The problem with working students

It’s been a while since I blogged because it’s been a while since I thought about my research.

And that, I think, is precisely the problem with working students — which applies to most of the population of graduate students anyway.  We can’t just think about our studies and nothing else.   It takes an entirely different mode to think deeply about teacher beliefs compared to my day job of running a school.  True, the two can feed on each other — as I sure hope they will — but the stage in my life does not have enough room for both the scholar and the practitioner to share the limelight.

So what happens is that given the daily rush of things, the non-stop series of concerns and things that crop up the way they do in the real world, the scholar is elbowed back to the wings, waiting for his chance to be summoned on stage.  The practitioner does his thing, and only when there’s a lull — like a holiday like today — does he concede to bow out and give the floor to the scholar.

Second Thoughts and What If’s…

It ain’t over.  Just when I thought I’ve had enough of it, here I go again, having second thoughts about my research design.  As it is, there are three parts to my data gathering:

(a) I’ll use a survey to determine someone’s epistemological orientation in the six judgment domains (nominal scale).

(b) Then I have a Likert scale to measure religious beliefs, values, and practices.

(c) Finally, I’ll do a semi-structured interview to determine ontology, fallibility, and decidability.