Research in My Eyes

What does “research” mean to me? Just like when leadership is mentioned, we often think of political leaders, rather than leaders in educational area; when I hear of “research”, I can not help thinking scientists and experiments. At the same time, a picture of researchers busy doing experiments in a lab is showed up in front of my eyes. I always simply think research is a kind of scientific activities. But sometimes, I also think research is survey with questionnaires, because some of my college students, especially those major in psychology, are fond of asking a large number of students to answer questions when they do research. As far as I am concerned, research is such a kind of activities that is conducted by professional people, focusing on a certain subject or area and having an explicit aim. Besides, research must have a certain value to be conducted, otherwise money and time is wasted. That means the results of research must benefit human or society.

I have never been a “subject” in research. I only filled out some research questionnaires, and was interviewed by my friend when she conducted a survey for her thesis. When I was a college student, I majored in Physical Education and most of my time was spent on physical training, therefore I seldom had chances to do research by myself either. But I indeed conducted a simple research about the effect of selenium (Se) on algae in my third year in university. Because my father is a professor in Biology department and my mother is a laboratory assistant in the same department, I have more chances to contact with biology and experiments. Affected by my parents, I am interested in microbiology, especially micro-algae. Therefore, I took some elective courses of botany and physiology in university. I liked to study unicellar red algae, especially Porphyridium sp., which has a great commercial value and broad application for synthesizing many high-value bioactive substances such as phycobiliprotein, polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), exopolysaccharide and so on. I also know that selenium is one of human essential bio-trace elements, having many physiological and biological functions such as scavenging free radicals, antioxidation, antitumor activity, etc. Porphyridium sp. can enrich and bio-transform selenium when cultured in medium containing sodium, which is an easy and effective way to get organic se-compounds. Therefore, I conducted a very simply research to investigate the effect of selenium on the algal growth and the major biochemical components. Although I searched a few relative references and got some useful advice from my physiology teacher as well as my parents before I conducted my research, I made many mistakes during the process of experiments. For lacking of rich biology knowledge and relative experimental skills, this research finally was not completed totally. But from the data I got, I found that selenium can promote the algal growth and selenium also stimulates algae to produce more exopolysaccharide. My friend Ava thought my finding was interesting and did more research during her graduate study. She published an academic article last year, named “The Accumulation and Distribution of Selenium in Protein, Polysaccharide and Lipid of Porphyridium sp.”.

As a graduate student in educational area, I find there are many interesting issues or subjects to be researched, such as teacher leadership, educational policy, quality education, differences between eastern and western education, distance education, teacher training, etc. Among all these issues, I am really interested in the quality education and curriculum reform in China. In order to call for an end to the overemphasis on imparting “book knowledge”, the Chinese curriculum reforms for grades 1-12 were officially launched in 2001, when the Ministry of Education issued a circular entitled “Guidelines for Curriculum Reform of Basic Education”. Shandong Province was famous for high-quality education and the senior high school where I studied, High School Affiliated to Qufu Normal University, was one of the first bath sample schools which implemented quality education and curriculum reform in China. As a student who experienced such reforms during 2000 to 2003, I realized that the undertaking curriculum reform brought tremendous challenges to school administrators, teachers, students, and parents. Ten years has passed away since the reform was implemented, does the reform change the old traditional teaching way? Does the reform solve the problems generated by examination-oriented education? Does this reform really reduce students’ study pressure? What are people’s thoughts of this reform, including administers’, teachers’, students’ and parents’ opinion? … Although I know the research concerning this reform will be very difficult and I even have no idea about how to conduct such a research, I am really interested in participating in the relative research about it.

Research, in my eyes, is an activity which needs time, money, energy and talent. Just like not all the people can be athletes, not everyone is suitable to do research. If you like to do research and the subject lies in your favorite area, it will be happiness; but if not, it will be a nightmare.