starting strong with research – the how

I recently wrote about why starting strong is crucial to starting writing projects in memoir and in research. I then wrote briefly about how I go about that with memoir.

I teach research skills to folks ranging from 6^th graders to mid-career educators, and I have found one thing to be true across all kinds of students. The topic or research question you choose is the anchor that grounds your entire research journey. Interrogating a young researcher’s motivation behind their chosen research question can be the hardest of all conversations. Young researchers often want to push for speed and progress and rush into choosing a topic because they believe that topic selection isn’t even part of the process – it’s a prerequisite.

That’s not how I see it – I think there are many important stages before finalizing a research topic. There are, off the top of my head, the following lesson objectives:

1. Understanding the research cycle
2. Understanding feasibility
3. Reflection and figuring out a passion/purpose
4. Understanding expertise/positionality
5. Conducting a preliminary literature review and identifying a gap in the literature
6. Looking at an issue from multiple angles and multiple lesnses
7. Understanding what research can do?
8. Understanding methods
9. Understanding epistemology
10. Understanding theoretical study versus empirical

These are 10 teaching points I think precede the finalization of a research topic.

I insist, then, in my research mentorship work, that young researchers set aside the topic that they have in their head or are already ‘sure’ that they want to pursue. We step back and learn about the foundations and principles of research while still making sure that students feel momentum and progress with their research projects. In future blog posts, I will outline each of these lesson objectives – what I hope to achieve, why I teach it, what I assign, and how I approach the topic in classrooms and in one-on-one teaching.