Some definitions

When it comes to defining terms within research, there are lots of definitions out there. We’re going to put forth some definitions that we can use so that we know we are all starting from the same place. Then, throughout the term, you can alter these as your knowledge and understanding grows.

These are starting places to ensure that we are all talking about the same thing and gives you a place to start as you grown into your views, which you should by all means do. And to be clear, these are my own interpretations of these terms. You’re gonna have to find your own this term (and in your careers) and more importantly, be able to describe and explain them in use.

Research

IRB: a systematic investigation including research development, testing and evaluation designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge.

Generalizable – the results are generalizable means that they can be applied to other contexts; similar situations that are slightly different.  Such as these results can be generalized across current middle schoolers in public schools in California.  Meta work can put studies together to try to make something generalizable. Writing and comm people would like more of this.

Melonçon: Working definition of research – “research as a systematic iterative investigation that answers a curiosity, question, problem, or issue, and contributes to your field’s or disciplines’s knowledge.”

Methodology

I have defined methodology in two related ways. First with J. Blake Scott (2018), we described methodologies as “multidimensional, value-laden frameworks for approaching, studying, and making sense of phenomena” (p.1), and with Kirk St.Amant (2019), we took methodology “to mean the ideological or disciplinary approach to the broad practice of the work of research,” (p. 131). Thus, I embrace an ideological definition of methodology in which what a researcher thinks about the world informs their perspective on the object of study and what can be known about it. This philosophy underpins decisions about how to study the object, or methods, which in turn are enacted as practices that describe how the study actually is accomplished

Methodology is closely linked with theory (at least it is for many people.) We will talk about that relationship as the term progresses.

Method

The way that you choose to gather your data. See this proposed methods schema for more information.

Practice

Formally, I have defined practice  “to mean the actual work and implementation of methods and methodology in the process of performing research” (Melonçon & St.Amant, 2019, p.131). Said another way, practice is the performance of research – boots on the ground, butt in chair, work in motion of research. Practice most often will be messy and include things going wrong and decisions that need to made in the moment to figure out how to keep the project moving forward.

As a final note to remember when it comes to research.

No research is free from bias. NO research is wholly objective. This is why we need to approach all research with a critical eye to unsettling our own bias and the structural inequities and injustice that impact research. We also have to keep an eye on what the research does. it’s ok if its academic or theoretical, but it needs to do something and it needs to build from existing conversations in the literature.