Writing the formal report was a much larger task than I had originally thought that it would be. Asking my workmates for interviews did not go as planned because many of them were not able to complete the interviews. In the end, three people completed my interview questions and from that, I was able to complete a guide and the draft of my final report. Organizing the paper was a bit of a task because each formal report will have its own style and needs for each section. Finding the correct way to order the sections and subsections was a bit of a trial and error process but it worked out well in the end. Researching for the report was not very difficult because as a psychology student I had background knowledge on the studies done about authority. Therefore, it was a matter of finding a peer-reviewed journal article to back the information and make it more specific to the authority a teacher would have.
The feedback I received from Esteban was helpful in highlighting areas I need to focus on before submitting my final draft of the formal report. It helps to have someone else read the report with a fresh mind as he was able to see the mistakes that I had missed, especially grammatical errors. Esteban mentioned that reviewing the literature on a teacher’s authority types may not be needed for the audience that I am presenting my work to however, I believe that this is not the case. The breadth of research on authority means that authority has thousands of different definitions depending on the context that it is used in. Because of this, it was paramount that I introduce authority in the context of teachers in classrooms and its importance for the transfer of knowledge.
Reviewing the formal report was an interesting process for me. I not only got to see how Max organized and broke down his paper, but I got to see what his survey data looked like. For the formal report that I am doing surveys were not sufficient to answer my questions and because of that, I hadn’t put in any graphics into my paper. Seeing Max’s graphics and how he chose to present and label them was very informative and I believe he executed it very well. The content of the report that was present at the time of review held good promise for the final draft, although many sections were still left to fill in.
Overall, I learned that writing and peer-reviewing a formal report doesn’t always go as planned and that moving forward is the only way to go. Because of my coworkers’ busy schedules, many of them were not able to do the interview but those that did provided very valuable insight. For the peer review Max was unable to fill in every section of his paper but by looking at his work so far and the table of contents I was still able to give feedback that I believe will help him complete his final draft.