Parents of Hardworking Teens

The Research Project Trap (and how to avoid it)

• Katie Jones • Episode 153

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Ep. 153

→ Get the Free Parent Guide: 3 Huge Mistakes (Even Smart!) Students Make in Exams and Assignments - and how to fix them immediately so your teen confidently achieves their best ever grades.
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There's a significant difference between an 'inquiry' research task and a research 'project'.
Treating an inquiry, report or any kind of research task in the upper years of high school like a 'project' will keep your teen stuck at a mark or grade that doesn’t reflect their effort or ability in the topic they're researching.
In this episode I’ll explain:

  •  what the research project trap is, 
  •  the two reasons why so many students fall into it,
    and
  • how to have your teen avoid it. 


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You're listening to the Parents of Hardworking Teens podcast, episode 153. The project trap that may be keeping your teen stuck at a mark or a grade that is not reflecting their effort or their ability or their knowledge in research and inquiry tasks. I'm going to explain the difference between a research project that often happens in those lower year levels that they may have been absolutely acing previously, and how that is different to a research inquiry task—the type that gets set in those upper years of high school. There's a small but super important difference, and we're going to get into it.Hey VIPs—very important parents and carers and grandparents. It is great to have you here. I hope you're doing really well. I hope your teens are doing great as we are really getting into term two.

Hey, VIPs! I hope you and your teens are doing super, super well. I am doing great, but I also need a little brain break after I finish recording this. I have been working super hard—mentally rather than physically, I will say—this week. I have been doing some marking and moderation work for senior student assessments. I have been doing a lot of coaching with my coaching groups and my couple of one-on-one students. And we have had some really complex tasks that we've been looking at, and some beautifully high-end responses that I have been reviewing. And all of that has taken a lot of brain energy and effort.

And on top of that, I've also been undertaking some new exam board training for coursework assessment, for internal assessment. And it is all stuff that has taken a lot of concentration, and quite honestly, my brain is truly hurting from some of it in a really good way, in the way where you feel exhausted because you've been working hard, and you feel accomplished, and it's been really worthwhile.

And I've also had that sort of constant background decision-making and thinking that just happens when you are doing any kind of reno work like we are. Like, one of the things was what size handles do we want for the kitchen cabinets? And where exactly do we want that plug socket to go in the bathroom? Which, I know isn't hard, but it just takes quite a bit of thinking through, or thinking ahead maybe is a better way to put it. And I absolutely know I could just hand over some of those decisions to my husband, but we all know that is not going to happen. I am a control enthusiast, and I want to make those decisions myself. And he knows that whatever he ends up choosing is probably going to be wrong. So, I cannot step away, I'm afraid.

All of that to say, my brain has had a workout, and I'm not going to rest just yet because I really wanted to record this podcast for you while everything is fresh in my mind on the topic of research projects, research assignments, inquiry tasks, reports. And those names, those labels for those types of tasks is really important because I'm going to get right to it.

Because one of the things that I see keeping students very busy and working hard, but also keeping them stuck at marks or grades that are lower than they want, lower than they're capable of, and certainly lower than what would reflect their effort that has gone into these tasks, is treating research or inquiry or report-style tasks like the projects or projects that they used to do in primary school, or even those early years—Year 7 or 8—of high school.

I have so many examples of this, but I'm going to share a couple with you that are on my mind right now. One that has stuck with me for a very long time—it's probably, this probably came up like maybe four or five years ago now—but I always remember sitting on a consult call and a parent was telling me about how her daughter had done this huge research project, had spent hours, days, weeks working on it till late at night, and came out with a C. Now, obviously, a C isn't terrible—I'm not saying it is—but for the time and effort and work that went in, and, important to note, the amount and quality of the information and the sources and the research and references that went into it, a C certainly did not reflect the effort or level of knowledge on the topic that that project was about.

And there marks or highlights the problem. The student was treating it as a topic project. How I would word this, it's a "tell me everything you can about" topic, topic type of project, like we used to do in those earlier years. A project about Leonardo da Vinci, a project about soccer, a project about sharks, a project about World War II, whatever the project is about, whatever the topic is, it's about them going away and finding lots of information and sharing that in some kind of form. Maybe it's a PowerPoint, maybe it's a written project, maybe it's a poster, whatever it is.

In other words, the thing that I always tell students not to do because no exam question, no essay will ever ask, "Write everything you know about [topic]," whatever that topic is.

