I always feel unwilling. On the one hand, I have been engaged in educational research for four years. I have read more than 1000 papers in a year, and I can't even tell what I am doing. This is ridiculous. On the other hand, when writing a thesis, I often think of "what's the use of writing these things" and want to take this opportunity to think about it; Besides, I don't want to lose too much in front of my girlfriend.
In a word, she asked a good question: What exactly does educational research do? Answering this question can be divided into the following questions: 1) What is educational research studying; 2) How to carry out educational research; 3) How educational research can play its role; 4) What to do after educational research.
To answer this question, I don't make any reference, but simply talk about it in combination with my own learning and scientific research experience. Please point out the mistakes and inaccuracies.
Educational research includes three elements: students, teachers and schools.
Taking students as the research object, including but not limited to educational psychology and learning science, how to learn well and what factors affect students' learning. Nowadays, the frontier field is a frontier discipline formed by the intersection of biological science and educational science, aiming at building a bridge between mind, brain and education.
Study teachers, including but not limited to normal education, teachers' continuing education, teaching theory and curriculum theory, how to train teachers, what is a good teacher and how to carry out teaching.
The research on the school includes but is not limited to school management, learning operation, principal's leadership, the relationship between the school and the outside world, etc.
The above aspects can be subdivided. For example, the study of school management can be subdivided into teacher management, student management, logistics management, teaching management, scientific research management, organization management, management system, management mechanism and management guarantee.
The arrangement and combination of the above three elements can be used to study the internal essence of education and the overall situation in the field of education, and can also be combined with the theory and research of other disciplines for educational research. Research fields related to educational research include but are not limited to educational principles, educational philosophy, higher education, degree and postgraduate education, educational sociology, educational technology, educational economics, global education, comparative education, educational history and vocational education.
You can also study educational activities in specific fields, such as engineering education, cadre education, family education, rural education, urban education, internet education, game education and so on. You can also study education under specific themes, such as sex education, safety education, aesthetic education, moral education and so on.
In addition, pedagogy also includes physical education and psychology, and the research contents of these two disciplines also belong to pedagogy. Broadly speaking, as long as educational activities take place, they will be included in the research scope of pedagogy, such as the five-finger operation method in the game "Peace Elite" and the detailed teaching of the king in the game "the glory of the king".
The research methods of educational research include:
By reading the literature, sort out and summarize what you want (theory, argument, viewpoint, conclusion, etc.). ), organize your own ideas and support your own views.
Teaching methods include situational teaching and immersion teaching, and teaching evaluation methods include formative evaluation and summative evaluation. Theoretical papers should either innovate application scenarios. For example, this teaching method was originally used in mathematics classes, and now I have proved that it can also be used in Chinese classes. Or broaden the practice scene, for example, this teaching evaluation method can only be used in classroom teaching, but I have proved that it can also be used in extracurricular teaching, and the effect is not bad.
For example, quantitative research, by studying the test scores of students in 100 class and whether they sit in the front row, explores whether there is a relationship between sitting in the front row and doing well in the exam; Another example is qualitative research. By interviewing 100 students and sorting out the interview results by qualitative research methods such as grounding theory, this paper explores whether there is a relationship between doing well in the exam and sitting in the front row.
One is indirect and the other is direct.
Policy consultation is a typical application of educational research, such as the reform of enrollment methods in junior and senior high schools, the division of school districts, and the allocation of high-quality educational resources. All this is supported by educational research. This kind of research is generally oriented to the Ministry of Education, or governments and education departments at all levels, and generally includes:
1) as a reference for decision-making, at the national level, such as the enrollment expansion of professional postgraduates, at the school level, such as whether to open a new campus, whether to use the new campus as a centralized teaching area for juniors after opening, whether to move to several colleges, or whether these campuses also have independent enrollment qualifications.
2) As a policy reference, such as the education part in the Outline of the National Medium and Long-term Education Development Plan, China Education Modernization 2035 and the Outline of the National Five-year Plan, there are a lot of efforts of educational researchers.
