Monthly Archives: November 2014

The Purpose of Curriculum Evaluation

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Curriculum evaluation is a critical aspect of the educational process. Most schools have to evaluate their curriculum at one point or another. This post will share insights into defining evaluation as well as the distinction between measurement and evaluation.

Defining Evaluation

Evaluation of a curriculum happens in order to decide whether to accept, change, or eliminate various aspects of a curriculum. The overall goal is to understand if the curriculum is producing the desired results. This implies that the evaluators know what to expect prior to the evaluation and are looking for these predetermined results.

Evaluation is about gathering data. This data can be collected in many different ways. The various data collection approaches are the same as any used in research. They include observation, interviews, surveys, and more. The data is often aggregated and used to determine if the goals of a program are being met.

Measurement and Evaluation

Evaluation is not only about measuring a phenomenon. Instead, evaluation assigns value and meaning to the results of a study. It assesses quality through quantitative or qualitative means. This is in contrast to measurement which describes a phenomenon but does not interpret the quality of it.

It is common for there to be confusion over measurement and evaluation. To remember the difference, measurement describes something numerical. Evaluation, on the other hand, judges something qualitatively.

Conclusion 

It is important to remember that evaluation can happen at many different levels. The teacher can assess their unit plans. A department can assess their reading program. A school can assist its entire curriculum. Regardless of the level. Curriculum evaluation is often focused on determining how the curriculum is doing in terms of achieving the goals set for it.

Implementation Model: Overcoming-Resistance-to-Change

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There are many different models for implementing curriculum. One common model is the Overcoming-Resistance-to-Change Model (ORC model). This model focuses on gaining advocates and sharing power equally between administrators and teachers. The ORC model focuses on allowing for the personal needs of the teachers to be addressed through maintaining high flexibility in the implementation.

The ORC model focuses on change from the perspective of the teacher. In this model, there are four stages as listed below.

  1. Unrelated concerns
  2. Personal concerns
  3. Task-related concerns
  4. Impact-related concerns

Stage 1: Unrelated Concerns

The first stage is a stage of indifference. A teacher is aware change but do not see how it relates to their own life. As such the teacher is not worried about whatever innovation is coming. An example might be hearing about efforts to bring online learning to a school. The teacher knows this innovation is out there but it has not impacted them yet.

Stage 2: Personal Concerns

The teacher is now concerned with how the new innovation or curriculum will impact their life personally. For example, an English teacher wrestling with how using online learning will affect what they are trying to do in the classroom.

Stage 3: Task-Related Concerns

In stage 3, the teacher is thinking about how to use the new curriculum or innovation. Questions begin to go through their head in terms of application. For the online learning example, the teacher may wonder about such problems as how much time will it take to learn this? What are the best ways to use this new innovation? What kind of support will I get? These are just some of the many questions that are possible.

Stage 4: Impact-Related Concerns

Now the teacher has taken their focus of their performance and is now worried about how this will affect students. At this stage, teachers are focusing on their students, peers, and school. For the online learning example, teachers start to wonder how online learning will benefit the students. A teacher may start to wonder how other teachers are doing as they try to use this new innovation. The shift here is from self to others.

Conclusion

Change involves a reaction. For the ORC model, the reaction involves four clear steps. Every teacher may not go through these four stages. However, these stages help to explain what a leader can anticipate when trying to implement curriculum

Qualitative Research Part II

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In a previous post, we looked at the first three steps of the process of qualitative research. The steps of this process are below as a review.

  1. Explore a problem to understand the phenomenon
  2. Minor literature review
  3. State purpose and research questions in a general way
  4. Collect data normally from a small sample relying on words instead of numbers
  5. Analyze the data using text analysis to find themes and descriptions
  6. Write up

In this post, we will look at the last three steps of the qualitative research process.

Data Collection

Data collection allows a researcher to learn about the participants of a study. Usually, a protocol or a form for collecting data is created. The protocol can be a list of questions to ask during an interview or a place to record behavior that the researcher observes during the course of data collection. For example, if we are looking at the experience of African students in Thai government schools, we may use an interview protocol, or a list of questions, when collecting data from the students.

The most common forms of data collection include interviews, observation, and document analysis. Interviews is a question and answer session with another individual(s). Observation is the act of watching others. Lastly, document analysis is evaluating written or other objects in the sure for useful information.

