Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello! I am conducting an experiment involving the effect of teaching experience on how much students learn, and I'm having a little trouble with the "scientific process" part of the experiment. I have a qualified english teacher that is willing to work with me. The procedure consists of a student teacher (me) teaching a lecture on the book To Kill A Mockingbird and then giving out a test on the information. The same lecture will be taught by the experienced teacher with the same test, and I will be comparing the results. My procedure is fine, but the other parts of the board that are required, such as materials and literature review, are lacking because this field of research isn't very deep. Are there any references you can point me to, or advice you can give, that can help me feel more confident about the meat of this experiment? Thank you!

Hello thesefourstrings,

Great questions! There are a lot of things to keep in mind when working with human test subjects since there are so many variables--which will be part of your discussion section. Where did you get this idea--from this website?

First things first, after doing your preliminary research, what have you come up with for your hypothesis?
here are some tips: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... hypothesis. You should have a statement such as, "because of [variables or other factors], I think that students will perform [___%] better than _____. Something along those lines.

Look at the Science Fair Project Guide to help you keep all the steps together when organizing your project:
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ndex.shtml
Find out what will be your independent variable, dependent variable, and control.

Also: more on human behavior studies: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... rvey.shtml
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... mBeh#howto

Your materials list will be all the items you used in order to complete the project, such as: pre-designed tests (explain how you set them up in your procedure section), pencils for students, any books you used, other resources, such as a qualified professional, etc.

Here are some resources on doing research:
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... searchplan
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... rvey.shtml
There are a LOT of resources and research projects done on similar topics to what you are interested in. I would use GOOGLE SCHOLAR(http://scholar.google.com/) to look up scientific papers, and use keywords, such as, "human behavior and learning," "psychology," "learning modalities," "teaching methodologies," and other key words you find in research. Try to find experiments already done to get ideas of how to set up your project.
For example: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1 ... 34#preview.
http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~antonvillad ... %20JAP.pdf
Once you get some articles online, you can use the authors' bibliography to further research that topic--your librarian should be able to help with this.


Let me know if that helps and if I can assist you further. I'm interested to see how your projects comes along!