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How to read a research article for your academic writing?

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University or college students need to read research articles for their assignment and thesis.   I have struggled with reading research papers. I easily get distracted. One paper takes me to the rabbit hole full of other research. After years of struggle, I learnt the lesson – do not read a paper in its own sequence!!!! That’s correct! I used to read the abstract and while I read the introduction cum literature review; I am lost into the piles of other research articles. To avoid the fog, do not read a paper from top to bottom, left to right, word to word. Instead choose your sequence. Here is mine:   I skip the introduction or literature review part of a paper and come back to it at the end. If I find the abstract relevant, I read the study design and method of the study. This saves me time because I can focus the current study instead of other relevant ones. After the study design I read the result/analysis followed by the discussion section. I take notes as I read the re
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What is Agency and how is it exercised

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In literature agency is defined as a personal capacity. It is the feeling of gaining control over ones action. When a person has a good understanding, feels confident about something and is able to make decisions is an agentic person. However agency is exercised and enacted in a context where other factors like the structure, the rules, other people and the norms of the context affect our ability to take action or make a decision. In the research field people are generally referred to as ‘actors’ or ‘agents’. In my opinion, actors are those who follow rules and are good followers. In our context ‘actors’ are generally those who ‘act’ in a TV drama or film or theatre. These people act on a script written by someone else, usually the script writer. So the ‘actors’ act upon it. In research particularly in educational research, actor are used for those people (school management, or teachers) who enact an educational policy or curriculum. So actors generally follow rules and implement p
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Literacy: The new development and how to teach it

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Literacy is traditionally defined as the ability to read and write. With this definition in mind, read the following statement and answer the two questions that follows: Statement: A mayber was railing his temp. Sintly a durf accotted some padis in the mayber’s temp. Q1: what did the durf accot in the mayber’s temp? Q2: Why did the durf accot padis in the mayber’s temp?   You might have answered Q1 as “the durf accotted padis in the mayber’s temp” which is correct. But to answer Q2 is tricky. It is an analysis question which requires a level of understanding to answer why. The statement is just a made up one which can be used as an example of being literate but can’t be used to answer higher level of thinking and understanding. So instead of being literate (ability to read and write) we need literacy (the ability to gain knowledge and use higher order thinking) in today’s modern world. In today’s world literacy is more than just the ability to read and write. Some scholar
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Students should feel safe: Caring for emotions in the classroom

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Unsafe classrooms are where the teacher:          uses physical punishment          uses verbal abuse and degrade students           bullies students           calls names to students           calls students useless           insults students’ in-front of their peers Some teachers think that the above strategies can teach the students a good lesson and they can learn better. Some teachers believe that such strategies are effective to maintain classroom discipline. They want to control students by force. They want to show that the students know less and so the teacher has the authority to feed them what they do not know. However research has strongly rejected such claims, proving that any kind of punishment affects the child’s personality. The child loses confidence on him/herself. This has life-time implication for the child.  There are other and more effective ways of soft discipline strategies through a positive teacher-student relationship that I have talked abou
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Information processing model: Implications for teaching and learning

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In the last post I wrote about a very simplified version of how our brains process information - what is forgotten; what is retained for further processing and how long term memory is developed. Here I will revise some key points and explain the teaching and learning implications for teachers and students.  As I discussed, the working memory has limited capacity. Information stays here for about 5-10 minutes (for kids) and 10-20minuts (for adults). The number of items/chunks of information is between 2-5 (for kids) and between 5-9 (for adults). This has a serious implications for teaching and information retention. All teachers hope that each student will store the information for long term use and in fact reproduce it in exams. If you are a school teacher or a student, you know that a period is between 20-30minutes. Because students can concentrate for only 20 minutes. This is still long period for the brain to work on one activity, so teachers do different activities in one peri
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How the Brain Processes Information: The Information Processing Model

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Now that we have learnt the different parts of the brain and their function ( here ) and the structure of a brain cell or neuron ( here ), this post is intended to explain a model of how the brain processes new information. By knowing this process, you will be able to know how to manage and optimise your learning. The brain receives information from the environment. The environment around us has stimulus. For example someone talking to us is a stimulus. A book that we read is a stimulus. Our senses such as hearing and sight receive these stimuli from the environment and pass them on to the brain. Different parts of the brain process these information in seconds and also simultaneously. But during this processing some information is lost, some is retained and stored. So what happens between receiving the information from the environment through to losing and/or retaining it. Before I explain each part the information is passed through, scan this image and note the path of th
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Learning about learning: The Basics of Neuro-Science -The Brain Cell

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In the first post , I described the different parts of the brain and their different, mostly overlapping, functions. To understand neuro science, one also needs to understand the brain cell or neuron and its structure. In this post I talk about the two types of cells in the brain. Then focusing neurons, I will use a hand and arm analogy to explain the two parts of neuron before going into the technical details of the neuron structure and how information can be lost or retained and passed on. I will tell you a cool fact at the end of the post.   The brain is composed of trillions of cells. These are of two types: the nerve cells or neurons and the glial cells . The brain is mostly of glial cells . Gail cells act as blood-brain barrier and protects the neuron from the blood substance that may disrupt the neural activities. These glial cells hold the neurons together and keep harmful substance out of reach of the neurons . It also regulates the neuron signals. The neurons
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