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?