Descriptive Research Essay

School is not only about reading, writing, and understanding concepts but it is about socialization, acceptance, and finding out who you are. Countless times I have walked into an inclusion classroom and noticed the unintentional separation. Is this being caused by the teachers? Or is it caused by students? Do the interpreters have a part in it? Is it because they are just not educated on how to incorporate everyone? These endless questions I have asked myself time and time again provided me with the perfect research. "When an inclusion classroom is involved with both Deaf and hearing students how can the teacher make sure that the students do not feel isolated during lecture and group work?" Types of Research In our textbook "Educational Psychology: Windows on Classrooms" Eggan & Kauchak discuss the four types of research; descriptive, correlation, experimental, and action.

Descriptive research "uses tools such as tests, surveys, and observations to describe the status or characteristics of a situation or phenomenon" (Eggan & Kauchak, 2016 pg. However, in my study I am not studying a phenomenon with variables which have relationships nor do I seek to make any predictions. I am seeking to know how teachers and student feel in contexts where interpretations are required. This does not have variables with a linear relationship. Therefore, it needs a description of the attitudes of teachers and students. Similarly, experimental research cannot be useful in this inquiry. This scenario happens more often than not. In educational interpreting, there will always be a twenty to thirty seconds delay in communication. For this research, I chose descriptive research because I first want to understand how the teachers and students feel during this process.

My first instinct was descriptive research because we are dealing with people's actions and why they are or are not doing something. In order to be successful in the descriptive research, I first must identify the problem, review literature, select my participants, collect data, analyze the data, and then report any conclusions that were found. My reasoning behind that is because I want to see if the teacher promotes it, ignores it, or just unaware of it. Also, you can tell by the student's reactions when things are taking place. During the observations, I would conduct data on the reactions of the students during this process. Are the hearing students agitated and raised their hand while jumping out of their seats to answer the question? Are the Deaf students used to this process and just sit there and watch the interpreter throughout the entire class with no participation? Are the Deaf students frustrated with knowing the correct answer but not able to participate? Does the teacher always pick on the same students? Does the teacher realize the reactions from her students? All of these questions are important because then I can create a survey to distribute to the teacher and students.

Data Analysis Once all of the data is obtained I then will create surveys and interviews with the participants. They will give us the true feelings of the teachers and students as they provide explanations for their answers. I will then interpret them and draw conclusions while trying as much as possible to minimize subjectivity and biased views. Limitations of descriptive research With every type of research, there come to its disadvantages. With descriptive research one of the most significant obstacles would be my perspective on the situation. Being partly qualitative and partly quantitative descriptive research, the researcher is the instrument of research (Neuman, 2014) and since I am an American Sign Language interpreter and is sufficiently knowledgeable of the Deaf culture and what is occurring in schools there may be times I have a bias opinion including making subjective choices.