Foundations of Social Research: Rehabilitation Case Study- Reflective Practitioner- Research Project Assignment

Internal Code: MAS7611

Research Project Assignment:

Task: Description: In future practice, you will find yourself in situations of uncertainty. This uncertainty prompts a question. In order to turn this uncertainty into certainty, you must answer this question. But before you can answer this question, you must be able to formulate it. In this assessment task, you will reflect on why reflective practice is important, what researchers in your field are investigating, and what you might like to investigate. In later courses in your program, you may be asked to develop an original research question – in the sense of a question to which no one currently knows the answer – and to design and carry out a research project to answer that question. As this is an introductory course, we do not expect you to develop a fully original research question. Rather, we ask you to explore the kinds of research questions currently being asked in your field, and to reflect on the process of developing a research question relevant to a future professional role. In this assessment task, you will reflect on the topics from the course podcasts, readings, and tutorial activities from weeks 1 – 4, to address the following questions: Question1 What is a reflective practitioner?: Define what it means to be a reflective practitioner. Then, based on what you currently know in your field, explain why you think reflective practice is important in your field. Question 2 What are others in your field investigating?: Based on your exploration of research by staff in your program and major journals in your field, discuss three examples of research question that other researchers in your field are investigating. For each example, do the following: 1. State the research question. 2. Explain why you think research into that question is, or is not, important for practitioners in your field. Question 3 What might you investigate?: Skim the employment adds at an organization for which you might like to work, or look at ads for your profession in an online job site like seek.com.au. Find at least one ad for a position in your general field, which is senior enough that it requires staff to exercise independent judgement (entry-level roles in many professions do not allow staff enough discretion to apply their research skills, while more experienced and senior roles often require research skills to support independent decision-making). Once you have found a suitable role, read the position description of the role, and look up information about the organisation advertising it. Imagine you are a professional working in that advertised role. Do the following: o Describe the organisation, the role and your responsibilities. o State at least three research questions that would be of interest to the organisation for which you are working. o For each question, explain why you think it would be important to that organisation: what would change about how the organisation thinks or acts, depending on the answer to each question? Note that you will return to these questions in tutorial activities and assessments later in this course, so try to choose questions that are also personally interesting to you. Research question 1 Is parole a viable solution for decreasing the recidivism rates? Research question 2 Do school-based drug prevention programs reduce rates of illicit drug use? (Soole, Mazerolle, Rombouts, 2008). Research question 3 Do prisons have the capacity to become breeding grounds for radicalisation and terrorism?(Mulcahy, Merrington, Bell, 2013). Research question 4 Do rehabilitation programs reduce recidivism? Research question 5 Is case management effective in reducing the rates of re-offending? Research question 6 Is there an association between poor prison management and inside prion violence?