Whatever is collected, whether text from interviews, imagines, or other sources becomes a database. Words become a text database. Imagines become an image database. These databases of information are used for the data analysis.

Data Analysis

Data is analyzed in qualitative research in a number of ways. Text segments are the dividing of sentences from the text database into groups. These various groups are used to explain the central phenomenon of the study.

Themes and categories is another analysis technique. In this approach, the researcher looks for commonalities among the data and attempts to organize these themes in order to explain the central phenomenon. For example, if during the course of the interviews with the African students in Thai schools the student mention rejection and humiliation consistently in several interviews, this could be a theme or category of information about the central phenomenon of the experience of these students in Thai schools.

Write Up

The format for qualitative research is similar to quantitative. There is a problem, purpose, literature review, methodology, results, and conclusion. However, this format is much looser in qualitative research and is not strictly followed. Some qualitative studies begin with a long narrative that serves as providing the background of a study as an example.

Qualitative studies have an extensive write up of the data collection which shares the themes and categories as well as the relationship among them. The researcher must also share their biases, values, and assumptions in order to indicate why results were interpreted a certain way. For example, as an African American, I am familiar with the discrimination of Africans in Thailand from my own experience. Therefore, if I were to interview African students about their experience in Thai schools, there would be a temptation to attempt to confirm my own experience as I speak to the students. By sharing this in the write up it informs readers of my own biases about living in Thailand.

Conclusion

Qualitative research is about explaining a central phenomenon. Data collection is for the purpose of gathering information about the topic of the study. The analysis is for the purpose of explaining the results. Lastly, the write up is about conveying the results in a way that is clear for the public.

Qualitative Research Part I

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Another form of research is qualitative research. This form of research is employed when the researcher does not know what variables to explore in a study. There are six characteristics of qualitative research. The characteristics are below.

  1. Explore a problem to understand the phenomenon
  2. Minor literature review
  3. State purpose and research questions in a general way
  4. Collect data normally from a small sample relying on words instead of numbers
  5. Analyze the data using text analysis to find themes and descriptions
  6. Write up

In this post, we will explore the first three characteristics.

Exploration of a Problem

Qualitative research is often used when numbers are not able to shed light on
the research problem. Instead, the problem is explored through examining a central phenomenon. For example, if a researcher wanted to know the experiences of African primary students in Thai schools. This is not a study employing numbers but rather exploring the experiences of African children in Thai schools. The central phenomenon would be the testimony and experiences of these minority children in schools in Thailand.

Minor Literature Review

Since it is often exploratory in nature, qualitative research often includes a minor literature review as there is often little information on the central phenomenon. The literature review is mostly used to justify the need for a study. An extensive search of the literature would foreshadow the results and this is inconsistent with the idea of exploration in qualitative research. The desire is to focus on the views of the participants and less on prior literature that does not take into account the uniqueness of the participants and the setting.

In our example about African students in Thai schools, there is little data on this phenomenon. To justify this study, we may need to find some articles that mention the struggles of international students in school as they deal with culture shock and discrimination. This leads to the question of how African students are coping with their experience in Thai schools.  We now know at least that we need to explore culture shock and discrimination as we collect data from African students who attend Thai schools. However, we have no idea what to expect. In other words, we have no hypotheses to test only a desire to explore.

Purpose and Research Questions

The purpose and research questions are written in a way that you are able to gather data from the participants about the central phenomenon. For example, in our African students in Thai school case, we are exploring the African students’ experiences with culture shock and discrimination. These two components are the central phenomenon of the study.

The phenomenon of culture shock and discrimination as experienced by African students in Thai schools will yield verbal data that needs to be analyzed. In other words, we are not using a numerical survey. Instead, the data collected will be the words of the participants as they share their experience with the central phenomenon.

Conclusion

Qualitative research is about examining small samples normally in a non-numerical way. The researcher explores a central phenomenon through the use of interviews, observation and other means. Since there is often a lack of data on the central phenomenon, many qualitative studies have a minor literature review and lack hypotheses as there is no clear direction from the literature. This form of research is an interesting way to gather first-hand experiences from the lives of people.

Quantitative Research Part II

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In a previous post, we look at the first three characteristics of the quantitative research process, which was problem identification, review of literature, and developing a purpose for the research.  In this post, we will look at the last three characteristics of the quantitative approach to research which are…

  1. Collection of numeric data
  2. Statistical analysis
  3. Write up of the results using a standardized format

Collection of Numerical Data

Once the purpose of the study has been developed you can think of ways to measure the variables of the study. There are various instruments that can be used to measure the data. One common form of an instrument is a survey. The questions on a survey indicate what people perceive or think about the variables in the study. For example, if a variable is student satisfaction, the question on the survey would relate to what the students think about the school.

