PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Report on Continued Professional Development Impact on Educational Settings: An Evaluation

      Introductions in Research Articles (RAs) serve the purpose of guiding readers on seeing the problem under study in a clear and explicit manner. Within introductions, literature reviews mainly provide an account of what the scientific literature tells the academic world about the topic chosen for research. Bennett et al.’s (2011) report provides a list of connected paragraphs in the form of summarized studies which contain a concise reference to the authors or organizations involved, followed by a brief description and evaluation of their main findings. Bennett et al.’s (2011) brief paper consists of a series of enumerated sub-sections that presumably form part of the report’s introduction. These portions of text have been labeled under different sub-titles respectively.

     Under the sub-heading “Review of Relevant Literature” (p.7), the three moves within introductions in research papers (Swales and Feak, 1994) can be perceived. Bennett et al. (2011) describe the scope of the literature explored to support their evaluations on the state of the arts in relation of their object of evaluation. Move 1 - what has been done - refers to the systematic review of the literature, especially to Bennett et al.’s (2010) previous report and to Guskey’s (2002) impact model. In Move 2 - the motivations for the study in the form of a rationale - the authors declare that they intend to extend on the “systematic review of the literature on the nature and extent of change in classroom practice as a result of PD interventions in our previous report” (Bennett, Braund and Lubben, 2010, p.7). As far as Move 3 is concerned, the authors state what the present research is about as regards their objectives and purposes. As expressed by Bennett et al. (2011), “The current study focuses on factors influencing level 4 impact, and assumes, with Guskey, that any level 5 impact will indicate an appropriate level 4 impact” (p. 7).

          On average, Bennett et al.’s (2011) report ends with the argument that the current study fills in some gaps in research, specifying what it focuses on, and briefly explaining PD interventions and drawing relationships among the factors found in the previous literature review. All in all, the concise paper under the current exploration appears to be an unfinished report on a larger, complete academic paper. Thus, the section being explored principally presents information that is most likely to be found in the Introduction sections to Research Papers (RPs) or Research Articles (RAs). Furthermore, the report seems to have been adapted for the purpose of thorough analysis in academic settings.

                                                              References

American Psychological Association (2007). Concise rules of APA style. Washington, DC: British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.

American Psychological Association (2010). Publication Manual (6^th ed.). Washington, DC: British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.

Bennett, J., Braund, M., Lubben, F. and Mason, Y. (2011). Modes of professional development. An evaluation of the impact of different course modes operated across the National Network of Science Learning Centres. University of York, Department of Education.

Swales, J.M., & Feak, C.B. (1994).  Academic writing for graduate students: 
Essential tasks and skills. Ann Harbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. 

Integrative Assignment - Final Version
Allende, Carla - Lacanna, Alejandra - Rodriguez, Viviana

EXPLORING RESEARCH ARTICLES (RAs)

  Results, Discussions and Conclusions in Professional Research Articles

        Research Articles (RAs) writing is of vital importance in every professional field. Consequently, a deep analysis of diverse papers’ components may render itself useful both to explore thorough investigations as such, and to aid prospective RAs writers when dealing with discursive structure. The present paper’s deliberate intention is to analyze and compare three sections of two RAs, that is, Results, Discussions and Conclusions. The selected papers belong to different fields, the medicine and the education ones. The article written by Barrs (2012) specifically deals with the challenge of "how to maximise target language interaction both inside and outside of the classroom”, mainly with the aid of "digital technologies" (p.10). Di Angelantonio et al. (2010) are the authors of the medical article, and their cohort study’s main objective is “to quantify associations of chronic kidney disease stages with major cardiovascular disease and non-vascular mortality in the general adult population” (p. 1). 

       First and foremost, the very nature of these papers’ studies is utterly different;  while Barrs (2012) epitomizes an experimental report, fostering as it does changes in practicum, Di Angelantonio et al. (2010)  present an interventional clinical study defined by Chapman and Hall (as cited in  Röhrig et al., 2009, p. 3)  as "...The aim of an interventional clinical study is to compare treatment procedures within a patient population, which should exhibit as few as possible internal differences, apart from the treatment." Besides, ethical issues related to randomization of data in order to avoid bias in results are much more regulated by law in the medicine field.  Moreover, the medicine paper activates a specialist’s schemata in order to respond cooperatively to it, whereas Barr’s (2012) research does not demand such a specialist’s understanding. Medicine papers, in general, present a high degree of nominalization; the educational field, in turn, demands more narrative because the discussions seem to be more philosophical than otherwise.

