task?) Watch the video with teacher Ron Berger from Expeditionary Learning. You may have seen it before because it is a MOC favourite! This last shot of all of Austin's six drafts helps show how he thoroughly considered and refined his work. If you only saw the final draft, you would not realise how much he had learned about scientific drawing. Similarly, if you only saw these pictures without hearing Ron tell Austin's story, you would not appreciate that Austin critiqued each drawing with his classmates to know how to improve. This is similar to how you need to provide evidence of your learning to your teacher and the SACE Board. You must record how and why you refine your research question to show what's going on behind the scenes. You can use the MS Word template on the right to record how you develop your research question. Start by following the six steps below. The record will then form part of your Folio of evidence that you have met assessment criterion P1. |
Download and use this template for your Folio:
Have difficulty writing?
Alternative = keep a video journal. |
Six
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Example of what your RP Question Refinement Record might end up looking like:
<--------- Practice by critiquing some of last year's RP "questions" on display in the learning common
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Starting PointHopefully by now you will have an idea of your topic or area of interest. Perhaps you are going to pursue the topic that you looked at for UCreate last year?
You can record this topic as your first entry in your record. It doesn't have to be a question yet. If you aren't sure, just choose a random topic and go through the process to practice what you will need to do once you have decided. |
Questions end with question marks
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Open vs Closed questions
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Is it challenging enough?
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Create a debate
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Loaded questions
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Narrow the scope
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Rinse and repeat!Once you have settled on an initial research question, you can proceed with writing your Proposal.
However, you can continue to consider and refine your research question after that. Some of the above steps might only make sense once you start your research and strike difficulties which can be overcome by amending your research question and/or adding guiding questions. The key to success is to record on the template when, how and why you change your research question so you have evidence for your Folio of what you learn from this process. |