Hui Gao

This week’s reading opens my mind about using children’s drawings as an effective research tool. In this article, drawings is used as data to support child-centred research. This paper also facilitates a discussion on the strengths and weakness of using drawing as a research tool. To further illustrate the benefits of using drawings, the authors used a case study in exploring career aspiration of 151 Street Children from Kolkata, India. Children were invited to draw a picture reflecting what person they want to become in the future. Using drawings as data allows children to participate in the research in a fun and relaxing environment where in comparison, interviews may seem to be intimidating for children. It also allows children to express their opinions and feelings with no or minimum literacy skills. This is a very important point as children have been underrepresented through traditional research methods including interviews or questionnaires.  Moreover, drawings  proposes new i

For this week reading, Armstrong’s Master thesis was focused on examining group flow in the middle school mathematics classroom settings. As a school teacher, this topic resinates very well with her own background and work experience.  Using video and audio taping, Armstrong observed how group flow occurred and identified the conditions required to promote a collective learning experience for students. Surprises: While reading this thesis, I noticed that the tone of the paper was mainly written in the first-person narrative which is something I did not expect. In today’s academic world, it seems that there is a strong preference towards quantitative research and using third-person narrative writing style. In addition, the author explained in details why she was interested in this specific topic and illustrated how her research interests were related to her working experience as a math teacher. As a reader, I feel more connected with her stories and her research motivation using firs

For Kwesi: • Were interviews conducted in English or in their native language? If in their native language, did you translate the content for transcribing purpose and during the data analysis process, were there any linguistic challenges or barriers in translating certain concepts originated in the native language? • How would the conceptual framework of Africanity contribute to your Master’s research?  For Diana: • You mentioned that your research field is still dominated by quantitative research methodology. What are some of the factors which my create or reinforce this phenomena?  • What are some of the limitations or things to keep in mind when using auto ethnography methodology? 

This week, I listened to a short interview of having Dr. Wade Davis talk about his new book “The Serpent and the Rainbow on CBC radio with Peter Gzowski. The interesting story is about how modern medicine and cultural belief relate to the creation of Haitian “zombies”. Reflection from the transcribing activity, I feel that it was difficult to be focused on transcribing the questions only during my first few attempts. My attention was easily taken away by the interview content. During this interview, the setting seems to be quite informal although it was broadcasted on national radio channel. The interview was not conducted with a well structured framework; instead, it was more like having a daily conversation between two individuals. The interviewer, Peter Gzowski did not rely heavily on questions with open or close ended questions. In fact, he asked the interviewee, Dr. Davis to describe information with statements. For example, he used “Given me an example of…..”. By using this t

Below, please find three questions we would like to ask Dr. Urueta to elaborate further regarding her research: 1. What are the p ractice implications of her research to be applied in children education? (i.e.: for policy makers to review the effectiveness of garden-learning methods) 2. As a researcher,  what will you do when you discover a new theme originated from the interview data or something you missed when you design your first set of interview questions? 3. How cultural identities of the students play a role in fostering their understanding about healthy food and nutrition? Is this something she acknowledged when interpreting her data or something to be investigated separately via a different research Garden Based Learning – Dr.  Tathali Urueta

I am studying the transitional experiences of domestic undergraduate students at Simon Fraser University who are admitted  from the international pathway programs because I want to find out what are the unique but unmet needs of those students during their transitioning into a Canadian post-secondary institution, in order to better understand why the existing new student orientation program fails to provide sufficient transitional support and services to this student group so that we will know more how to develop a specific orientation program for them aiming to offer positive learning experiences and improve student persistence from an institutional point of view.