As I plan to do my research in a K-12 setting, I anticipate that I may have ethical issues surrounding the students that I will be working with.  How can I be sure that my research will "do no harm" to students that will be involved?  There's no way to really no how each participant is going to react to the research. 

 I suspect that I will form relationships with the students in my research as well as the individual teachers.  My research could help me build stronger relationships with teachers on my own staff if I use them.  I may form relationships with other educational leaders as I talk with them.  I'm not as worried about relationships with teachers and administrators.  I worry more about relationships that could form with students.  I'm not in a position to really be friends with students or their parents.  I think I would have to make some tough decisions about whether I would do my research at my home school or at another site.  


If I could speak to Benjamin, I would want to know if he succeeded in passing the GED.  I would ask him if he decided to follow his plan and go into the military?  I would ask him what advice he had for other kids who were thinking about dropping out or who were struggling in school?  I would ask him if he could go back and change anything and do anything differently, would he?






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I can write well, especially for work related documents.  I struggle with personal writing.  I often find it hard to get started.  I sometimes rely on others to get me started.  I want to be able to start without help and write that "shitty first draft."  I like getting the idea of getting into a groove and just vomiting all over the page with my words.  I edit other's work really well.  I'm not as good at editing my own work.  I think it has to do with my own biases and narcissism about my writing.   Who doesn't think they write well!

I don't have a solid definition yet - but here's my thoughts:  Good Research should answer some questions about the issue being discussed but it should also leave the reader with more questions.  Good Research should bring change either to a Reader's perspective or even to how a reader does something in life.  Good Research should have a balance of quantitative and qualitative data.  Good Research should affect the well-being of a person or people.  I don't think good research is black and white.  I'm not sure I'm making any sense yet.  I want to be able to answer to this question more intelligibly eventually!  I don't think I know enough yet to make sense!

I'm intrigued by this class.  I look forward to learning about myself and my scholarly profile.  I'm interested in learning about good research.  I hope to improve my scholarly writing skills.  I am very excited to create my website and begin blogging.  I can't wait to see how my style/personality/thoughts evolve over time in this program.  The research portfolio is going to be a great project.  I am looking forward to laying out my Doctoral Program and seeing my roadmap for the next few years.  I don't know yet where my research will be going so it will be interesting to see how that evolves in this class.  Picking a theory to guide my research is daunting but I look forward to the challenge of it. It will be interesting to review the different theories and see what lights up for me.