The Student Room Group
Uni students - Complete our survey >>
Uni students - Complete our survey >>
Uni students - Complete our survey >>

EPQ - managing finding between lit rew & discussion

Hello

my EPQ question is: "can teachers help with ending discrimination within peers in a classroom?"

in my Lit review, I need to show that they are relevant to my topic and their limitations... but also what they say in relation to my question?

For example, do I mention studies about what discrimination is? Is a study about how students felt about 'social political rules' relevant?
"Research A studied this and concluded that discrimination is X, which is also how this essay defines 'discrimination' because the study shows how discrimation works while talking about students (subject of the essay)."?

Or do I go straight for those studies that specifically address how teachers have helped/hinder with ending discrimination within a class? (of which there are not so many casa). Do I simply say "Research A studied how an Australian teacher implement a reward-system against discrimination and concluded that the reward system works, although it was about a single-sex schools"? This seems wrong because boys and girls part both of my study, which makes the paper seem irrelevant although it has the most convincing definition of discrimination in my mind.

Furthermore, how to I proceed with the discussion? It seems to me that, with every peace of my lit review, I am already giving my answer "yes, teachers can help", so what do I write in my discussion?
Do I repeat myself by simply go in more details about how a specific finding within study from researcher A supports my argument?
(Original post by think_patronus)

Hi, I did an EPQ six months ago (managed to get full marks! :biggrin:) and am doing a second now - the way I would think about it is this:

Literature Review is ONLY an analysis of the existing research, comparing different opinions or existing research (eg. times teachers have or haven't been able to stop discrimination, research which shows that children should learn to handle the situations themselves and that when teachers get involved it stops the children learning from experience, etc.). You should not be persuading anything in this section so you should not reach an answer by the end of it.

In the discussion, you put all of your research into the context of your question, analysing what the research you have learnt means in terms of whether all of your evidence from the discussion means that they can stop discrimination. This is your chance to go slightly beyond your question - for instance, even if you have argued in the discussion that they can make a difference if they get involved, you could have a 500 word section on whether they should get involved, looking maybe at the ethics of indoctrination and whether this oversteps the role a teacher should have. Go in lots of different directions, even if they aren't directly related to your question, for example like you said you could talk in you literature review about what discrimination is and then in your discussion you could argue that its hard to draw a line between 'banter' and genuinely hurtful comments, and then if you find after you have finished the discussion that the question you have actually answered is slightly different to the one you started with you can modify your title which is another thing that the mark scheme looks for.

Sorry for the essay - hope this helps in some way!
Omg, "sorry for the essay"??? I say thank you beyond the moon and the starts!! <3 <3 And congrats for your grade! help coming from you is double helpful!

This helps a lot!!

May I ask one more question (I have an hamster's brain):

if I go into ethical perspectives, do I have to have mention anything about it in the literature review? Or can I reference a research about ethical perspectives that I have not mention earlier?
How do I support my discussion part, basically, with referencing my lit-reviews studies in details I have and/or have not mentioned earlier?
You can 100% refer to new sources in the discussion - for example in total my first EPQ had 45 sources (this is quite high you only need about 25 in total) and 30 of my sources were in the literature review but I talked about 15 new sources for the first time in the discussion. The idea is that you compare different opinions in the literature review to get an in-depth idea of the subject area but you could 100% talk about new stuff. You can also refer to sources you mentioned in the lit review just by saying ‘The review of the literature demonstrated that there is a link between ... and ... . This potentially creates some ethical dilemmas which it is crucial we solve if we want to discover whether teachers can help end discrimination in the classroom’ You can cite the same source again here if you want.

Quick Reply

Related discussions

Latest

Trending

Trending

Articles for you