Others include inductive and introductory articles, such as analyzing the training programs of several schools at the same time and putting forward reference opinions for the construction of training programs of their own schools; Introduce and compare the experience of running schools abroad, and provide reference for the development of their own school activities.
If policy consultation is government-oriented, then educational interpretation is academic and public-oriented. For example, the reform of educational evaluation system, before I engage in educational research, I can only think of the following problems: those who learn water courses get high-scoring scholarships, and those who learn difficult courses get low-scoring scholarships.
However, China has the largest and most complicated education system in the world, and 276 million primary school students, middle school students, college students and students with other academic qualifications have given more than 276 questions, which requires teaching and research workers to make a convincing introduction to this policy based on existing research and their own knowledge, and it is not easy to explain the problems thoroughly and seek the explanation of the greatest common denominator.
For example, you observe why some people can get good grades in a good school without working hard, and some people can't get good grades without working hard. For example, I play the role of some people and others at the same time: I was admitted to a good school in junior high school without much effort, and I was admitted to a good university in high school with a little effort, but I didn't pass the undergraduate course, and I can still do well in the undergraduate course. Why is this? Is this phenomenon an example or a common phenomenon? What factors are related to learning acquisition? Environment? Endowment? What is the content, how much to learn and how difficult is it?
Being able to explain the observed phenomena completely and get the recognition of academic circles is also helpful to solve common problems.
This is easy to understand. For example, sex education, a topic that China people are ashamed to talk about now, is carried out at the level of children, primary school students, middle school students and college students. What teaching methods are more effective? The existing teaching and research articles and teaching methods can play a direct role.
For another example, in educational management activities, ready-made organizational theory combined with managers' own practical experience can eliminate many pits. Teaching evaluation can be modified according to the actual situation on the basis of the existing scale, or it can be used directly.
There are generally two kinds of people engaged in educational research, one is pure researchers, and the other is front-line education practitioners (teachers, educational administrators, etc. There are generally three places to go.
Scientific researchers engaged in educational research generally have strong writing skills and meticulous logical thinking (that is, the ability to justify themselves), and have strong adaptability to government departments.
Schools can carry out both educational activities and educational research, which is the first choice of many educational researchers.
Such as China Academy of Educational Sciences, local institutes of educational sciences and institutes of educational sciences.
Including some consulting companies (McCarthy, Qingta, etc. ), education counseling institutions, large enterprises and universities docking departments (such as Tencent, Xiaomi university docking department).
When I first started studying education, I felt very relaxed, and the academic pressure and course difficulty were two or three times less than those of the undergraduate course. That's it? After entering this field, I found that there are still many things to see, especially when I see that people who have been trained in pedagogy often use Herbart, Newman and Cole. I found that it was not easy to make achievements in the field of pedagogy, and I gradually felt awe and did some research. Up to now, I am confused and even a little bored. My girlfriend asked me a question about educational research. Besides living on it, I also studied these relationships, principles and mechanisms. What is this for? What's the use? You studied it, and others will listen to you?
Of course, I can also come up with such great truths as "useless learning", "sitting on the bench for ten years" and "true learning" to convince myself. These principles should be related to the direct and indirect effects of educational research and the government, schools, scientific research institutions and enterprises to be visited in the future.
Whether it is engineering research or educational research, for me, I may simply feel or enjoy the process of doing research, and feel the joy of making one thing clear and doing one thing. Engineering research may be experiments with different materials. For example, Edison (more likely a graduate student of Edison) tried 1500 kinds of materials, and finally found that tungsten wire can be used as the material of light bulbs. Educational research, a version of the paper is not good, but also in constant iteration, and finally reach a more satisfactory version. The process may be boring, boring, even depressing and painful, but the result is happy and fulfilling. Whether it works or not will be discussed later.
Since you have the opportunity to sit in an ivory tower and talk about food and clothing, why not?