Research Planning3

Patterns Frequencies

Times

Spaces

Interactions

Questions How often does this occur? How often does this occur in comparison to that? Does it occur constantly and evenly? Does it occur periodically and in ways? What things occur simultaneously? Do the similar things occur during similar periods, or at similar times of the lesson, day, week, year? What things occur in sequence How are things connected in space? Close or distant? Above or below? Beside our opposite? Crossing or parallel? Inside or outside? On or off? Over or under? What is this acting on? What is this reacting to?

Causes

What are the possible causes of this? What does this cause?

Effects

Is the effect of this to increase or decrease that? To balance or unbalanced that? To change or maintain that? Is this a necessary condition for that to happen as it does? Under what circumstances does this occur?

Conditions

Examples How often do children visit book corner during free choice playtime? How may French vocabulary words taught in class appear in the journal writing of French 1 students? How often do girls than boys seek help during science lab? Who arrives first in class each day and who used last? During what time during the lesson to my students seem most engaged?

Where do the boys sit in class? The girls? The academically successful students? The academically unsuccessful students? Who stays inside for lunch? How does room arrangement enhance or frustrate learning?

To what are students responding when I ask them to write a journal entry about what we have learned today? Do they respond to what they think I want to hear, or to what they are reading? Or to something else? Why do some students do better on tests when they study in groups and others do not? What are some of the possible causes of student misbehavior in my classroom? What are the effects of student participation in school decision-making on their sense of autonomy? What are the effects of interdisciplinary teaming on student sense of belonging? What kinds of control do adolescents need over their environment to feel that their work is meaningful? What are the effects on children, if any, when the teacher engages in sustained silent reading with them? When black, white, and Latino middle school students

Speeds

Does this happen as fast as that?

participate in a multicultural awareness workshop, what are the effects on the ways they socialize in and out of school? Do children who are taught holistically developed at the same speed on reading tests as those taught with phonics only? Does one method of word processing instruction produced faster typists than others?