How to succeed in research

1. How to succeed in research Dick Anderson September 18, 2006

2. Choose research problems thoughtfully • Think first, read later

3. Choose research problems thoughtfully • Think first, read later • Avoid problems everybody else is working on

4. Choose research problems thoughtfully • Think first, read later • Avoid problems everybody else is working on • Ask yourself is this really an important problem?

5. Choose research problems thoughtfully • Think first, read later • Avoid the problem everybody is working on • Ask yourself is this really an important problem? • Personally, I search for problems of both theoretical and practical significance

6. Choose research problems thoughtfully • Think first, read later • Avoid the problem everybody is working on • Ask yourself is this really an important problem? • Personally, I search for problems of both theoretical and practical significance • Do you have an original theoretical or methodological idea?

7. Choose research problems thoughtfully • Think first, read later • Avoid the problem everybody is working on • Ask yourself is this really an important problem? • Personally, I search for problems of both theoretical and practical significance • Do you have an original theoretical or methodological idea? • A well-chosen problem is important, hasn’t been studied much, and you have a great idea for how to solve it

8. Think in terms of a program of research • You should have a line of research involving many studies and a stream of papers • Reputations are built on programs of research • Disconnected studies will not add up • It may take a dozen related studies over 10-15 years to make real progress on a problem

9. Think in terms of a program of research • You should have a line of research involving many studies and a stream of papers • Reputations are built on programs of research • Disconnected studies will not add up • It may take a dozen related studies over 10-15 years to make real progress on a problem • You need to develop the expertise that comes with extensive and focused experience

10. Bold or cautious? • How big a problem should you try to solve in one try?

11. Bold or cautious? • How big a problem should you try to solve in one try? • Depends on you, your resources, your career stage, circumstances

12. Bold or cautious? • How big a problem should you try to solve in one try? • Depends on you, your resources your career stage, circumstances • For me, bold has been better

13. Master the craft of writing • Avoid posturing—taking up a lot of space to display your theoretical, methodological, and ideological commitments • Conceive an audience, not of specialists, but intelligent nonspecialists • Avoid technical terms wherever possible. Define and illustrate those that are unavoidable. • Strive for coherence

14. Master the craft of writing • Avoid posturing—taking up a lot of space to display your theoretical, methodological, and ideological commitments • Conceive an audience, not of specialists, but intelligent nonspecialists • Avoid technical terms wherever possible. Define and illustrate those that are unavoidable. • Strive for coherence • Papers must contain news!

15. Manage your own motivation • Talk to yourself about the intrinsic reasons for your research • De-emphasize achievement per se • Congratulate your students and colleagues when they do well [they will reciprocate] • Pursue two lines of research • Be tough enough to stand up to rejection notices • Be persistent and, remember, hard work is an acquired taste

16. Do I practice what I preach?

17. Do I practice what I preach? Sure. Most of the time. More or less

18. Do I practice what I preach? • I have two programs of research • When I begin, there was little research on either topic • Both programs have practical as well as theoretical implications. • Sometimes I am bold • I still have zest for my work after 43 years on the University of Illinois faculty

19. Two lines of research • Comparative cross-language, cross-cultural studies of learning to read • Especially, learning to read Chinese and learning to read English • Small group discussions that promote children’s cognitive and social development

20. Developmental stages in learning to read ChineseXi Chen, Richard C. Anderson, Hong Li, and Hua ShuThe development of strategies in learning to read Chinese was examined in three studies involving 271 children from preschool through grade six. Evidence was obtained for a model that consists of three stages: the visual stage, the phonetic stage, and the orthographic stage.Experiment 1 showed that Chinese children in the visual stage remember words by relying on a few distinctive but arbitrary visual features. Compared with beginning English readers, beginning Chinese readers stay in the visual stage for a longer period of time. Experiment 2 indicated that, as early as kindergarten, Chinese children begin using phonological information. They can read a phonetic compound character by using the information in the phonetic or by making an analogy with another compound that shares the same phonetic. Kindergartners’ use of phonological strategies, however, is inconsistent and requires a lot of support. By second grade, most Chinese children are in the phonetic stage and they can use both strategies reasonably well. Experiment 3 demonstrated that by grade four most Chinese children have entered the orthographic stage, which is characterized by the use of consistency information contained in families of characters. They learn characters in consistent families better than semi-consistent families, followed by inconsistent families; they use family consistency information to pronounce novel characters.

21. Emergent leadership in children’s discussion groupsYuan Li, Richard C. Anderson, Kim Nguyen-Jahiel, Ting Dong, Anthi Archodidou, Il-Hee Kim, Li-Jen Kuo, Ann-Marie Clark, Xiaoying Wu, May Jadallah, and Brian MillerEmergent leadership was examined in twelve discussion groups in four fourth grade classrooms. Children’s leadership moves were coded from transcripts of ten free-flowing, open-format discussions of each of the twelve groups. The transcripts encompassed 26,000 turns for speaking, including 22,000 child turns of which 1,700 were judged to serve one of five leadership functions: Turn Management, Argument Development, Planning and Organizing, Topic Control, and Encouragement. Comparison of the number and kind of leadership moves made by the children showed that one primary child leader emerged in six out of the twelve groups and that in all but one of the remaining groups leadership was shared among several children. A three-level generalized hierarchical linear model with multiple discussions nested within students, and students nested within groups, showed that the frequency of leadership moves increased with the progression of the discussions, suggesting that the emerging leaders were learning how to lead. Girls frequently nominated by their peers as having good ideas and seldom nominated as being too quiet exhibited more leadership than other children.

22. Postscript: You can read about me. Kiewra, Kenneth A & Creswell, John W. (2000) Conversations with three highly productive educational psychologists: Richard Anderson, Richard Mayer, and Michael Pressley. Educational Psychology Review, 12(1), 135-161. • Royer, James M. (2005) From behaviorism to situated cognition: An examination of learning and instruction in the second half of the 20th century through the research and writing of Richard C. Anderson. In The Cognitive Revolution in Educational Psychology. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. (pp. 41-85)

23. Thank you!