The work for my Unit 2 Project informed the ultimate aim for my final project. After Unit 1, and throughout Unit 2 my research got extremely broad. I was interested in how what we learned from our readings could affect the world at large, and wanted to find out more about that. After researching from that perspective and getting a much larger view of the discussion, I realized I needed to dial in on something more specific. But this wasn’t hard to do necessarily, because the question I theorized in my Unit 2 reflection – could openness and trust in communication be the answer to conflict in diverse settings? – really starts at an early age. The tools discussed in the articles I read about diversity and inclusion trainings at jobs could be done during schooling, and not just revisited once in the workforce.
Once I began to think of my theory in this way – starting at a young age – I realized the answers to my questions were simpler than I thought. Most of the work done to fix racial conflicts is cleanup. It’s fixing wrongly formed habits and opinions that began at a young age. So my findings and implications from my research could be applied to youth, instead of aiming at the whole world, like it felt like I was beginning to do in Unit 2.
Out of doing this work, starting in a small topic, expanding to a larger discussion, and dialing back into a small topic, I learned many useful tools for doing research. One of the newest techniques to me was in the “complicating your research” activity. I never thought to look for what I wasn’t looking for to find what I am looking for, but it proved to be useful in finding holes in my research. I learned how to utilize a counter argument to my advantage. It was interesting to take my research and reword my findings into a way specific for my audience. Doing the steps for this assignment made this process very clear, and I could see what I learned transform into something I could then put into an informative piece for others.
The value this assignment had for me was in my topic. As I discussed in previous blog posts, racial conflict has always been an interest to me and what could possibly help solve it. This interest guided my research and brought me to my ultimate project/idea. It’s interesting because the idea of implementing diversity/cultural classwork into K-12 education has been tossed around in national conversations recently, and actually became a reality for states like New Jersey. I thought of something like this as a huge step for change, but not as impactful as I believe it to be now through my research. The articles I read show a clear solution to conflicts in groups with diversity, and those conflicts can be avoided early-on instead of cleaned up after the fact, like the majority are today. Without the small topic to broader discussion to small topic style of research we did in this class I’m not sure I could have come to the same clear conclusion. The work I did in this class will most definitely inform my work with research moving forward, and I’m happy to have gone through this process.