October 25, 2018
It’s been awhile since I have posted anything here. It’s been a busy semester at both work and in grad school. I haven’t had much time for reading or writing for leisure. It’s all been academic writing or reading academic writing. All of it so dry engaging with it requires chugging water by the gallon just to stay hydrated. A lot of academic writing doesn't sound intelligent and technical as much as it sounds like someone trying to B.S. their way to a specified word count.
I do understand that some stuff does require a specific jargon in order to communicate. But when studying education they make some of these studies needlessly dense and then wonder why there's a gap between research and practice of the educational methods studied. The part that tells you how and why to use the practice is barely touched on. So, maybe if they spent a fraction of the time talking about the implications for practice in plan, accessible language as they do showing off all the other studies that they studied prior to their own studies, there’d be less of a gap between research and practice. In other words, the gap exists because research papers are written for other researchers, Not practitioners. Not teachers.
Getting back to B.S.ing ways to word counts there’s that classic meme:
Text: I can't.
Email: I cannot.
.
3000 word term paper: I am unable to can.
I added another step:
Academic Case Study: In order to determine the possibility in regards to the aforementioned request that was given to the individual in question we explored various evidence based practices tested against similar requests. A 2001 study determined that such requests were not at that time possible (Browder et al, 2001) due to various mitigating factors that were noted such as prior engagements (Hoffman, 2003; Johnston, 2013; Gunning, 2011; Spooner, 2010), feelings of fatigue (Shanker, 2018; Carlson, 2010; Roberts et al, 2015), and inadequate experience in the requested field (Archer & Slowdowski, 2014; Roberts, 2015; Shanker, 2018). A 2015 study by Stevenson was disregarded due to independent variables being irrelevant to the given case.
A mixed methods approach was used to determine the ability as to whether or not the individual in question is able to fulfill the request. This included comparing the schedule of the individual and the timeframes of the given request (fig 1). Qualitative data was taken of the energy levels of the individual who had be given the request. Quantitative data included comparing the number of hours worth of experience held by the individual and compared to the average number of hours of experience held by a professional in the requested field (fig 2).
Results showed that while the individual held an adequate amount of experience to perform the given task a combination of incompatible schedules and above average levels of fatigue prevent them from performing the requested task at the necessary time.
Implications for practice are that I am unable to can