Now, I have a few ideas of my own about why students do this. And the first reason I think this is happening is because in those earlier years, whether it's in primary school, maybe even in Year 7, we did get those sorts of projects. I know I certainly did in school, where we had to investigate or learn about a particular topic. Now, I know that the curriculum these days is getting away from that, that everything is much more about thinking skills and not just about content—because of course, we all know that we now have Google for that—but I think there's still this almost old-fashioned or traditional (is probably a better word) view that we all somehow carry with us, that education and school is about having us learn about topics.

And the other reason why I think we all kind of have this default in us to think that a research or an inquiry task are asking us to do "projects about" (I like to put that in inverted commas, "projects about") is because we also carry with us the idea that education is all about subject content. That we are there to learn about chemical reactions, or countries, or the food chain, or a certain religion or culture. And this is understandable because so much of the curriculum and the syllabus is organized according to subjects and the unit content within those subjects. Even the senior exam syllabuses are organized as units and then topics. Now, yes, these all then have skills detailed within them, but things generally feel oriented towards the subject or the topic content.

So, those two reasons are for me big reasons why students continue to treat anything that has the word "research" in it, or even "inquiry" or "report" in it, as a "project about," because that's what we did in earlier years and that's how the syllabus documents tend to be organized.

But, in the upper years of high school, I can tell us that 100% any report, inquiry task, research essay, anything that requires some kind of research into a topic is not a project. It is not a "tell me everything you can about" type of task. And so let me share with you why that is and how your teen can approach these differently.

A "tell me everything about" project is operating at the two lowest levels of cognition, the two lowest levels of Bloom's Taxonomy: of describe and explain. It's giving facts and giving reasons, information and explanations. Now, those are not going to get many marks or get your teen very high up the marking criteria, no matter how detailed or comprehensive or well-researched that project is, because describe and explain do not require us to do very much thinking or processing for ourselves. And thinking and processing is what is required at the higher year levels and the higher marking criteria. Things like analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating are what are required.

And quick shoutout here for my workshop: How to Hit the Top Criteria in Essays, Assignments, and Extended Response Exam Questions. If your teen could use tactical, tangible training and strategies to do exactly that—hit those top criteria in those bigger, open tasks—you can grab the full workshop and workbook and complimentary—and complimentary, both of those words, complimentary as in they match up and complimentary as in they are included for free—bonus resources at www.greattransformation.com/topcriteriaworkshop, all one word. I will put the link in the show notes. So if you're interested in that, you can go purchase at that link, your teen will have instant access to everything.

Because what markers and examiners do want at those top criteria is your teen operating at those analysis and evaluation levels of cognition, levels on Bloom's Taxonomy. And 90% of the time, one or both of these will be built into the wording of the question or the task. And the key is to have your teen dissect and identify what that task or question is really asking of them and requiring of them, and then having the skill and the insight and the know-how to be able to demonstrate that in their response.

And I say 90%—in the other 10% of the time, if it isn't being clearly demanded or worded in that way, then honestly, they need to build it in for themselves. They need to incorporate opportunities for analysis and evaluation, or they need to come up with a research question at the analyze or evaluate level.

This is something I often help and support and guide students on is coming up with a research question. I have a podcast episode on exactly this. If your teen ever needs to craft their own research question, this would be a great thing to go check out and listen to. It's Episode 61, it's called What Makes a High-Quality Research Question? I will link to it in the show notes, but you can also just get to any podcast episode by going to www.rocksolidstudy.com/ and then whatever is the number of the episode. So for that one, it would be /61, the numbers 6-1, and that will take you directly there.

Now, this requirement of crafting and coming up with a student's own research question came up just this week on a coaching session. I was working with a student on getting going with their new psychology assignment. And in that, they needed to select a claim from the five provided claims, and then come up with their own research question to investigate or inquire within it. And here's where I really had some work to do to keep this student on the right track, in the best way, in the best way, and you'll see why.

And often this is where this kind of coaching really comes into its own. Sometimes the work I do with a student is about what they're writing or up-leveling or refining their responses. Sometimes it's about dissecting questions or structuring an answer. And sometimes, like this time, it is about coming up with the best question, getting on the smoothest, most direct path to a great result in a large assignment task without spending more time or more effort than is really needed. It's not about shortcuts, it's not about trying to make everything easy; it's about not taking the long path, the hard route. And instead, having a direct and smooth path, but also creating a path that actually takes them and guides them to those top criteria. Because so often I see students limiting themselves by not giving themselves the option or ability to even reach those top criteria because they've pitched their question at a lower level of response without even realizing it.

