The wonderful thing about a scientific experiment is that it never fails. It simply shows you, by trail and error, that this trial did not work. That is not failure but success of the most Polyannaesque sort. Though it doesn’t necessarily feel like success.
The study that has absorbed the past three months of my life appears to be firmly on Polyanna’s Success Steamboat. With the data now gathered, triangulated and meticulously analysed, I am discovering that I am not conclusively able to prove that which I so confidently set out to: that context exerts a significant influence over students’ learning styles. It seems so obvious, looking at the shared strengths and weaknesses, the common behaviours, the same mistakes made year after year… and yet my data refuse to confirm it in three out of four categories. So what I have been able to prove is simply that although there are some shared preferences among Omani Foundation Year program students, the influence of context on learning style appears to be limited, and moreover, years of observation do not necessarily yield the same truth as a triangulated study of students’ own views.
So basically, my whole conceptual apple-cart is overturned, and while bravely preparing the first draft of my study for submission, I fluctuate between certainty that it is gold and conviction that it is garbage, secretly doubting the measurability of the unfathomable human mind.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Albert Einstein once said :if the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts" Maybe the way you measure it is just wrong, not what you see with your students.
Now there's a point. It is very likely that the measurement instruments might be rickety as well, since I have precious little research background... And then the facts, in the humanties, are usually theories... and often do change!
Post a Comment