(Blog post for September 13th)
When last we spoke (which was, admittedly, awhile ago) I was over the moon excited. I had just found a topic for my research, one I was passionate about. The school I was teaching at had undertaken year long training on the Neurosequential Model in Education (NME) and I wanted to transfer what I had been learning from the classroom to the court. I had even made a connection with an expert one degree removed from the foremost researcher on the topic, Bruce Perry. They were piloting Neurosequential Model in Sport (NMS) courses and had captured the interest of multiple professional sports organizations. After a very encouraging phone call with said expert, I thought I had everything figured out. Then, as is usually the case when things appear too good to be true, the bottom fell out.
I arranged a call with my professors, dying to tell them the good news. I told them about the connection, the phone call, and how I wanted to conduct my research. They quickly and gently put me in my place, and rightfully so. The research I wanted to conduct involved asking about adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) within an elite athlete sample then comparing it to general population statistics. The only problem was my profession. I am a teacher/coach with no medical or psychological training and I wanted to work with extremely sensitive data that had the potential to trigger acute emotional and psychological responses in participants. I mean really, what could have gone wrong?
To be honest, I was crushed. The wind was completely taken out of my sails. I had no motivation whatsoever and struggled to engage with my class work (as you can probably tell by the tardiness of this post). I spent the better part of my summer searching for a topic that elicited the same burning desire to know as my original idea. Thoughts came and went, each with their own pitfalls. I felt completely lost academically.
Thankfully I was able to engage my support structure and come out of the doldrums. Turns out my father completed his masters by comparing expertise between laypeople, athletes, and coaches within a hockey context. During an encouraging conversation with him he outlined how I may be able to take his methods and recreate his findings within a basketball context. It is by far the most intriguing idea I’ve had since the NMS bubble burst. Just having a legitimate idea that is most likely feasible and jives with the feedback given by my professors is such a relief. It has served to reinvigorate me. I’m not sure yet if it is the direction I want to go but I’m happy to be feeling a shred of self-efficacy again. For now I am comfortable being back at the drawing board with an ever increasing belief that I can actually do this research thing competently.
TL;DR: I had (what I thought) was a great idea for my research project. Turns out it wasn’t. Took that feedback hard and have struggled to get back on the academic saddle. Gradually getting back into things and still searching for the right idea.
JP
Jackson, great blog post and reflection on the process. What you have experienced is what I might consider to be normal in doing a masters program and is what I call “the pit of despair”. Everything is great when you are ticking along with course work and moving across the building blocks towards your masters degree. That’s great when the learning is directed by the program, but then it really becomes difficult when you have to direct your own learning and investigation. I went through the same situation in my own masters program. I was really interested in the development of cognitive effort in practices and believed that coaches, and more importantly successful coaches, would be able to illicit practices that included a higher degree of cognitive effort. So I set out to try and measure cognitive effort in practice and went down a road using a psychometric tool called the “need for cognition” scale. It ended up being a validation study (which I did not fully understand at the time) where I adapted the tool to the sport practice context. So, I eagerly went ahead and started my research, collecting data, analyzing data and coming up with some conclusions. As I was moving into my third year of the program my motivation became finishing the program quickly as I had seen many of my peers lingering and or not finishing their masters research at all. Anyway, upon collecting all of my data and going through hours of analysis, I had another conversation with my supervisor who casually asked why I did not use the Borg Scale of perceived exertion as a direct measure to which I could compare my data on the “need for cognition” scale. I did not have an answer and was so focused on my research, I totally ignored other areas that could have been useful (it would have been great to also use the borg scale as this would have been an easier and simpler method of gauging one’s cognitive effort in a particular practice). I was also angry as I had kept my supervisor informed at each step along my research process and not once had we ever had and meaningful discussion about my research. I felt like I was just another student who she needed to get through a Masters program. In the end, I wrote up my research, presented my thesis and graduated.
While I still harbour some resentment of the outcome of my research, reflecting on going through the process was the real value of the program. I took a lot of skills away from the Masters program and was able to apply them in my professional life. I also have been grateful for having struggled through the process, and even now as I reflect, I have generated a greater understanding (and appreciation) of the research process. While I learned a lot through the my masters program, I probably learned a lot more afterwards as I eventually figured out how it all fit together in the end and helped me to progress my professional career.