Our draft has not yet been finished due to our inability to work an in-person meeting into both of our schedules. We both have jobs, as well as full-time enrollment. Please disregard the unfinished parts of our draft.
For students entering college, choosing a major is a big deal. Most of the time, students have an idea of what they want to do. Other times, students have no clue what they want to do with their future. This is where research comes in handy. Going into college, I knew that I wanted to me in the health-care field. I did not know; however, what specific field I wanted to work in. Under the options of majors, there is a major called health sciences. Other schools might call it pre-med or medical sciences. In the field of health and medical sciences, there is more than meets the eye to the research and theories that create a platform for future learning. I interviewed Amy Reesing, a human development professor who focuses on the development of the physical, cognitive, and socioemotional aspects of life.
After interviewing Amy Reesing, a professor in human development, there is a more defined way of studying our selected discipline. Reesing graduated with a degree in studies of human development. After being asked about the continuing debates in the field of health sciences, Reesing focused on brain development. Reesing stated “The field of medical sciences is never black and white, that is the first thing to know and accept when entering this discipline.” We can not just place a brain in a jar and watch it grow. Even if we did we can not know why or what growths and what age mean what. Reesing said that the biggest debate is over the importance of brain development within the first three years of age. Some say that it is life-threatening important and critical to create the right stimulation for the brain to grow. Others say that the brain has a quality of plasticity to always be growing, not placing such strong importance on the criticalness of the first three years of development. Reesing agrees with both ends of the argument. Reesing opinion is “I agree that the development of the brain in the first three years of life is extremely important, yet I do think that there is compensation that can be made.” When it comes to the general understanding and knowing of the discipline that Reesing is specifically in, she focuses on how and why people change and remain the same over the span of life. She mentions the three categories of development (cognitive, socioemotional, and physical), and places much importance on their interactions over several years to understand development of the human being. Reesing states that in her discipline, both quantitive and qualative data are accepted. “Quantative data including numbers and a wider-range of results are more accepted and used in the health sciences field.”
We also conducted another interview. Recently, I conducted an interview with a woman by the name Michelle Jung, an ASU employee who works in the Motor Behavior field. Throughout the interview I questioned her on many aspects of her discipline in order to see how different her ideas, view points, and research vary from others in the same or similar field. Early on in the interview I as her “What are some of theories or main ideas seen throughout her field”, in which she responded by saying, “The two main theories you would encounter are the Motor Program Theory and the Dynamical Systems Theory.” These both involve how the body produces signals to make other parts of our bodies move. Personally, Michelle comes from a Dynamical Systems back round which is more involved with the effects of the environment on the functions we perform. In order to understand how she comes about her data, I went on to ask her “What kind of evidence is more reliable, qualitative or quantitative?” She quickly, without even a blink, went on to reassure me that the field she is involved with relies heavily on quantitative data by informing me, “Any type of research done in the field relies heavily on numerical data because it provides the best type of evidence.” As the interview progressed and we became more comfortable with each other was given the opportunity to ask, “Have you come across any gaps in your field of study?” Granted this was slightly more personal than previous questions I had asked, but she had no problem explaining to me about the constant gaps in research she has come across in the past. Moreover, I asked her to provide me with an example in which she had no problem doing as she went on to explain to me, “[She] conducted a lab where she tested postural stability, but instead of testing it from the ankles she measured the posture from the torso and the results were nearly the same as those from the ankles.” This is a fantastic example of how she tests the gap to see whether or not more can be done then what already has been. Overall, the interview went extremely smooth and lasted close to twenty minutes and I am extremely happy I was given the chance to meet her because she was able to give me some different views not only in her field but my field of study as well.
Part 2:
Each field at any university will have specific research articles for their discipline. After finding a couple articles from the discipline of health and medical sciences and comparing them to those of other disciplines articles, there are distinct differences that set my major and discipline apart from others. In the first article that was analyzed, the research was focused on the composition of the tendons in our body. Titled “Collagen Structure of Tendon Relates to Function” this article claims that the collagen cells located in tendons are formed a specific way to aid in the function of the tendons. According to Tuhlmans way of analyzing research, this claim has other aspects. The data collected from the article states that under microscopic view, cells of the tendon appear to be in zig-zag or crinckled in appearance. The author states “At a first stage of tendon stretching, with very slow forces, a flattening of tendon crimps may occur. Increasing the stretching, but still at small strains, a straightening of molecular kinks of collagen fibrils may happen. Finally, higher strains lead to molecular gliding within the fibril structure.” This leads us to conclude that the warrant of this article is that tendons are capable of more stretching due to the composition of the collagen cells that form the tendon. Backing of this article includes microscopic examinations as well as cell samples and physical observations. There is a reservation that qualifies for this article as well, it is shown that although tendons are more easily stretched because of their unique collagen cells, stretching of tendons vary form one individual to another. The qualifier is that tendons are structures that attach bone to muscle and require an ability to stretch more than other collagen structures, thus they have specialized cells that allow more stretching. In the interviews, it was stated that quantative data is more broadly used in this discipline. The article supports this by creating a range of expieriments that slightly differ in their observations to allow a wider range of information gathered instead of one large experiment. This increased knowledge of the research done in this discpline because it was entirely based on science. In other disciplines articles, they may have an expieriment included in their article, yet for the health sciences discipline, the experiment is the article. It goes into more depth than a side experiment included in other articles. In our next article according to Tuhlman.....
Part 3:
*review interviews
*review articles
*make connections between the two
*discuss pros
*discuss counter arguments
*conclusion
