Research Methods In Education

Having to come up with a research question is quite a challenging task. This is due to the considerations one has to make in order to ensure that the topic and research questions are of relevance. Indeed it is not an easy ordeal as a student regardless of the level of study. The challenge becomes more compounded when you have to come up with not one but two questions indeed you have to stay sane throughout the process despite it being a challenge through every step to the end.

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Every detail that is expressed in a research paper is built upon the question you come up if at all you have difficulty with coming up with the research questions then the following steps of the research might prove to be a nightmare. The opposite is also very true, if the research questions are interesting then the process of looking for the answers will be quite interesting too. Unless you figure out the basic focus of the questions you need to answer then you cannot make any progress.

To start off with my research process I figured out from which topic I would get the two questions. In the beginning it did not seem like a challenge after all questions confront us all around us in our day to day lives. I decided to base my research on two questions based on integration of the people with special needs in our society specifically people with deafness and the people with visual impairment. My research questions were, are the people with multiple disabilities such as the deaf-blind capable of acquiring education in a formal school set up? The second question of course had to be related to the first one and it was, does any type of disability interfere with the cognitive ability of a person?

In order to come up with the answers for these questions then I had to have a detailed plan of where to specifically obtain the correct answers from. First of all the two questions are hard. The reason for saying this was because to obtain the answers I would require to set aside quite a number of hours, money to conduct the research and purchase the materials I needed. For a moment I had thought of scrapping the two questions and coming up with new questions because they seemed quite resource intensive. Also the field of the disabled has a lot of literature and having to identify an area that has not been researched on was as difficult as nothing I had ever experienced before in my life. These questions in the first place were outside my class theory but the extensive reading and personal interest remained as my main motivation.

I scanned through almost all the material that would come my way as much as it touched on the field of people with disabilities. It came to a point where I thought I would never get to find the answers to these questions. Many are the times when I wondered whether they were valid or rather it was a topic worth researching on. On the same line I thought of how finding the answers would be like if obtaining the questions was this hard but in the end I was a living testimony to the words where there is a will there is a way. I already had the answers and now it was time to collect the answers.

Looking for the Answers

After I was done with the process of getting the questions now it was time to get down to the real issue which was obtaining the answers. The first step to getting the answers was being able to understand that the questions I had come up were qualitative in nature and therefore this would dictate the methodology of where to get the answers. With this answer of the type of question I was dealing with I now had to think of places of sources that I would get the answers I needed.

First of all I am aware of the fact that I am not good in making mathematical analysis or computations and probably this might have been the reason I decided to focus on a topic like this. The first process of trying to predict the answers for these questions was by studying literature that concerns itself with behavior of learning that is otherwise referred to as the psychology of learning to establish whether the visual and auditory senses were in any way connected to the cognitive aspects of learning.

The stage was heading out to the schools for the people with special needs, these are the people who would offer me the first hand information this being a qualitative research. While there I interviewed the teachers on whether the learning for the people with both hearing and visual impairment was possible. For a moment I had to be honest about my abilities by asking myself whether that was what the study demanded. I understood it required more than just the interview aspect for instance I needed to involve psychologists and medical practitioners but this kind of formulation of a research team demanded a lot of finances.

The interesting aspect in my quest to find the answers was the fact that I was able to gain more information from the sources I was inquiring my answers as they veered off my topic questions once in a while and informed me of what I had actually not enquired from them. The challenge however which was my coldest moment was when I sought to interview a learner with hearing impairment. Communication became a real challenge because I personally had never acquired sign language. The teacher whom I thought would be of assistance as an interpreter declined to assist and in the end I did not get to interview any of the learners.

At the end of the .process the task was quite challenging but I was able to gain much knowledge and acquire information that was relevant to get to answer my questions. The steps to acquiring these answers were from interviews, to small group discussions and finally being able to move rejection in form of failure of some respondents to cooperate. In the end I was happy I had acquired what I needed to complete the task.

Works cited

Breakwell, Glynis M, Sean Hammond, and Chris Fife-Schaw. Research Methods In Psychology. London: Sage Publications, 1995. Print.

Creswell, John W, and Vicki L Plano Clark. Designing And Conducting Mixed Methods Research. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Publications, 2007. Print.

Cohen, Louis, Lawrence Manion, and Keith Morrison. Research Methods In Education. London: RoutledgeFalmer, 2003. Print.