How Things Work - Doha Academy of Tertiary Studies

Stating the Problem 79
an evaluative study, looking to see whether the workshop is of high quality.
Or it could be a study of the homogeneity of teachers needed to make
the workshop operate well. (For example, are there problems combining
primary and secondary school participants, library assistants, and experienced
librarians in the same sessions?)
Initially Marie wanted to find out those things about her own part
of the workshop, thus to do an action research study (Chapter 9). But
then she decided she wanted to study the workshop as a whole.
Let us say that Marie, a librarian herself, first identifies three research
questions. Read them carefully. (I should tell you how to read?)
Are there conflicting beliefs among the participating librarians
about project-based learning?
Are there competing rationales for helping students with web-based
projects?
What coaching skills do these participating librarians bring to the
workshop?
Reading them carefully, we see that Marie’s questions are about the participants
but not about the workshop itself. If she were to gather data on
just these questions, it could be good but not a clear step to make the
workshop the thing studied. And it might be too small a study to satisfy
a curious reader. Those are three good questions, but unless Marie finds
out more to report about the workshop, it probably will not be a good
study.
You might say she should just change her focus from workshop to
participants. But let’s say that Marie wants especially to understand the
pedagogy and curriculum of the workshop. For her, the workshop is the
thing. She wants to know how this thing works in its situation.
So what are the ordinary things for Marie to find out? Most readers
will be curious about the agenda, about the personal experiences, about
the sponsors of the workshop, the financial considerations, social opportunities,
and of course about the faculty. Most would like to know about
the context or situation in which the workshop occurs. These seem to
be good topics to consider in the study. But if each of the topics were
dug into, she probably would have too big a study, a study too timeconsuming
to accomplish and too voluminous to read. (Don’t we promote
ourselves as curious inquirers and our readers as bright but busy
people? Not always realistic, of course.) So Marie decides that her main
research question should be: