Weekly Reflections On Lectures

EDUF 4044
Reading and Designing Research

Fria (Rong) Fan 311149677

Contents:
Week 1 Reflection----------------------------------------------------------3
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Week 3 Reflection----------------------------------------------------------5

Week 4 Reflection----------------------------------------------------------7

Reference List --------------------------------------------------------------9

Week 1 Reflection

The first lecture of this week presented the idea that the Education Ministerial Advisory
Group defines world's best practices in teacher education are based on pedagogical
approaches, subject content knowledge as well as professional experiences (Proctor,
2014).These three approaches are important to pre-service teachers, as real classrooms are
always more diverse than expectations, in order to cater for various situations of teaching,
teachers should always think about effective teaching practices. According to NSW
professional teaching standards, teachers at professional competence level should know their
subject content and how to teach, which requires teachers to apply effective pedagogies and
teaching content through teaching experiences (NSW Institute of teachers, 2011). During my
previous practicum, I had to know my teaching contents well, apply different teaching
methods and activities and always reflect from each lesson. Real classroom teaching
experiences provided me a different taste from research-based and theoretical studies of
teaching.

On the other hand, during my practicum, before I came to the schools that I would be
teaching, I used "MySchool website" to look for extra pieces of information. MySchool
website provides me not only the general school information about the school, but also the
factual results of NAPLAN. During lecture 2 of this week, I understood that the ICSEA refers
to the index of community socio-educational advantage and it is based on the data which was
collected from students' parents of the target schools (Proctor, 2014). Moreover, the
significance of ICSEA is to contextualize the NAPLAN results in relation to its social and
cultural capital of parents' occupation and educational levels (Campbell & Proctor, 2014), it
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enables fair comparisons of performance of students' literacy and numeracy skills with similar
backgrounds. From collected data and statistical information of ICSEA, school and teachers
could monitor students' performance and work out updated teaching programs and
adjustments, it is easier for parents to understand schools' entire performance when compare
with students from similar backgrounds (ACARA, 2012). Overall, I think the development of
applying ICSEA has made MySchool website's information more reliable and significant.

Reference List:

Campbell, C. and Proctor, H. (2014). A history of Australian Schooling (Chapter 8 The

Present and FutureSchool pp. 248-270). Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Professional Teaching Standards. (n.d.). NSW Professional Teaching Standards. Retrieved
August 03, 2014, from http://www.nswteachers.nsw.edu.au/Main-Professional-TeachingStandards/nsw-professional-teaching-standards/
Proctor, H. (July, 2014). Introduction to EDUF 4044.Lecture conducted from University of
Sydney, Sydney.
Proctor, H. (August, 2014). Using the MySchool website for Assessment 2 and other
purposes. Lecture conducted from University of Sydney.

Week 3 Reflection
The first lecture of this week was about the research findings on affinity spaces, where affinity
spaces refer to those virtual or physical spaces for people to interact around common interest
(Gee, 2004). During the lecture, I agree with the two characteristics of affinity spaces, those
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spaces are multimodal with various types of productions and writers would thrive on having
self-confidence and public audience for creating work (Kress, 2003, p.170). I have been to
some of the fandom websites of a famous idol group, where majority of those websites do
have valuable resources for readers to share and post any critical comments or thinking. Thus,
as teachers, we need to focus on how could we engage students towards digital learning and
help them to develop literacy, summary, synthesis skills and etc. by implicating these online
tools. (Scott Curwood, J., Magnifico, A.M. & Lammers, J.C., 2013). One of the advantages
for writers and audiences to use these affinity spaces is that readers usually post their thoughts
about the work created by authors and contribute some interactive discussions relate to the
topic.

On the other hand, the lecture on Thursday was about how could we evaluate research
through three main perspectives: validity to see it if is meaningful, reliability as consistency of
the progress and transparency which refers to how the research is reported (Scott Curwood,
2014). During the lecture, we were evaluating the research Does television cause autism.
Actually the research was conducted by looking at data collected from three states in US with
high precipitation variability based on hypothesis. My personal critique towards this research
is that it is not internal valid as it could barely explain the relevance between investigated
subject and phenomenon (Liu, 2013). Therefore, by using these principles to evaluate
research, we could easily figure out the weaknesses and improve the research per se based on
the critiques. Improvements on literacies are always built upon continuous critical thinking,
interactions and reflections, it is necessary for educators to evaluate relevant research and
ultimately formulate better developments of educational standards.