People answer the questions on the survey normally using some sort of numerical response such as a Likert scale, which has values from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The respondents select the number that is most closely align with their attitude on the subject. For example, for the student satisfaction survey, we could ask “The teachers are prepared for class.” The students may indicate strongly agree or circle a 5 on the questions or they could strongly disagree and select a 1. A response somewhere in the middle could be 2, 3 or 4.

Statistical Analysis

The analysis is where the data is broken down in order to answer the research questions. The results of this are interpreted in light of your predictions and prior studies. How you analyze the data depends completely on the type of questions you asked. There are many interesting things in almost any data set. However, you must focus on answering your research questions and not on some new discovery you found in your data. New discoveries need to be dealt with in future studies since it is often not acceptable to modify research questions after data collection.

For our student satisfaction example, if the students strongly disagree that the teachers are prepared for class this indicates that the students may not be satisfied with the school since they are not happy with the teachers. One conclusion drawn from this would be that the school must focus on improving the preparedness of their teachers in order to improve student satisfaction.

Write Up

The reporting of quantitative research is formalized into the following pattern.

  1. Introduction
  2. Review of Literature
  3. Methodology
  4. Results
  5. Discussion

There is little variation on this format when publishing. For internal documents, there is much more variation in reporting a quantitative study. The writing style for publication is usually objective and impersonal. There is also a desire to avoid any bias or opinions in the study.

Conclusion

The quantitative research process involves the development of research questions that are answered in a systematic way. It is highly important that you focus on answering your research questions in a study. This is where many people get lost as they attempt to navigate this experience. The purpose of the study, as specified in the research questions, shapes the rest of the journey.

Quantitative Research Part I

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Quantitative research is one of the major forms of research used in the world today. This form of research has several distinct characteristics. In all, there are at least six characteristics of quantitative research and they are listed below.

  1. Description of a research problem
  2. A review of literature that provides justified research problem and questions
  3. Purpose statement that is narrow, observable, and measurable
  4. Collection of numeric data
  5. Statistical analysis
  6. Write up of the results using a standardized format

In this post, we will discuss the first three and look at the next three in a future post.

The Research Problem

The researcher begins by finding a research problem through finding trends in a field or finding something that needs to be explained. An example of a trend would be to assess students’ perception of food services. If the sample does not like the food it can be inferred that the population of the school is disappointed as well.

A different research problem would be to understand the relationship among variables. A variable is a measurable attribute that is studied. For example, a researcher may want to know the relationship between height and weight. He wants to know if an increase in height will lead to an increase in weight.

Review of Literature

The literature review serves two main purposes

  1. Justify the need for the research problem and need
  2. Suggest potential purposes and research questions

The review of literature helps you to find something that has not been studied before or that no one has examined thoroughly. For example, a review of literature might indicate that we know little about how height affects weight. This naturally leads to the question “does height affect weight?” The literature review provides the need for the study as well as helps to shape the research questions.

Research Questions

The research question has already been alluded to. Your goal is to develop specific, narrow, and measurable questions. Specific questions help you to only have a handful of variables you need to deal with. For example, in our height and weight illustration, the question we can ask is “does height influences weight?” In this example, we are looking at two specific variables which are height and weight. We need to measure the height of people and we also need to measure the weight of the same people. We can then use statistics to see if height influences weight.  Clear questions are important in clear research design as we will see in the future.

Conclusion

These initial steps are critical to successful research. If the beginning is off and not clear there is no hope for the study. It is at the early stages of a study that students struggle are most frustrated. If a good job is done here the rest of the study is relatively easy to complete.

Resistance to Curriculum Changes

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It is common for people to dislike change. When curriculum implementation is taking place there may be resistance to the new ideas and innovations presented. Thomas Harvey has provided a list of common reasons people may resist change.

Lack of ownership. Change must be an internal movement to have success. If the ideas are coming from an outside push success is much less likely to happen. Few people enjoy taking orders from external powers.

Lack of benefit. If teachers do not see any advantages to the new program for themselves or their students, they may not accept it. The strong points of a new curriculum must be explained.

