dissertation ideas, primary school

[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

My MEd is some years ago but my dissertation (and others) were advised to follow the format of: research, intervention, analysis of intervention.

So, you would have to show something before and after you changed things. Not Primary but, could you look at putting toys in coloured boxes. See if the way the toys are presented (pink box or blue box) changes choices about what to play with.

It would be easy enough to put all the toys in, say, black boxes for a few sessions. Then separate into pink and blue.

Would be easy to measure and might teach those who read it something about packaging and its influence on children.

I think from what you have described you are probably trying to do too much for an undergrad dissertation? My advice would be that you'd rather do less but do it properly. Be quite precise in what you want to find out, and also read up on literature in the area first.

Check out PhD and master's dissertations on ethos.bl.ac.uk. If there's one in your area (quite likely) it'll give you ideas on how you can design your study.