Ed 603 - Assignment 1

In this first assignment for Ed 603, you will do a little exploratory activity relative to educational research. In this assignment you will:

  1. Identify the best research oriented professional journal in the field you plan to do research in (or at least write a research proposal for).
  2. Review the table of contents for at least three recent issues of this journal and for each issue identify a research based article you would like to read.
  3. Identify a major textbook for the area in which you plan to do research in or write a research proposal for.

Identifying the Best Research Oriented Professional Journal in Your Field of Study

You will want to identify the best research oriented professional journal in your field of study. You can do this by consulting with your major advisor in your graduate program or with another instructor you feel is knowledgeable about the research in your field of study. Another way to identify this journal is to look at a major textbook for your area of study. Scan this book to find reports of research in the field and then look at the references for these reports and identify which journal they appeared in. You should identify one to three journals in this way and record the name of the journal(s). If you have not decided on a field of study or area for your research, you may use the journal, Journal of Educational Research or the journal, Journal of Educational Psychology. Both of these journals are research oriented and report on research representing broad coverage of the field of education.

Identifying Three Research Based Articles in the Journal

Having identified the major research oriented professional journals in your field, the next step is to look at three recent issues of the journal (or journals). Read over the table of contents for each of the issues and select an article you might like to read. You may wish to make photocopies of these articles unless you have access to the journals directly, i.e. you have a subscription to the journal. For each of these articles record the complete reference to the article in APA (American Psychological Association) format. If you are not familiar with APA format look at the reference section of the textbook for Ed 603 as all of these references are in correct APA style. You can also look at the examples of References in APA Format in Table 2.2 on page 57 of the textbook for Ed 603 (Fifth Edition, 1996). You will be recording these with a word processor, so use italics for italicized components of the reference, rather than underlining.

Identifying a Major Textbook in Your Field of Study

Your final task for Assignment 1, is to locate a major textbook in your field of study and record the proper APA style reference to this textbook.

Specific Format for Completing the Lesson 1 Assignment and sending it to the Ed 603 Instructor

Once you have assembled the information mentioned above you should create a word processing document for the assignment. Microsoft Word for either the Macintosh or for Windows would be a good choice to use but any other widely used word processor would be OK. At the top of the page, on the first line record the following: Ed 603, Lesson 1 Assignment. On the second line record your name and student number at MSU (if you have one). On the third line record the date you completed the assignment. After you have completed the assigment (and it saved on your computer) send e-mail to your instructor indicating that you are sending the lesson 1 assignment in and then attach the file for the assignment to your lesson. All of your assignments for Ed 603 will be done in this manner.

The e-mail address for the instructor, John Wasson, is wassonj@teleport.com

Here is an example of what a completed assignment for lesson 1 could look like.

Ed 603, Lesson 1 Assignment
John Wasson, Student Number 710967
January 8, 1999

Professional Journal: Journal of Educational Research

Articles of Interest:

  1. Caldas, S. J., & Bankston, C. (1997). Effect of school population socioeconomic status on individual academic achievement. Journal of Educational Research, 90, 269-278.
  2. Griffith, J. (1996). Relation of parental involvement, empowerment, and school traits to student academic performance. Journal of Educational Research, 90, 33-41.
  3. Jitendra, A. K., & Kameenui, E. J. (1996). Experts' and novices' error patterns in solving part-whole mathematical word problems. Journal of Educational Research, 90, 42-51.

Textbook in Area of Interest:

Woolfolk, A. E. (1998). Educational psychology (7th ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

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