More work. Few teachers want more to do. Change often brings additional responsibilities, at least, initially. Wise implementation entails removing current responsibilities in order not to overburden teachers with too much work.

Lack of support. This is closely related to the previous point. If leadership does not support the change, the workers will not either. The example and support of administration is key to the success of any change happening in an organization.

Insecurity. The risk of failure is always present when new ideas are tried. This can make some people really hesitant to try new ideas. A supportive atmosphere where failure is okay is needed for dealing with this. If people look bad using a new curriculum they will not use it for long.

Incongruence with Norm. The philosophy and beliefs laid down in the innovation must be consisted with the beliefs of the people who will use it. If there is a conflict in beliefs there will be a potential rejection of the innovation. This is especially true over controversial topics like sexual orientation, abortion, or creation.

Chaos. Change often brings disorder. If the amount of chaos and disorder is perceived as too high people may resist. People want change that brings order and not disorder.

Complete/wholesale change. A change that calls for a complete revamp of a current system is too much for most people to handle. An incremental approach is much more acceptable when dealing with bringing curriculum change. Many schools will role out a new curriculum a grade at a time rather than all at once. This helps the students and gives the teachers time to prepare.

There are many other reasons besides these that may be the root cause of resistance to curriculum change in a school. These reasons serve to provide a basic introduction into causes for resistance.

Types of Curriculum Change

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When making the move to consider changes to a curriculum the people responsible must consider what kinds of change they are going to be making. The type of change that takes place is going to impact how stakeholders may react. Many types of change have a lot to do with the amount of power the different players involved have. Bennis in identified three types of change which are…

  1. Planned change
  2. Coercion
  3. Interaction change

Brief explanation of each is provided in this post

Planned Change. In this type of change, those who are involved have equal power. It is clear what everyone needs to do. This is the preferred type of change. People have a voice, they are in agreement, and everyone is moving together.

Coercion. This type of change has a serious imbalance of power. One group determines the goals and has the power. All other groups are excluded from the discussion and are expected to obey. This is, unfortunately, an extremely common type of change in education. Often governments or administrators will create a curriculum and simply dump it on the teachers. Without input, there is a high risk of failure because people need ownership in order to be motivated.

Interaction Change. This approach involves equal amounts of power among all those who have an interest. The problem is communication and execution. The process for implementation is not thought out and developed. This leads to people who are willing but unsure of what to do.

An experienced educator has probably seen these three common types of change. It is important for administrators and teachers to understand the dangers to change. Coercion is not going to work long-term. As soon as the force is removed so will the conformity of the teachers. Interaction is unsuccessful not because of a lack of willingness but because of lack of follow through.

Conclusion

To have success, change must include a commitment from the teachers as well as clear communication of expectations. By sharing power and provided clear direction can help in preventing these common roadblocks to change.

Research Process

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The research process or scientific method is the default mode for systematically gather information for the purpose of answering questions and solving problems. This process serves the purpose of defining the goals of research, making predictions, gather data, and interpreting results.

In general, there are six steps to the research process as listed below.

  1. Identify the research problem
  2. Review the literature
  3. Specify the purpose of the research or develop research questions
  4. Collect data
  5. Analyze and interpret data
  6. Report and evaluate results

Identify the Problem

The problem can come from personal observation, readings, from others, or any other of a host of ways. Finding a problem also helps in focusing your study. When identifying a problem it is important to make sure that you develop a justification for investigating it as well as the importance of it. People need to know why they should care about what you are studying. This has to do with relevancy.

Reviewing the Literature

Reviewing the literature is about knowing what has been done before your so that you can see how you can build on existing knowledge. Most research tends to add to an existing conversation rather than start a new one. Looking at the literature also helps you to see your contribution to the existing body of knowledge. This is one way in which you can find the “gap” in the knowledge that your study will address.

Purpose of Research or Research Questions

The research purpose is the overall objective of the study. It is a restatement of the research problem. Another term for this is the research questions. The research questions are the questions you are asking about the problem. Many times, you do not solve a problem, instead, you ask questions about a problem. The answers to these questions may help to solve the problem or may not. Many people confuse the research purpose with the research questions when they are one in the same. Your goal at this step is to break a part the aspects of the problem into answerable questions. The answer to each question may contribute to solving the research problem.

Collecting Data

This is where the research design begins. Data collection is influenced by the research questions. What you want to know influences what data you will collect. Data collection includes sampling, methods, procedures, and more.

