 |
|
|
|
Susan Hanson is an urban geographer who is interested in the relationship between residential location, gender and employment location. In her research methods class, students develop their own research projects on questions ranging from socioeconomic differences in playground access to the place of the internet in fostering global communication to stop human rights abuses. |
|
 |
Meet the researchers:
Walking the walk
Interview with Professor Susan Hanson, Sara Levenson, and grad students Susannah McCandless and Liz Waithanji
In geographer Susan Hanson's research methods class (Geography 141), geography majors don't just read about research methods, they practice them. Over the duration of one semester, class participants form a community intent on understanding the ins and outs of rigorous research practice. In a recent conversation, summarized below, Hanson, undergrad Sara Levenson '04 and graduate teaching assistants Susannah McCandless and Liz Waithanji discussed the goals and benefits of approaching the course in a hands-on rather than lecture format.
Susan, please describe what you're trying to accomplish in the research methods class.
Geography 141 is the only course required of all geography majors. I assume the students don't know anything about research methods.
Our goal is to help students understand how we come to know what we know. How do we construct knowledge? For example, one idea that's out there right now in the media a lot is that we have a terrible obesity epidemic, and our population in the U.S. is getting progressively unhealthier. One hypothesis (although some people state it as if it is a fact) is that this is all due to the way we've designed our cities. Our whole culture is so reliant on the automobile, and that's what's leading to this decline and deterioration in our health.
So you take a question like that, and you ask the class, how would we go about figuring out to what extent urban design and reliance on the automobile does lead to health problems? How would you figure that out? First of all, what do we mean by health? What do we mean by auto-orientation? So you have to define the terms. And how would you go about designing a project to assess that question? That's just one example.
I'm a firm believer that nobody can learn research methods without actually doing it. I could sit there and talk all day and nobody's going to learn it, really. You only learn it when you have to do it. So every student defines his or her own research question with the help of the TAs and me. We work together as a team, to define a research question. And we go through every step: how do you define your variables: how do you measure them: how do you sample: how do you collect data: and how do you begin to assess the data? They work it through with their own project. They conduct a literature review on the topic that they choose. it's actually very professional and very thorough. They go through all the stages, and through that kind of hands-on approach they really do learn, I think, how to conduct research.
So it's a very different approach from just assigning a paper at the beginning of the semester and expecting that it be turned in at the end of the term.
Yes, because we break the process into little chunks. At every stage students hand in work and we go over it in great detail. We interact with the students about what's working and what's not. Then we move to the next stage. Their work is constantly being revised as they go along.
Do students talk with each other during class about what they're working on?
Susannah: Yes. There's cross-fertilization. During class the students often work in small groups so they can brainstorm ideas.
Susan: And challenge each other. You might think that you have a research question that's very clear and very important, but others in your group might disagree. A student has to defend his or her stance, and clarify it for the others.
Sara: Everyday from the beginning we met in groups, even to work out what kinds of questions we wanted to research. I had no idea when I started. Then I got talking with a fellow student who suggested that since I was interested playgrounds and children, I work on that. Discussing these ideas with other students gets you interested. It's a lot better than going to a lecture everyday. You get a lot more out of it.
At first I was a little nervous to take this class. The syllabus looked very intimidating. I thought that it was going to be very difficult and I didn't know what I was going to get out of it. But the atmosphere of the class was that we were all in it together, and after the first couple weeks, cause when we would split up into these groups, Professor Hanson would come sit down for a while and pick our brains, or we'd pick hers, and the same with Liz and Susannah. You could definitely meet with Professor Hanson during her office hours, she was very accessible, but the TAs would pass around a sheet, almost as if they were saying 'please, come talk to us, we really want to help you.' It was very nice, and when we all presented at the end of the semester, we had refreshments. That was a very different atmosphere from the first day of class. In hindsight, This class was definitely one of my more memorable ones here at Clark. I will remember this class looking back years from now.
Susannah: Susan, Liz, and myself also have different focuses and a diversity of strengths and interests. So sometimes we'd direct students to whomever among the three of us we thought would be most interested in or best qualified for their topic. And sometimes it depended on which students we found that we could work with best with our personalities.
Susan: Having two TAs in this class is so essential. Liz and Susannah were absolutely spectacular in that role. The undergrads loved them and appreciated their help so much. And we all had such a great time in that class because Liz and Susannah were just terrific and worked with the students tirelessly, one on one, which Sara can attest to. We had so much fun.
Sara, what was your research question, and how did you go about collecting data?
My research question has evolved because now I'm expanding it into a senior honors thesis. But it stems from the project I did in Geog 141. Originally I was interested in children and playgrounds in an urban environment. I wanted to investigate whether playgrounds are accessible to all children throughout the Worcester area. Then I narrowed the focus to a comparison of two neighborhoods, Main South, which is usually characterized as an economically depressed neighborhood, and the West Side, which is more affluent. I wanted to compare the two to see which children get the most out of playgrounds and who has the most access. Finally I decided to take a public school from the Main South area and one from the West Side, and survey those children ages 8-12 about their degree of access to playgrounds. My surveys are being sent out now, and I'm waiting for responses.
During Geography 141 I conducted a pilot study and fined tuned my survey. Susannah and Liz were incredible! They helped me round up a lot of children in the Main South area for the pilot.
Susannah: All our friends and neighbors! We said let's talk about playgrounds and eat pizza and ice-cream. That was our incentive!
