So I’ve been thinking a bunch about research lately.  I want my students to do more of it; I want to teach it better; I enjoy research myself, most of the time, and I think I’m good at it; it’s difficult, useful, and valuable.  I hope those are sufficient reasons?

Here are some questions that have started my thinking spinning:

1. What is RESEARCH supposed to look like now, in a best-case, standards-based, PARCC-testing, Common Core classroom?  What am I supposed to be aiming for, ultimately?
2. (Will Common Core be around next year?  Is that a change our new Ed Secretary wants to make?)
3. How do we reconcile research the way that old people like me learned it (hard copy journals, sifting through printed articles, lots of notes, annotated bibliographies, decoding professional academic language) and how it happens these days (Okay, Google. . . )?
4. If kids can do their own research, what kind of instruction do they need from content-area teachers?  How can/should I reconstruct my classroom around the idea of “information abundance”?
5. How do I fairly assess products created through research – do students need to focus on finding appropriate resources most of all, or can I instruct and assess both the “search” and the “output”?
6. What types of products are the most effective and most authentic means of helping instruct and assess research skills?  (Should students have total freedom to decide how to “show what they know”?  Should students be expected to create arguments that navigate bias appropriately, including an appropriate recognition of their own?)

I have some answers to this, but I’m finding that my answers tend to produce more questions rather than less.  I’m currently designing an open-ended project for my students that will be built around independent research, and I intend to experiment a little with how I approach this.  Of course, I hope to share some of the results.  More on that soon . . .