My Potential Researcher Biases

As the last section in Chapter 5 of Mills' textbook discusses, many times research is tainted by the researcher's own biases.  In those situations, researchers often only look for and find evidence to support their original theory.  In order to conduct a valid and reliable study, I agree it is important to recognize and acknowledge our own personal biases before we start a research project.

To that end, the following are my proposition statements for peer teaching, based on what I think will happen if I were to use the techniques of peer tutoring and my idea of peer teaching as described in my literature review paper.  In my data collection plan, I will administer pre-tests, look at previous report card scores and conduct a pre-survey/interview to gauge students' attitudes about and understanding of math.  That will be my baseline data.  This is what I think/hope will happen:

1. I believe the post-tests will be much better than the pre-tests.
2. I believe the students' attitudes towards math will improve.  Students who may have hated it before will at least not hate it so much and those who were "afraid" of it before will feel comfortable with it.
3. I believe all students' grades will improve.
4. I believe the students will enjoy the CWPT sessions and competition.
5. I beleve some students will want the opportunity to teach a section of the subject and will have a deeper understanding of what they teach.

I realize that I will need to consciously look for data that refutes the above beliefs or I will only find evidence to support them.