Stephanie Passino, Hayfield Secondary School, Hawks Writing Center Director
Once you have an idea for your proposal, you will need to conduct research. Many students tend to choose topics they have personal experience with from the work they do in their center. This is a great place to start! I’ve provided some guiding questions to get you started along with some suggestions for how to conduct reliable inquiry.
How can you conduct research on your own center to help you answer your research question?
You will need to consider a few items:
- Who will need to be involved?
- Tutors, tutees, directors, administrators, teachers, community members, etc.
- What type of information are you hoping to discover?
- Quantitative or qualitative
- How will you collect your data?
- Survey/questionnaire – electronic or hard copy
- Interview
Items to keep in mind when collecting your data:
- You will need to have a distinct sample size – consider what it truly representative of your center, school, staff, etc. You will want to include demographics in your data that represent your school. This will vary by school.
- Timing – will you collect data during the school day? Which classes/students will you target? Be sure to distribute your means of collecting data in a timely fashion.
- When creating a survey, questionnaire or interview questions, use neutral language. Be sure to write non-leading questions by avoiding words with positive/negative connotations.
- Comparison point – Would it be helpful to enquiry about other writing centers and their procedures? How can this be done?
Best of luck with your research! Feel free to email me with any questions at SLPassino@fcps.edu.