      In relation to the three moves meant to be found in introductions to Research Articles (RAs) or Research Papers (RPs), Swales and Feak (1994) present the “Create a Research Space” Model, where the three portions of text within the introductory paragraphs to the topic of study should be clearly grasped by readers. These cycles have the purpose of creating a research space, in other words, showing the relevance of the research carried out, presenting what other researchers have done in the field so far, establishing a niche or gap in previous research - and finally occupying the niche, where the nature and purpose of the study should be stated. To exemplify, Barrs’ (2012) article clearly expresses the gap in previous research by means of an inversion statement, followed by the introductory negative connector “However” (p. 11); in the case of Di Angelantonio et al.’s (2010) paper, the niche is established by the negative connector “However” (p. 1), followed by an extended definition of what the difficulty in previous studies has been so far.

       Both Research Articles (RAs) include the Results section within a separate set of paragraphs; this aids the reader in his or her scanning of the text. Besides, the hitherto mentioned section offers the audience useful information to evaluate the investigation. The data have been presented not only in the text, but also through the use of tables and figures, as it is usually the case with RPs. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), “tables and figures enable authors to present a large amount of information and to make their data more comprehensible” (APA, 2010, p. 125). More precisely, APA (2010) asserts that tables should be integrated within the text, but they should be designed in such a way that they should be understood on their own. As regards the use of figures in papers, APA (2010) declares, “If the figure does not add substantively to the understanding of the paper or duplicates other elements of the paper, it should not be included” (p.160).

       Admittedly, while Barrs (2012) seems to employ mainly tables, Di Angelantonio et al. (2010) use tables as well as figures. Indeed, Barrs' (2012) tables are appropriately numbered and they have an individual, italicized title including each word capitalized. Equally, Di Angelantonio et al. (2010) include figures which are equitably numbered, and they all include a title with a legend and caption giving enough explanations to offer the readers the opportunity to estimate results.  Di Angelantonio et al. (2010) make use of these tools to accurately represent the data collected, and by so doing, they acutely reflect the quantitative nature of their study. In the case of Barrs (2012), the author has included eight tables as well as some examples of exchanges in his paper’s Results’ section. For instance, there is a sample three-part interaction exchange, a single initiation-reply example, and an excerpt of a continued threaded discussion.

       Di Angelantonio et al.’s (2010) paper has a separate Discussions section, whereas the article by Barrs (2012) contains two sub-sections devoted to analysis and reflection. For instance, in its first period of action research, there is a Reflection section where the data collected have been thoroughly analyzed and reflected upon. Moreover, in the second period of action research, Barrs (2012) presents a detailed reflection of its main findings. In brief, the medicine article by Di Angelantonio et al. (2010) has a separate main Discussions section where there is a detailed interpretation of the outcomes of their research, whereas the education article by Barrs (2012) has its two periods of action research with their corresponding interpretation of outcomes embedded in them. Additionally, an overall evaluation of the exploration which has already been conducted is done in order to establish future research actions. Modals verbs are mostly used to signal possibility and advice respectively.

       On average, multiple comprehensive RAs features were deeply considered so as to have a better overview of papers whose main function is to provide data corresponding to distinctive fields. Basic distinctions have to do with subject-dependant characteristics like nominalization in medicine papers, and with the different nature of the aims of the research under study. By and large, in spite of the fact that Barrs’ (2012) article presents statistical data, the qualitative nature inherent in the action research that guided the study may make its results not generalisable to large populations, but just applicable to certain specific and reduced contexts. While Di Angelantonio et al. (2010) explain the potential limitations of their study, Barrs (2012) asserts that gathering data in such an investigation may result extraordinarily difficult, given the conditions under which the action research project was carried out.  Ultimately, Barrs (2012) and Di Angelantonio et al. (2010) give emphasis to the necessity of exploring new and valuable areas of inquiry that have emerged as a consequence of their present studies. Therefore, both papers’ contributions to each field should not be underestimated but highly valued.  

References

American Psychological Association (2010). APA Manual (6th ed.). Washington, DC: British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.

Barrs, K. (2012). Action research: Fostering computer-mediated L2 interaction beyond the classroom. Language Learning and Technology. 16(1), 10-25. Retrieved April 2013, from

http://llt.msu.edu/issues/february2012/actionresearch.pdf

Di Angelantonio, E., Chowdhury, R., Sarwar, N.,  Aspelund, T.,  Danesh, J. and Gudnason, V. (2010). Chronic kidney disease and risk of major cardiovascular disease and non-vascular mortality: prospective population cohort study. BMJ Online First.  doi:10.1136/bmj.c4986

Retrieved April 2013, from

http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c4986.pdf%2Bhtml

 Röhrig, B., Prell, J. d, Wachtlin, D. and Blettner, M. (2009). Types of study in medical research. Part 3 of a series on evaluation of scientific publications. Aerzteblatt-international.d. NCBI. doi: 10.3238/arztebl.2009.0262

Retrieved April 2013, from http://www.aerzteblatt.de/int/archive/article?id=64227

Swales, J.M., & Feak, C.B. (1994).  Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills. Ann Harbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.