“Research papers in education are a medium to express, share and discuss critical points in the educational field”

Academic articles and their impact on the educational field

In each academic field, research articles are the polished products of investigation, which provide the reader with in-depth discussion as to the field being explored and on most occasions undergo a complex writing and research process. Important still is to notice that they belong to “a genre that requires [the writer] to spend time investigating and evaluating sources with the intent to offer interpretations of the texts, and not unconscious regurgitations of those sources” (Online Writing Laboratory (OWL), Genre and the research paper, para. 2, 2011).Therefore, the assumption that “[r]esearch [p]apers in education are a medium to express, share and discuss critical points in the educational field” seems correct.

 As the American Psychological Association (APA) (2010) addresses “different scholarly disciples have different publication styles” (p.11). According to this, researchers are comprised in a systematic process which forces them to carry out a number of procedures for the fulfillment of a goal. This goal may vary according to the kind of research made and the design opted for. A research article in the field of education may be exploratory for which there is not sustained theory and argumentative which involves the writer’s thoughts and subjectivity (Hernandez-Sampieri, Collado & Lucio, 2008). Else it may be analytical offering the audience a “critical interpretation of primary and secondary sources throughout the paper (…)” (OWL, Analytical research paper, para. 2).

Either case, the writer will resort to his or her critical thinking skills in order to evaluate, interpret, understand and ultimately generate knowledge, “to establish that his or her particular area of research is of some significance” (Swales & Najjar, 1987, p. 179). Education which belongs to the Humanities appears to have these characteristics. It is in this field of study where writers attempt to describe, share and discover new realities with the purpose of enabling this community to be part of further investigation and discussion.

Language teaching, Applied linguistics, Sociology, Psychology may seem to belong to this wide category of research in the Social Sciences where a thoughtful and comprehensive perspective is favored in order to contribute to the field but also to provide the researcher and the academic community to create the a new enlighten “research space” (Swales & Najjar, 1987). If the researcher, for examples, is interested in analyzing the use of the Critical Incident Technique in a community of teachers, he may then have a clear objective in mind on which his or her study would be based upon.

On the whole, there is evidence to support that research articles are the tangible, visible product of a dynamic and purposive process. Accordingly, Educational journals may be considered as the formal means to allocate findings in formal acknowledged context, inviting colleagues to assess, discuss and perhaps refute those conclusions and results (APA, 2010). What is fundamental to consider is that this researcher then leaves literature that fellow colleagues may use to continue investigating or establishing novel gaps to be bridged.

References

American Psychological Association (2008). Publication Manual (6^th ed.). Washington, DC: British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.

Hernández Sampieri, R., Fernández Collado, C., & Baptista Lucio, P. (2008). Metodología de la investigación (4th ed.). McGraw Hill. México.

Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL) (2011). Genre and Research Paper. Retrieved May 2011, from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/658/01/

Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL) (2011). Genre and Research Paper. Retrieved May 2011, from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/658/02/

Swales, J., & Najjar, H. (1987). The writing of research article introduction. Written Communication (4) 2, 175-191. Sage Publications: Inc. Retrieved May 2011, from http://wvuscholar.wvu.edu:8881/exlibris/dtl/d3_1/apache_media/L2V4bGlicmlzL2R0bC9kM18xL2FwYWNoZV9tZWRpYS82MDM1.pdf