Now, in this case, the student was really interested in the topic. So when I said I was having to keep them on track in the best way, it was because they were really enthusiastic and wanted to look at so many aspects of the topic. She'd already done some preliminary thinking, she'd already decided what she wanted to base her research question on, and it was the claim that other people influence the way we respond to situations. So she decided she specifically wanted to investigate the bystander effect. So they had to come up with a psychology concept or a psychology focus within that claim.

Now, this is actually the first point where we really need to be aware, because this is where it can turn into "I'm going to investigate [whatever the topic is]," so for this student it was "I'm going to investigate the bystander effect." But that is not what the task required. It required a specific research question to be answered.

So, as she started to come up with some specific areas to research and craft a question for, what started to happen was just as we'd start to laser into something—like, how does the number of people present impact the bystander effect—then she'd tell me, "But I also want to look at this, like I want to look at which part of the brain impacts those decisions, or maybe I should also consider this other factor, like what about the type of situation? How does that impact someone's behavior? Like, maybe if it's an emergency, does that change the bystander effect?"

And after a couple of back-and-forths where we considered, okay, well, what would those research questions look like, how would we word something to go into detail on that, I then had to take slightly more drastic action because it was clear that this wasn't just about possibly investigating a different factor or aspect, but it was a case of "I think I need to cover everything about the topic. I think I need to look at all these different aspects of the bystander effect."

So, I had to say, "Okay, stop. This is not a project about the bystander effect. This is an inquiry investigation. It is about researching one very specific element and analyzing its impact and evaluating the validity or reliability of those findings. It is not describe and explain all the information about the brain and the bystander effect, and then recounting or telling us about the studies that have found that information. It is about finding specific studies on one specific element, analyzing the results of those studies, and evaluating what they found, analyzing the overall answer to the research question, and then even evaluating that answer. A very different task, a very different approach, and a very different process to complete. It is not finding information about; it is analyzing studies in relation to a very specific research question and evaluating those sources and evaluating the conclusion."

Very different, and hopefully from that, very clear as to why it might be that students are putting in a ton of research and time and effort, but not essentially producing the right outcomes—the outcomes, the content in their writing that actually hits those top criteria, actually meets the demands of these types of tasks. And otherwise, get stuck at those lower levels without realizing it, no matter how much great information they have.

In some ways, this can be a great thing because it refines and limits how much information needs to be found. One of the things that happened with that student from four or five years ago was that they had found so much information and they were trying to pack it all in. This is not what it's about, so this can turn into a positive when your teen is on that right track.

Because I really wanted to make sure that this student did not drift back into "project about" mode. And so as we wrapped up with a suitable research question drafted, I asked her, "Okay, what are you going to go away and do now?" And thankfully, she got the answer to that question absolutely correct; that's exactly what needs to happen next. And just to make sure, I also asked, "What are you not going to do?" And I had to give her the answer to that question, which is, "I am not going to go and do lots of general research about the bystander effect. I'm not going to go and look at all the different things I could share about the bystander effect."

Because as a side note, I think this is something that also has students taking up a lot more time and energy than they need to, which is they may be feeling a little bit uncertain or a little bit daunted about how to now go and do that analysis and evaluation. These are skills that are higher level, they're skills that a lot of students are not doing as well as they could, I will say that. But they think that having more information, going and doing more research is going to somehow magically reveal the way to do that. And I'm here to say that is not going to happen. Having more information is not going to make you better at writing a sophisticated analysis.

I really hope that sharing all of this means that your teen does not fall into the "project about" trap, the time-sap trap of finding lots of information about a topic—lots of great facts and stats and studies about a topic or about an issue—and ending up stuck at those describe and explain levels. Everything needs to be operating at at least the analysis level, and to do that, we need to be processing and applying that research and information with a whole different focus, a whole different approach, a whole different process and outcome, and one that will actually access those top criteria.

Now, if you like the sound of this kind of work that I'm doing with students, and your teen having this kind of training, these kinds of conversations with me regularly on their own work—this kind of high-level, detailed, and practical, tactical coaching on their assignments and exam prep and performance—then drop me an email: support@rocksolidstudy.com and just pop in the subject line, "info." And I will send you the info doc with all of the details.

I will see you back here on the next episode, and in the meantime, I'm going to go and try to rest and refresh my brain just a little bit. And you can maybe share this small but mighty tip or insight with your teen to keep them away from the describe and explain style projects, and get them on that path of analytical and evaluative inquiry. Take care, and I'll see us soon. Bye!

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Katie Jones

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