reception/primary dissertation HELP!

[amanda1991]

Hi, I'm currently on my third year of a degree in Primary education and have to come up with a proposal for my research project/dissertation..Very scary! I work as a teaching assistant in a reception classroom, and was considering looking at something to do with how gender stereotype affects children's choice in play within the classroom (maybe focusing on influences from adults?) That's kind of as far as my idea is going..!
I considered questionnaires with the children from my class, with pictures of different toys and getting them to choose which they would like to play with. I also think its important to look at the impact of the adult, possibly sending questionnaires to parents (not exactly sure what questions I would ask? any ideas would be great) and maybe interviewing teachers to find their views. I also wanted to do some sort of observation in the classroom, possibly just setting out some different typical gender bias things such as the pink dolls house and the dinosaurs, and seeing who goes where. Not sure if this is an observation that would need to be done multiple times, or on 2 different classes to make it more reliable.

As you can see, my ideas are all over the place and I can't seem to pull them together anywhere. ANY advice or suggestions of what might work would be amazing!! My deadline for my proposal is looming and im becoming increasingly stressed! xx

[SaveOurBogBrushes]

Sorry I'm coming from a Psychology background but we would need to speak about previous studies to explain why we were exploring this new area. Could you try looking up past studies and see if there's anything similar that seems to be particularly lacking? Other people will be along shortly so maybe my idea is completely irrelevant to other degrees.

[overthemill]

It's a good idea but seems quite large to me. Can you focus it down a bit? When I did my (post grad) teaching qual we had to discuss rough ideas with supervisor first. Can you do that? IME you need to focus down quite tightly to avoid being all over the place

[moab]

Is there are previous research on gender stereotypes toys in the classroom. If so what do they say? What did they do in their research?