Analysis and Interpretation

Once data is collected it is analyzed. The method of analysis is also influenced by the nature of the research questions. Interpretation is where you answer the research questions. You found a relationship between variables or you didn’t. These answers to your research questions can be used to solve the research problem.

Reporting and Evaluating Research

At this step, the information is complied in a way so that you can communicate with your audience. The format of communication depends on who you are writing for. From journal articles to science fair projects all researchers must know the expected format for communication.

Evaluation is the experience of having your work judge by others based on a certain standard. These standards are not agreed upon. This lack of agreement is another reason to know who you are writing for so you can communicate in a way that is acceptable to them.

Conclusion

The research process serves the purpose of finding answers to questions about problems. A researcher needs to follow the six steps of the research process in order to communicate their findings in a way that is appropriate to their audience.

Defining Research and its Importance

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Research is a process that people use to collect and analyze information in order to deepen their understanding of a topic. Generally, there are three steps in this process.

  1. Ask a question
  2. Collect data that relates to answering the question
  3. Present answer(s) that may answer the question

Informally, everyone has done this in their lives. Examples include looking for one’s keys to deciding what to make for dinner based on what is in the refrigerator. Following this process helps in dealing with the challenges of life. There are also several benefits and problems with research as we shall see.

Benefits of Research

Research also has the following benefits

Research adds to our knowledge. Research provides more and more information on various topics. Each project can potentially provide another witness of a particular phenomenon. The vast amounts of statistics on various topics provide information that enlarges knowledge of a given subject.

Research improves practice. Research helps people to find the most efficient ways to do things. An example would be evaluation research done at schools. The schools examine their practices and decide if what they are doing is best based on the data they collected.

Research provides information for policy debates. Research allows decision makers a chance to weigh various options and determine what is best based on data. For example, a school might want to decide if having single subject or multi-subject teachers is the best by collecting data from standardized tests.

Problems with Research

Problems with research include the following

Issues with the research questions. If the questions of the study are vague and unclear the study is dead from the beginning. The foundation of a successful project is clear and researchable questions.

Issues with collection. The data was not collected properly. This could be due to sampling issues, unethical practices, or more.

Issues with analysis. The number of problems here are endless but they include rounding errors, questionable analysis of outliers, improper analysis technique in relation to the questions, adjusting results to support the hypotheses

There is more that could be shared but this is just an introduction into the process of research. There are pros and cons to almost anything. Research must be planned and conducted carefully in order to benefit those who are seeking answers through this process.

Portfolio Assessment

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One type of assessment that has been popular a long time is the portfolio. A portfolio is usually a collection of student work over a period of time. There are five common steps to developing student portfolios. These steps are

  1. Determine the purpose of the portfolio.
  2. Identify evidence of skill mastery to be in the portfolio.
  3. Decide who will develop the portfolio.
  4. Pick evidence to place in portfolio
  5. Create portfolio rubric

1. Determine the Purpose of the Portfolio

The student needs to understand the point of the portfolio experience. This helps in creating relevance for the student as well as enhancing the authenticity of the experience. Common reasons for developing portfolios include the following…

  • assessing progress
  • assigning grade
  • communicating with parents

2. Identify Evidence of Skill Mastery

The teacher and the students need to determine what skills will the portfolio provide evidence for. Common skills that portfolios provide evidence for are the following

  • Complex thinking processes-The use of information such as essays
  • Products-Development of drawings, graphs, songs,
  • Social skills-Evidence of group work

3. Who will Develop the Portfolio

This step has to do with deciding on who will set the course for the overall development of the portfolio. At times, it is the student who has complete authority to determine what to include in a portfolio. At other times, it is the student and the teacher working together. Sometimes, even parents provide input into this process.

4. Pick the Evidence for the Portfolio

The evidence provides must support the skills mention in step two. Depending on who has the power to select evidence, they still may need support in determining if the evidence they selected is appropriate. Regardless, of the requirement, the student needs a sense of ownership in the portfolio.

5. Develop Portfolio Rubric

The teacher needs to develop a rubric for the purpose of grading the student. The teacher needs to explain what they want to see as well as what the various degrees of quality are.

Conclusion

Portfolios are a useful tool for helping students in assessing their own work. Such a project helps in developing a deeper understanding of what is happening in the classroom. Teachers need to determine for themselves when portfolios are appropriate for their students.