Reference List:
Gee, J. P. (2004). Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling. New
York, NY: Routledge.
Kress, Gunther. 2003. Literacy in the New Media Age. London: Routledge.
Liu, X. 2013. Social research and Science. Shanghai: Fudan.
Scott Curwood, J., Magnifico, A. M. & Lammers, J. C. (2013) Writing in the Wild Writers
motivation in fan-based affinity spaces, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literary, 56(8): 677-85
Scott Curwood, J. (August, 2014). Learning in online affinity spaces. Lecture conducted from
University of Sydney, Sydney.
Wilson, R. (August, 2014). Reading and evaluating research. Lecture conducted from
University of Sydney, Sydney.

Week 4 Reflection
The first of this week has introduced the value and significance of educational research, and
outlined that any questions raised by the researches are to drawing something from one to
another, which could be underpinned with researchers' own practical, personal, professional
interests (Morrison, 2002). I agree with the idea that, the questions that researchers raised in
the research always accompany with some underlined concepts. To a certain phenomenon,
participants of the research appear to perceive the phenomenon by linking to their own
understandings. Brown and Dowling also suggest that, the educational research itself equals
an attitude towards educational phenomena which involves an investigating process or
activity (Brown and Dowling, 1998).

Moreover, the second lecture introduced that there are many factors influences the
observation process of a certain research, which includes researchers' perception of gender,
race, class, disability and etc, as well as their own places in the world. When researchers
going to the field to observe certain things, they will bring in their own views, and it shapers
an ontological position (Jones & Somekh, 2005). For example, when I watched the video clip
at the beginning of the lecture, I thought that the classroom in the video was in chaos and
messy, lack of classroom management, however, the perception and the ways of seeing the
same scene may varies by another person according to their own knowledge.

It implies that when researchers look at the classroom practice as data sources, they need to
choose a relevant type of inquiry, which could be natural science, social science or cultural
science (Hayes, 2014). Each type of enquiry has different objects, appropriate methodologies
to be used as well as the corresponding methods to collect data. Though it is challenging to
choose a certain type of enquired to be conducted with certain methods (Morrison, 2002), it is
therefore necessary for researchers to consider the value of epistemology, ontology or
methodology according to significance of how will be the research result being used.

Reference List:
Hayes, D. (August, 2014). Making sense of what happens in the classroom. Lecture
conducted from University of Sydney, Sydney.
Jones, L. & Somekh, B (2005) 'Observation', in B., Somekh & C. Lewin (eds) Research
Methods in the Social Sciences, London: Sage Publications, pp.138-145.
Morrison, M. (2002). What do we mean by educational research. Research methods in
educational leadership and management, 3-27.

Reference List:
Campbell, C. and Proctor, H. (2014). A history of Australian Schooling (Chapter 8 The
Present and FutureSchool pp. 248-270). Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Gee, J. P. (2004). Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling. New
York, NY: Routledge.
Hayes, D. (August, 2014). Making sense of what happens in the classroom. Lecture
conducted from University of Sydney, Sydney.
Jones, L. & Somekh, B (2005) 'Observation', in B., Somekh & C. Lewin (eds) Research
Methods in the Social Sciences, London: Sage Publications, pp.138-145.
Kress, Gunther. 2003. Literacy in the New Media Age. London: Routledge.
Liu, X. 2013. Social research and Science. Shanghai: Fudan.
Morrison, M. (2002). What do we mean by educational research. Research methods in
educational leadership and management, 3-27.
Proctor, H. (July, 2014). Introduction to EDUF 4044.Lecture conducted from University of
Sydney, Sydney.
Proctor, H. (August, 2014). Using the MySchool website for Assessment 2 and other
purposes. Lecture conducted from University of Sydney.
Professional Teaching Standards. (n.d.). NSW Professional Teaching Standards. Retrieved
August 03, 2014, from http://www.nswteachers.nsw.edu.au/Main-Professional-TeachingStandards/nsw-professional-teaching-standards/
Scott Curwood, J., Magnifico, A. M. & Lammers, J. C. (2013) Writing in the Wild Writers
motivation in fan-based affinity spaces, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literary, 56(8): 677-85
Scott Curwood, J. (August, 2014). Learning in online affinity spaces. Lecture conducted from
University of Sydney, Sydney.
Wilson, R. (August, 2014). Reading and evaluating research. Lecture conducted from
University of Sydney, Sydney.
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