Archive for the ‘Research’ Category
Being a better Researcher
Research involves a lot of information and data which have to be easily and efficiently managed under tight deadlines and time restraints. The following steps will offer you a bit of insight into how you can become a better researcher using some simple web tools like mind maps and bookmarklets.
Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies
The Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies is the only handbook to make connections regarding many of the perspectives of the “new” critical theorists and emerging indigenous methodologies.
Built on the foundation of the landmark SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, the Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies extends beyond the investigation of qualitative inquiry itself to explore the indigenous and nonindigenous voices that inform research, policy, politics, and social justice, explore in depth some of the newer formulations of critical theories and many indigenous perspectives, and seek to make transparent the linkages between the two.
- Contains global examples including South African, Hawaiian, Maori, Central African and Islamic ones.
- Includes a “Who’s Who” of educators and researchers in critical methodologies.
- Provides a comprehensive body of work that represents the state of the art for critical methodologies and indigenous discourses
- Covers the history of critical and indigenous theory and how it came to inform and impact qualitative research
- Offers an historical representation of critical theory, critical pedagogy, and indigenous discourse.
- Explores critical theory and action theory, and their hybrid discourses: PAR, feminism, action research, social constructivism, ethnodrama, community action research, poetics.
- Presents a candid conversation between indigenous and nonindigenous discourses.
This Handbook serves as a guide to help Western researchers understand the new and reconfigured territories they might wish to explore.
Decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples
From the vantage point of the colonized, the term ‘research‘ is inextricably linked with European colonialism; the ways in which scientific research has been implicated in the worst excesses of imperialism remains a powerful remembered history for many of the world’s colonized peoples. Here, an indigenous researcher issues a clarion call for the decolonization of research methods.
The book is divided into two parts. In the first, the author critically examines the historical and philosophical base of Western research. Extending the work of Foucault, she explores the intersections of imperialism, knowledge and research, and the different ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and methodologies as ‘regimes of truth‘. Providing a history of knowledge from the Enlightenment to Postcoloniality, she also discusses the fate of concepts such as ‘discovery, ‘claiming’ and ‘naming’ through which the west has incorporated and continues to incorporate the indigenous world within its own web.
The second part of the book meets the urgent need for people who are carrying out their own research projects, for literature which validates their frustrations in dealing with various western paradigms, academic traditions and methodologies, which continue to position the indigenous as ‘Other’. In setting an agenda for planning and implementing indigenous research, the author shows how such programmes are part of the wider project of reclaiming control over indigenous ways of knowing and being.
Exploring the broad range of issues which have confronted, and continue to confront, indigenous peoples, in their encounters with western knowledge, this book also sets a standard for truly emancipatory research. It brilliantly demonstrates that ‘when indigenous peoples become the researchers and not merely the researched, the activity of research is transformed.’
Developmental Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use
Developmental evaluation (DE) offers a powerful approach to monitoring and supporting social innovations by working in partnership with program decision makers. In this book, eminent authority Michael Quinn Patton shows how to conduct evaluations within a DE framework. Patton draws on insights about complex dynamic systems, uncertainty, nonlinearity, and emergence. He illustrates how DE can be used for a range of purposes: ongoing program development, adapting effective principles of practice to local contexts, generating innovations and taking them to scale, and facilitating rapid response in crisis situations. Students and practicing evaluators will appreciate the book’s extensive case examples and stories, cartoons, clear writing style, “closer look” sidebars, and summary tables. Provided is essential guidance for making evaluations useful, practical, and credible in support of social change.
Building In Research and Evaluation: Human Inquiry for Living Systems
Yoland Wadsworth’s ground-breaking proposition is that the act of inquiry is the way by which every living organism and all collective human life goes about continuously learning, improving and changing. Building in Research and Evaluation explores this new approach, a basic theory of human understanding and action. By deepening our understanding about the cyclical processes of acting, observing, questioning, feeling, reflecting, thinking, planning and acting again, Wadsworth identifies how new life might be brought to what we do, both professionally, and personally. Far from being dry academic theory, she shows how this practice-derived evaluative inquiry process can drive progress toward social justice and human betterment. This book will open new vistas of thought and new methods of inquiry for the reflective practitioner in health, human services, education, social sciences. It is the theoretical capstone of a trilogy of best-selling books by Wadsworth, which also includes Everyday Evaluation on the Run and Do-it-Yourself Social Research.
