Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Meaning of Inquiry
John Dewey’s theory of connected experiences for exploratory and reflective thinking
Lev Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
Stresses on the essence of provocation and scaffolding in learning
Jerome Bruner’s theory
Learners’ varied world perceptions for their own interpretative thinking of people and things around them
(Small 2012)
Meaning of Research
Research is a process of executing various mental acts for discovering and examining facts and information to prove the
accuracy or truthfulness of your claims or conclusions about the topic of your research. Research requires you to inquire or
investigate about your chosen research topic by asking questions that will make engage yourself in top-level thinking
strategies of interpreting, analyzing, synthesizing, criticizing, appreciating, or creating to enable you to discover truths about
the many things you tend to wonder about the topic of your research work. (Litchman 2013)
Characteristics of Research
Purposes of Research
Types of Research
Approaches of Research
1. Scientific or Positive Approach-it allows control of variable and the data gathering techniques are
structured interviews, questionnaires, and observational checklist. It is applicable in a quantitative research.
2. Naturalistic Approach- an approach happens in a natural setting and talks about how people understand the
world and their perceptions or point of view. It is use in a qualitative research
3. Triangulation or Mixed Method- is a combination of scientific and naturalistic approach, and triangulation
give opportunity to view different perspectives or angles of research.
A type of research that puts premium or high value on people’s thinking or point of view conditioned by their personal traits.
As such, it usually takes place in soft sciences like social sciences, politics, economics, humanities, education, psychology,
nursing and all business-related subjects.
1. Case study-it seeks to find answers to why such things occurs to a subject.
2. Ethnography- a study of a particular group of people (culture or context)
3. Phenomenology- study of how people finds the experience meaningful
4. Content and Discourse Analysis- examination of the content (e.g. books, letters, journals, photos, video
recordings, SMS, online messages, emails, audio-video materials, etc.)
5. Historical Analysis- examination of primary documents to make you understand the connection of the past events
to the present times.
6. Grounded Theory- discover a theory or explanation behind an event that takes place.
1. It adopts a naturalistic approach to its subject matter, which means that those involve in the research understand
things based on what they find meaningful.
2. It promotes a full understanding of human behavior or personality traits in their natural setting.
3. It is instrumental for positive societal changes.
4. It engenders respect for people’s individuality as it demands the researcher’s careful and attentive stand toward
people’s world views.
5. It is a way of understanding and interpreting social interactions.
6. It increases the researcher’s interest in the study as it includes the researcher’s experience or background
knowledge in interpreting verbal and visual data
7. It offers multiple ways of acquiring and examining knowledge about something
Soft Sciences (Social Sciences, Politics, Economics, Humanities, Education, Psychology, Nursing and all business-related
subjects)
1. Interest in the subject matter- your interest in the subject motivates you to investigate about the topic with
enthusiasm and energy.
2. Availability of information-see to it the availability of the reading materials related to your topics
3. Timeliness and relevance of the topic-it should be an instrumental to positive societal change, unless it is a
pure or historical research
4. Limitations on the subject- in case you have no freedom to choose a topic beyond your subject as compliance
5. Personal Resources- assess your research abilities in terms of your financial standing, health condition, mental
capacity, needed facilities, and time allotment to complete the research.
Spend time getting background knowledge about the problem that triggered off your research topic to discover its relation
to what the world, particularly the experts, professionals, and learned people know about your topic. Also, reading for rich
background ideas about the problem is also another way to discover some theories or principles to support your study.
(Braun 2014; Woodwell 2014)
Research Questions
Research Problem: The need to have a safer, comfortable, and healthful walk or transfer of students from place to place
in the UST campus
General Question: What kind of covered path should UST construct in its campus?
Specific Questions:
1. What materials are needed for the construction of the covered pathway in the UST campus?
2. What roofing material is appropriate for the covered path?
3. In what way can the covered pathway link all buildings in the campus?
4. What is the width and height of the covered path?
5. How can the covered path realize green architecture?
1. Establish a clear relation between the research questions and the problem or topic.
2. Create a research question based on the alignment with what the world already knows.
3. Formulate research questions that can arouse your curiosity and surprise you with the discoveries or findings.
4. State your research questions in such a way that they include all dependent and independent variables referred to
by the theories, principles, or concepts underlying your research work.
5. Let the set of research questions or sub-problems be preceded by one question expressing the main problem of
the research.
6. Avoid asking research questions that are answerable with “yes” or “no” and use the “how” questions only in a
quantitative research,
7. Apply SMART (Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bounded)
Literature is an oral or written record of a man’s significant experiences that are artistically conveyed in a prosaic manner.
Embodied in any literary work like essay, novel, journal, story, biography, etc. are man’s best thoughts and feelings about
the world. These recorded or preserved world perceptions of a man are expressed directly and indirectly. Direct expressions
of man’s knowledge of the world are in books, periodicals, and online reading materials. Indirect expressions are his
inferences or reflections of his surroundings that are not written or spoken at all. (Ridley 2012)
A review of related literature is an analysis of man’s written or spoken knowledge of the world. (Wallman 2014)
Traditional Review- the structure of the summary resembles that of an essay where series of united sentences presents
the RRL results.
This is the stage of review of related literature where you devote much of your time looking for sources of knowledge,
data, or information to answer your research questions or to support your assumptions about your research topic.
(Baraceros 2016)
There are three basic types of literature sources:
General References- will direct you to the location of other sources
Primary Sources- will directly report or present’s a person’s own experiences
Secondary Sources- internet, books, peer-reviewed articles in journals, published literary, thesis, dissertations, leaflets,
posters and other library materials
Reading, understanding, or making the materials meaningful to you is what will preoccupy you on the second stage of
reading RRL. Reading or making sense of the source materials does not only make you list down ideas from the
materials, but also permits you to modify, construct, or reconstruct ideas based on a certain principle, theory, pattern,
method, or theme underlying your research. (Baraceros 2016)
Dump or Stringing Method- transfer or listing of writer’s ideas that is devoid of or not reflective of your thinking.
Juxtaposing- dealing with studies with respect to each other is your way of proving the extent of the validity of the findings
of previous studies vis-à-vis the recent ones.
Opening an article with a bibliographical list that begins with the author’s name is not good like the following examples:
Transitional Devices such as also, additionally, again, similarly, a similar opinion, however, conversely, on the other
hand, nevertheless, a contrasting opinion, a different approach, etc.
Active Verbs such as analyze, conclude, criticize, debate, defend, define, demonstrate, discuss, distinguish, differentiate,
evaluate, examine, expand, explain, exhibit, identify, illustrate, imply, indicate, judge, justify, narrate, outline, persuade,
propose, question, relate to, report, review, suggest, summarize.