Sara: It worked out really well. The children in the pilot study had a great impact on the survey. We held three sessions to make sure the children understood the survey and could answer the questions without any problem. It was a huge help to do that. At first I had children put a star next to a question they didn't understand. Then once they knew me better, they felt comfortable enough to approach me directly about something they didn't understand. I would use that feedback to better structure the question. I also asked if there was anything else they thought should go on the survey. One child said that it was very important that they be asked what language was spoken at home. They also drew pictures of the playgrounds: what they thought was the best playground and the worst playground. That information is now an integral, and one of my favorite parts, of the survey.
Susannah: It turned out to be very telling. The same child (a nine-year old Hispanic boy) who recommended the language question had also marked the question about race as one he didn't understand. The pictures are fascinating in part because they reveal that the playgrounds they like to go to best are also the furthest away. You could even learn about the children's family configurations and who they felt close to by who was in the best playground. There were very rarely any people depicted in the worst playground, or if there were they were given a more negative connotation.
Sara, how many surveys are you giving out?
I'm hoping to give out about 200. I'm working with students at the Goddard School in Main South, and Flagg Street School on the West Side. Teachers in those two schools are allowing me to come into their classrooms to administer the questionnaires.
You indicated earlier that at first you felt a lot of uncertainty about taking a class in research methods. Considering that you're still grappling with your research a semester later, how do you feel about participating in research rather than learning via the traditional lecture format?
Sara: I feel that this class has drastically changed the last year and a half that I had at Clark. I just never imagined that I would be involved in something like this. I think it's opened up a whole new world of opportunities for me. I never thought I would be really interested in something research-oriented. I looked at the class as something I had to take to graduate. The information from this class is going to be priceless. It's stuff I will never ever forget. How to go about doing a research project, and how much time and effort it really takes. You can't save it till the last minute. It's changed my options in the future and what I want to do. In a sense it's made my last year here more enjoyable. I'm more interactive in the community, which I always wanted to be. I'm working with children, which I love. I get to go to the playground as much as I want and call it research-it's great! I'm doing stuff in the city. So I'm doing something I really, really enjoy out of the classroom, out of a class that I really didn't know what I was going to find.
Liz and Susannah, you're both doctoral students in geography. Could you each give a brief description of your research focus at Clark?
Liz: I'm studying sedentarized pastoralists; that is, nomadic people who have given up their nomadic life to settle and work in an urban setting. I want to understand the effect on them of this transition, especially as it impacts gender roles and class differences. I'll be focusing my study on a region of northeastern Kenya, on the border between Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Because of the conflict in that area, people's traditional livelihoods are being interrupted.
Susannah: Using Vermont and Costa Rica as case studies, I'm assessing the role of private land conservation (particularly land trusts and conservation easements) as a mechanism to enable the coexistence of land-based livelihoods with conservation and biodiversity. I'll be using interviews to gain an understanding of how people establish the values that they want to see manifested in their landscape. Also, I'll be using remote sensing and aerial photography to see if and how private conservation areas are reshaping the landscape.
Why did you choose Vermont and Costa Rica?
Both are places where maintaining the aesthetic of the landscape is critical to the tourism industry, and where residents engage in land-based livelihoods. A tension exists in both places between earning a living off the land and making sure the land looks beautiful for the paying guests. I'm investigating the potential of private land conservation as a way to reconcile these two goals.
I know that serving as a teaching assistant can be a distraction from your own research. Does working with undergrads in a teaching capacity further your own intellectual development?
Liz: Oh yes. I gained a lot of experience just sitting in class and interacting with students. I felt that I went through the course with the students, and that enabled me to identify with what they were going through. The student research projects covered a very wide range of topics, and Susannah and I had to be very flexible. And at the same time, we were doing our own directed study on research methods with Susan. That made me a very confident person and opened up my perception of research methods.
There was a white student in the class who was looking at access to housing and real estate agents in a Black and Latino community. I suggested that if a white researcher asked these questions of me, a black person, that it might influence my responses. The student looked stunned; this perspective had never occurred to him. Things like that started coming up in class, and I had never thought about research like that. To me the method was not important, it was the results that were important. But now I realize how important-I call it a conduit you have to go through it and do it right, because if the method is not right then the research is not valid. So I really benefited a lot.
Then also, grading, going through the different stages of production of the methodology and grading those, we did it in stages. We'd go through it, and then Susannah would give me the papers and then I would go through them. And then we'd go to Susan and go through them. So we were going through a process of assessing reports and that really made me very sensitive to certain errors that I made and also certain errors that I overlooked. And I think it has enabled me to critically look at my work and other people's work. So I would say that just from that experience I have become a much better editor of papers and articles.
Susannah, do you want to add to that?
I was the TA during my third year here in Worcester. I really love this city and I had so many questions about how it works and what people experience of different aspects of Worcester's natural environment and built environment, and their social interactions. So I was able to sort of direct those suggestions towards different students according to their interests. So I also learned a lot about the city.
I discovered that I enjoy editing more than I like writing! I say this because I've just been writing my own research proposal and I just submitted a grant proposal yesterday. And I was laughing at myself because after tossing off ideas and sitting down with students, sometimes we'd rewrite ten pages sections in my office, hours on end. And that was wonderful and went fluidly. And then I finally sat down to do it myself after having helped two dozen other people do it, and I was just as stumped as the most confused person to ever walk into my office. My just desserts!
|
|
|
Additional Resources
|
|
|
Clockwise from top left: Professor Susan Hanson, Sara Levenson, graduate students Susannah McCandless and Liz Waithanji.
|
|
How do we construct knowledge?