Concepts: Guiding questions
As I continue to work through the curriculum, I am gaining a better understanding of how to scaffold conceptual understanding for my students. I originally thought that word walls were the answer. They definitely help, but they assume that the students understand the concepts in the first place and, more importantly, why they are important. So, I took a step back, and I asked students, What questions should you ask about a study when we talk about bias? Or causality? This led to lights going on.
Below you will see the questions that my students and I came up with as a result of this activity. The questions were generated in groups after reading Bandura's Bashing Bobo study. I added the final questions for each concept. I have put those questions in italics. When I give my students their next Paper 2, Question B (and their first Paper 1, Question C), I plan on projecting these questions for them.
Bias
- Did the way that sample was chosen potentially introduce bias?
- Could there be participant biases?
- Could the researcher's biases have influenced the findings?
- How might the culture of the participants have biased the study?
- How might attrition bias have influenced the study's findings?
Causality
- Does the study have high ecological validity?
- Is it a longitudinal or cross-sectional study?
- Is the study a true experiment?
- How well is it controlled for extraneous variables?
- Are there alternative explanations?
- Does the study measure a variable "before" and "after" something? A pre-test/post-test design? (Temporal precedence)
- Is there a temporal gap? How much time is there between the manipulation of the variable and the observed behavior?
Measurement
- What type of data was collected? Anecdotal, empirical, physiological, self-reported?
- What tools were used for measurement? How might the choice of tools influence the findings?
- Are we measuring what we think we are measuring?
- Is it possible to replicate the study to see if it is reliable?
- Is the measurement subjective or objective?
Responsibility
- Were participants protected from physical or psychological harm?
- Did participants fully understand what they were agreeing to?
- Could participants feel coerced or pressured to continue?
- Could the findings be misused or cause harm to certain groups?
- Was the research socially beneficial enough to justify the risks?