Words: 362
They then introduced the research gap; that it is unfair to analyses a singular component exclusively as it does not fleet the true nature of a classroom and proposed their more comprehensive approach. 1 The structure of this section is organized and the explanations to each citation are thorough. However, these citations do not help to show or reinforce their research gap and unfortunately the reporting the findings of these articles take up the most part of the section.
Listing the topics or the methods that students found interesting does not demonstrate the weakness of a one component study and hence is insignificant to trenches their argument. Furthermore, the cited topics of interest in Mitchell study almost 20 years ago would hardly be of any significance to their research. The authors should have excluded irrelevant details of their citations and instead developed their argument of the complexities of a classroom further to make the reading more relevant and concise to the readers.
The research question developed was “How do elements of science instructional episodes (II) (content topic, activity type, and learning goal) and heir interactions (if any) affect student interest in those episodes. ” They claim that their approach is defined and specific, allowing them to control the details in each II. What interpreted from this is that unique combinations of the elements would form each II, which will then be tested to the students. This method is essentially the same as varying one element while controlling the others.
So how is their research different from the many past papers cited that used a single element in their research? This approach does not fully address the research gap mentioned. Perhaps the development of their idea of an II was an attempt to tackle the problem of the complexity of a classroom environment. They could have structured their research gap to focus lack of research done on the interactions between the elements, making their research more significant. In conclusion, the article was well-structured. However it could have been more credible if they had used more relevant evidence and structured their research gap more adequately.