This is a question that has been going around my head for a long time even before I started my thesis project. The very first suggestions I got from my teachers and graduated partners was to start my research as soon as possible, to work on it since 7th or 8th semester. However, that was not my case.
I fell in love with a reading teaching technique called “Tucker Signing”. I had been reading and researching about it since I was in 5th semester, I even bought the book in the U.S. I based all my preliminary project on it. Readings, the research question, the hypothesis, the theoretical framework and literature review, and I even planned a possible pedagogical intervention. Tucker Signing was about teaching pronunciation and reading to children. I saw how impactful the results were in several classrooms and I wanted it to become something teachers could use in schools to teach English in Colombia.
Little did I know how ambitious that dream was. It wasn’t because of the idea of spreading the word, but because of the population and time it would have taken for me to carry out the whole concept and collecting data from teaching it. I needed a group of children for at least a year of two hour classes twice a week, which was impossible at the time because I had neither the group of children (I wasn’t allowed to research at the school I did my practicum) neither the time needed for it to be completed. This is how the dreamful 9th semester pre- service teacher me, was left out without another choice but to change basically all the research topic.
This was a time of struggle for me, I was working, doing my practicum, and trying to figure out life and how to graduate, basically. It was all stressful and I felt lost because I thought I had spent almost 2 years on this topic and at the end it wasn’t meant to be.
One day, scrolling down on fb (not procrastinating, just reading UNICA’s news) I found a post about several ongoing research projects at the university, with the teachers and topics next to them. I read something about Flipping Grammar and I got really interested. I decided to talk to Carolina (who had been tutoring Simon on that thesis) to find out more about that Flipping thing. It turned out, the impact of Flipped Learning both for me, for my project and for the world was ten times greater than what I wanted to do with Tucker Signing. Once I had my first chat with Carolina, I asked her if I could work with her as my tutor in order for me to find my north by using Flipped Learning and Pronunciation, which as the closest topic to what I had already been reading about and where my biggest interests laid at the time. Gladly, she was happy to work with me.
Finding Flipped Learning allowed me to have a mindset change within my teaching beliefs and practices, because as I read more I got more and more excited seeing what it did in several classrooms around the world and for different ages, not just for children. I started by becoming more familiar with it, and also I also kept reading about pronunciation. Carolina kindly allowed me some space in her English III class for me to carry out the research project. I followed the steps suggested in the book “Educational Research (John W. Creswell - 2012)”. Therefore, I identified the research problem and started to diagnose the population. My thesis was called “Flipping a Pronunciation Class for Pre-Service Teachers and its impact on Self-Regulated Learning”.
I carried out the pedagogical intervention and collected the data through planning classes based on the population’s needs. After that, I organized and coded the data which lead me to the data analysis. Doing the data analysis and actually doing all the polishing in the writing part of the project was the hardest for me, because I was running against the clock and I felt pressured to both do a well-done research as well as finishing on time for graduation. My tutor’s help and guidance was fundamental to me, she became my role model, and all her suggestions were meant to push me to give my best.
So, all this process was a challenge for me, but I learned one important thing that actually answered my question “How could I make my research painless?” I understood there’s not an accurate answer for everyone but for me it meant that as long as you love and become passionate about what you do, no matter how long and hard the journey may seem, at the end it is all worth the effort. You will always remember this experience as something enriching for you and for seed you want to plant for humanity.
Painlessly,
Luisa Ramirez
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