In the breakout group today, we discussed the differences between our articles and the methods used to complete the research. I was in the group that varied in topics and it was very interesting. One article was about social emotional wellness and mindfulness. The reader explained the research used to complete the study. When dealing with a mental process of calming down and grounding the students, I thought it would prove difficult to create a scale or a measurement to obtain statistics on the outcomes. The authors decided to have multiple scales to look at the results. One was looking at anecdotal evidence from the students and interviewing them throughout the study. I found this engaging and it humanized the study. The second was creating a scale to rate the anecdotal evidence into an index to measure the success of the study. Overall, I found the study interesting and opened my eyes to the vast options available to analyse results and make conclusions from.

 

My interest and focus since the beginning of the course that has been developing, is the idea of getting parents more involved in their child’s education through technology. I am still brainstorming the ways that this could happen but the more I look into journal articles and have discussions in class; the idea is starting to flush itself out.

 

The article I looked at for class was about if parent involvement could grow with the implication of communication through text message. The idea is that the teacher could send out group texts about assignments and tests to make the parents aware of what the students should be studying/working on. The study was carried out in a lower social economic area, where access to the Internet and wifi might not always be accessible for families. With text messaging being a communication method that people use regular on a daily basis, I figured that it could have a positive impact on families engagement. The results showed that there was not a significant impact on marks/grades through this process. I was surprised by the findings but I feel that after the group discussion there were valid points to be learned. Irrelevant of the outcomes, a study produces data that is useful that can be used to create a better study or influence another line of work. Another point that we discussed was that even though the general curve did not show progress you can not discount the individuals that were successful with this process. In the study, it outlined students that benefited from the parents becoming more involved with their schooling. This could be a factor of many reasons but overall you must look at the successes and how this can impact future studies moving forward.