Building In Research and Evaluation: Human Inquiry for Living Systems
Yoland Wadsworth’s ground-breaking proposition is that the act of inquiry is the way by which every living organism and all collective human life goes about continuously learning, improving and changing. Building in Research and Evaluation explores this new approach, a basic theory of human understanding and action. By deepening our understanding about the cyclical processes of acting, observing, questioning, feeling, reflecting, thinking, planning and acting again, Wadsworth identifies how new life might be brought to what we do, both professionally, and personally. Far from being dry academic theory, she shows how this practice-derived evaluative inquiry process can drive progress toward social justice and human betterment. This book will open new vistas of thought and new methods of inquiry for the reflective practitioner in health, human services, education, social sciences. It is the theoretical capstone of a trilogy of best-selling books by Wadsworth, which also includes Everyday Evaluation on the Run and Do-it-Yourself Social Research.
How to do Research – Kids Research Portal
“The Kentucky Virtual Library presents: How to do research! Step 1: Plan your project. Plan your project tutorial Define your subject Brainstorm What do you already know? Group similar ideas Identify key words and phrases Make a quest strategy Gather your tools Step 2: Search for information . Search for information tutorial The Kentucky Virtual Library The library catalog Encyclopedia Reference books: table of contents and index Magazines and newspaper articles Dictionary Search the World Wide Web What if you can’t find anything? Step 3: Take Notes. Take notes tutorial The KWL method Fact finder method Data sheets Clustering method (also called mapping or webbing) Venn diagram method Note cards Prints and photocopies Bibliography page Step 4: Use the information. Use the information tutorial Scan the page first The five finger test Is the information true or bogus? Put it in your own words Organize the information Compare and contrast Put the information in order Add your own conclusions Step 5: Report. Share what you’ve learned tutorial Step 6: Evaluate. Ask yourself, “How did I do?”
Ten Simple Rules for Getting Help from Online Scientific Communities
The increasing complexity of research requires scientists to work at the intersection of multiple fields and to face problems for which their formal education has not prepared them. For example, biologists with no or little background in programming are now often using complex scripts to handle the results from their experiments; vice versa, programmers wishing to enter the world of bioinformatics must know about biochemistry, genetics, and other fields.
In this context, communication tools such as mailing lists, web forums, and online communities acquire increasing importance. These tools permit scientists to quickly contact people skilled in a specialized field. A question posed properly to the right online scientific community can help in solving difficult problems, often faster than screening literature or writing to publication authors. The growth of active online scientific communities, such as those listed in Table S1, demonstrates how these tools are becoming an important source of support for an increasing number of researchers.
Nevertheless, making proper use of these resources is not easy. Adhering to the social norms of World Wide Web communication—loosely termed “netiquette”—is both important and non-trivial.
In this article, we take inspiration from our experience on Internet-shared scientific knowledge, and from similar documents such as “Asking the Questions the Smart Way” and “Getting Answers”, to provide guidelines and suggestions on how to use online communities to solve scientific problems.
Citation by Citation, New Maps Chart Hot Research and Scholarship’s Hidden Terrain
Imagine a Google Maps of scholarship, a set of tools sophisticated enough to help researchers locate hot research, spot hidden connections to other fields, and even identify new disciplines as they emerge in the sprawling terrain of scholarly communication. Creating new ways to identify and analyze patterns in millions of journal citations, a team led by two biologists, Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin D. West, and a physicist, Martin Rosvall, has set out to build just such a guidance system.
Trapped in disciplinary valleys, surrounded by dense forests of information, researchers have a hard time seeing a lot of scholarship that might be relevant to their work, especially if it’s not published in the places they already know to look. The work of Mr. Bergstrom and his colleagues is a response, they say, to the problem of how to work with an overwhelming and ever-growing amount of information.