Implementation Guidelines

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There are two ways change can happen in relation to an innovation or curriculum. These two changes are slow/minor change and fast or/major change.

Slow/minor change is change that is not significant or that takes place over a long period of time. Examples include changing unit plans, using a new instructional approach, or adjusting assignments for students. A rollout in increments of a new curriculum instead of all at once is another example.

Major/fast change is change that is significant or that happens suddenly. Examples include a new law that requires immediate compliance, or the immediate introduction of an innovation (such as computers) into every classroom. This type of change lives many gasping for breath as they struggle with what is new.

Few people like change. When dealing with curriculum implementation, there are five guidelines to keep in mind as explained below. These guidelines come from Warren Bennis (1966).

Guidelines for Change

  • Innovation needs to be based on research
    • Many great ideas are great because of marketing and not scientific research. Whatever the plan is it must be based on data that indicates that the idea will help students. In other words, read between the lines before implementing curriculum change.
  • Some innovations require changes in the structure of the school
    • The new innovation may require an overhaul of day-to-day behavior. A simple example would be the time that a school I worked at added art to the curriculum. It involved removing a study period from the schedule that was replaced with the art class. This allowed the students to learn art as well as get to know a new teacher.
  • Change must be manageable
    • This means that the new idea must be possible. For example, require students to write essays in English when they do not yet know the language is not manageable.
  • Implementation must be flexible
    • There is always a disconnect between theory and practice. Heavy-handed implementation of the innovation strictly only leads to passive resistance.  An adaptive approach in which the teachers can make minor adjustments to meet student needs is critical to success.
  • Have a plan for measuring implementation
    • Change must be assessed to make sure things are happening. To just tell teachers to do something without stipulating how the results will be analyzed is unfair to the teachers as they do not know how they will be graded. A teacher could never do this to a student.

These principles can help teachers and administrators to implement changes to the curriculum efficiently. They are intending as guidelines and not rules and there is so much more that could be said about this matter.

Nature of Curriculum Implementation

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Curriculum implementation is about taking the curriculum that was developed and actually using it. This is easier said than done. A new curriculum means the replacement of an old one. It means getting many different stakeholders to accept a new and untested innovation. There are the dynamics of organizational change and careful planning.

In brief, there are three critical components to consider when attempt to implement a new curriculum and these components are

  • the speed of the implementation
  • communication during the implementation
  • support during the implementation

The Speed of Implementation

The implementation of a curriculum must happen in increments. If the change is sudden, people may not use or adapt the new curriculum as they may not have been a part of the decision process. During the incremental implementation of curriculum, there needs to be agreement on the following questions

  • How do we define improvement?
  • What do teachers and students think of the change(s)?
  • What is a quality in relation to the curriculum and education?

Keeping in mind these questions while slowly implementing the curriculum in waves (i.e. one grade at a time) rather than all at once can help to improve the implementation process.

Communication During Implementation

There needs to be two types of communication during a curriculum implementation. Vertical communication between the workers and the boss as well as horizontal communication between workers.

In general, it is easier to speak with peers rather than with one’s boss. However, normally it is the boss who pushes an implementation. This makes it necessary to speak with them and indicates how the processes are going. A break down in communication can lead to a great curriculum on paper that is never used.

Speaking with peers can have perils as well. There may be division over the new curriculum. Petty office politics can erupt and wreck a great plan. It is often left to the management to eliminate this sort of infighting. However, such problems do not affect only curriculum but many other aspects of the school.

Support

A new curriculum cannot be dumped on a teacher. There must be support provided as the teacher acclimate to the new curriculum. Teachers need in-service training, staff development, money, and more to acquire the skills needed to use a new curriculum.

The support must be relevant to the needs of the teachers. This is a mantra we chant for students (meet their needs) but it is important for administrations as well (meet the needs of your teachers). This could help in making the use of the new curriculum a success.

Failure to provide some these needs will lead to the inability to execute the innovation even if there is acceptance of it. It is critical to see the bigger picture of change as the process of winning the hearts of the people affected by the change.

The Difference Between Facts and Opinions

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One aspect of reading that my students seem to struggle with consistently is telling the difference between facts and opinions. This post will attempt to explain the often subtle difference between these two components of reading.

Facts

A fact is something that can be verified as true by someone else. This truth can be tested through observation, experimentation, experience or some other means. Below is an example of a fact.

