Problem: Assume you are in charge of a school. All your classrooms are overcrowded; your students are spilling into portables; your teachers are underpaid, overworked, and unhappy about working conditions; parents are upset; and the mandated, standardized test scores of your students are plummeting at an exponential rate. In short, you have a problem that needs a solution. Using the eight characteristics of research as paragraph headings, formulate a research plan that might help you find at least one solution to your problem.
The purpose of this project is to give you some practice in applying each of the eight characteristics to a problem in a simplified manner. Your response should not be a detailed and exhaustive discussion of the problem. As a guideline, you should not write more than one or two paragraphs per characteristic.
Write a question that would promote research on this problem.
a. As clearly and concisely as possible, articulate a goal for a solution to this problem.
b. Write a detailed research plan of procedure for the goal you have articulated above.
c. Divide the principle problem into manageable sub-problems.
d. Using your responses to the previous questions, formulate a specific research problem, question, or hypothesis.
e. List as many of the critical assumptions made by your research as possible.
f. Describe your plan for selecting and interpreting data in an attempt to solve the initial problem.
g. Describe how your research proves or disproves your hypothesis. In addition, list any additional research avenues created by researching the original problem.