The average temperature of the human body is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit

To test this fact, we can simply take the temperature of several individuals and see if the average temperature is the same. If our experiment matches the statement then the statement is a fact.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The opposite of a fact is not an opinion. The opposite of a fact is incorrect information. If I said that the average temperature of the body was 78 degrees Fahrenheit. Your analysis would disprove this and show that the information was incorrect. This confusion over facts and incorrect information is a common misconception of even university students.

Opinion

Opinions are statements people make about their beliefs and or judgments. They cannot be tested and verified as facts can. Below is an example of an opinion.

I believe that America is the best place to study English.

There is no real way to verify this opinion. There are many English speaking countries all over the world where a student can study English. Determining how one is better than the other is highly subjective.

One problem with the opinion statement  is the word “best.” How do you judge what is best? Another problem is the phrase “I believe.” What one person believes is different from what another person believes. How do we test this?

Since opinions cannot be verified they can only be supported with additional explanation and facts. An author can build a persuasive case for their opinion through providing evidence that supports their belief. Consider the following example

I believe that America is the best place to study English. A study done by Researcher’s Anonymous found that people who study English in America learn twice as fast as those who study in other countries. In another study conducted by Student University, it was found that people who study English in America have a higher proficiency in the four skills of a language when compared internationally. Therefore, not only do people learn English faster in America, they also develop a higher proficiency from studying in that country. 

In this fictitious example, the author shares their opinion that America is the best place to study English. He follows this by sharing to facts about English. The study by Researcher’s Anonymous and the study at Student University. The results of these two studies are “facts” in this example because they can be verified. The facts the author uses provide support for their opinion.

You cannot prove an opinion but you can indicate how reasonable an opinion is through the use of facts. Based on the two facts of the study, it appears that America might be a good place to study English.

Conclusion

Students struggle with facts and opinions. They often accept everything an author shares in a book as the truth when in reality the author is sharing a great deal of well-defended opinion. Understanding facts and opinions are critical in analyzing the strength of an individual’s argument.

Writing Patterns II

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In this post, we conclude our discussion on writing patterns by looking at two more types. The two types of writing patterns for this post are cause and effect and comparison.

Cause and Effect

Causes are reasons and effects are the results of the reason. Causes have an effect on something or somebody. A paragraph that uses this writing pattern indicates the reason something happened and how it has an impact. Below are some common phrases and clues that indicate cause and effect writing pattern was employed.

Cause                Effect

the reason(s)     thus

the cause(s)       the result(s)  as a consequence

because, since  the effect(s)  on that account

is due to [cause]  the outcome  [effect] is/was caused by

Here is an example paragraph using this writing pattern, The cause is bold and the effect is underline.

Dogs make good pets. Since they are friendly dogs cause people happy.  In addition, because dogs love being around humans, the consequence is people often begin to love dogs.

In this paragraph, there were two cause and effect moments. The second and third sentence were both cause and effect. As you looked at the paragraph, you may have noticed that in the first example the effect came before the cause. This is common and normal in writing. The second example shares the cause before the effect. Either approach is acceptable. The goal of cause and effect or effect and cause is to show how one thing leads to another.

To determine cause and effect consider the following questions

  • What causes the “effect”? (The answer to this will be the cause.)
  • Why does “effect” happen? (The answer for this will be the cause.)
  • What is the reason for the effect? (The answer will be the cause.)
  • How can the “effect” be explained? (The answer will be the cause.)
  • What does the “cause” lead to? (The answer to this question will be the effect.)

From this list, you can see that it is more common to identify the effect first and then the cause. However, this is not always the case.

Comparison/Contrast

This identifies similarities, difference, or both in two or more things/concepts. Below are common words and phrases associated with compare/contrast writing pattern.

Comparison          Contrast

similarly                  in contrast  some; others

likewise                   however  nonetheless

both                         as opposed to     

same; alike              whereas

Here is an example comparison words are bold and contrast words are underlined.

Dogs are similar to cats.  Both have four legs and a tail.  However, dogs and cats are different in their behavior.  Dogs are much friendlier than cats are with people.  Though they are different both dogs and cats make good pets.

There is not much to explain. The different words employed indicate how dogs and cats are similar and different. Paragraphs can employ this mixed approach or focus completely on comparing or contrasting. What’ is best depends on the context.

Conclusion

Writing patterns provide ways in which to communicate ideas. There is no reason another will limit themselves to such fix approaches when expressing their ideas. These patterns are for helping students to see how an author is trying to express themselves.