Name:

Natasha Karunaratne
PROJECT #1
1. Revised essential question for project #1
How does educational equity, accessibility, opportunity, and freedom enable a student
to be successful?

2. Does your revised essential question for project #1 meet the following criteria?
Yes

No

Your essential question is open-ended; that is, it typically will not have
a single, final, and correct answer.

Yes

No

Your essential question is thought-provoking and intellectually

engaging, often sparking discussion and debate.

Yes

No

Your essential question calls for higher-order thinking, such as

analysis, inference, evaluation, prediction. It cannot be effectively
answered by recall alone.

Yes

No

Your essential question points toward important, transferable ideas

within (and sometimes across) disciplines.

Yes

No

Your essential question raises additional questions and sparks

further inquiry.

Yes

No

Your essential question requires support and justification, not just an

answer.

Yes

No

Your essential question recurs over time; that is, the question can
and should be revisited again and again.

3. Based on the above assessment, do you have any revisions to your question for
project #1? If yes, revise it in the box below. If no, then copy the question you started
with into the box below.
How does educational equity, accessibility, opportunity, and freedom [what kind of
freedom?] enable a female student to be successful?
Natasha-This is a very strong essential question (above). Our only query has to do with what aspect of
freedom are you talking about. Are you talking democracy? Are you talking the freedom to
attend school--to have educational opportunities at all? You should play with that and maybe
clarify.
[continued below]
4. Research questions that you would investigate in relation to your revised essential
question for project #1 (please include as many as you think are relevant to your project).
OK--so now the task is: whats your primary research question and whats your secondary
research question?
This set of questions doesnt really address what you are actually doing in the project. The
primary research question should. Isnt the following your actual primary research question?
How do female students from impoverished backgrounds benefit from attending allfemale schools on three continents--Sri Lanka, Rwanda, and the United States?
And then if that was your primary research question, which of these would be secondary
(subsidiary) research questions? Go through and identify those. Our guess is that you have
to recraft those. Some of these still hold but now think about this: what specifically will you
need to ask about in each focus group of students/administrators? Most of the
questions below dont really apply to the concrete research you will do. They are more
definitional questions--how do you define this or that and how do you quantify and qualify?

1. How does all female education benefit young women from impoverished
backgrounds?
2. Does a female student from an impoverished background have the same educational
equity, accessibility, opportunity, and freedom as a female student from an affluent
background?
3. What is educational equity and how can it be quantified and qualified?
4. What is educational accessibility and how can it be quantified and qualified?

5. What is educational opportunity and how can it be quantified and qualified?

6. What is educational freedom and how can it be quantified and qualified?
7. How is success defined through an educational lens?
8. How does the lack of educational equity, accessibility, opportunity, and freedom affect
a students success compared to that of a student with these benefits?
9. How can a countrys politics, economics, and society work together to improve an
education system to provide equity, accessibility, opportunity, and freedom for its
female students?
10. What would a school with educational equity, accessibility, opportunity, and freedom
look like and how would it operate? Are you suggesting you would evaluate each of
the schools you study?
11. How does a countrys free public secondary education affect the success of female
students from said country? Rwandas secondary education is NOT free, for example.

5. Give us a brief, one-paragraph description of your proposed project for project #1.
I want to view this question through a global lens, while focusing on public secondary
education for female students. What if you cant find a PUBLIC school for women in the US?
There are charter schools --those are public. One is in New York City (Manhattan) called
Girls Prep (http://www.nyccharterschools.org/content/girls-prep-lower-east-side-middleschool); another one is in Chicago--Young Womens Leadership Charter School
(http://www.ywlcs.org/about/) By this, I am not necessarily referring to unisex schools And
thats an option certainly...but it will affect your data, but when I do case studies, I will be
focusing on female students specifically.
I am aware that taking this on through a global lens is an onerous task, but quite frankly, I
wouldnt see my project mattering as much if I were to restrain it to schools in the U.S. I plan
on having close contact with the administration of public secondary schools in Rwanda, Sri
Lanka, and the U.S. If I find that this is doable, I would love to add at least one country from
majorily populated continents (all those except Antarctica), but I am trying to keep feasibility
as a main priority.
I would gather data about the schools equity, accessibility, and opportunity, while also
analyzing whether the girls at these schools have educational freedom to choose a path they
are passionate about.
I find that this project is essential to the world, because we have had too many recent
incidents (ex. Malala, the Nigerian girls) to avoid this topic any longer. I am taking on this
project to persuade girls themselves, parents, governments, nations, and the world that our
top priority should be making sure that girls have educational equity, accessibility, opportunity,
and freedom.

Lots of great possibilities here. Lets continue to discuss, as you revise!

Ms. Freeman and Mr. Mikalaitis

PROJECT #2
1. Revised essential question for project #2
How does gender, age, culture, socioeconomic background, and personal beliefs
morph an individuals definition of success?

2. Does your revised essential question for project #2 meet the following criteria?
Yes

No

Your essential question is open-ended; that is, it typically will not have
a single, final, and correct answer.

Yes

No

Your essential question is thought-provoking and intellectually

engaging, often sparking discussion and debate.

Yes

No

Your essential question calls for higher-order thinking, such as

analysis, inference, evaluation, prediction. It cannot be effectively
answered by recall alone.

Yes

No

Your essential question points toward important, transferable ideas

within (and sometimes across) disciplines.

Yes

No

Your essential question raises additional questions and sparks

further inquiry.

Yes

No

Your essential question requires support and justification, not just an

answer.
Yes

No

Your essential question recurs over time; that is, the question can
and should be revisited again and again.

3. Based on the above assessment, do you have any revisions to your question for
project #2? If yes, revise it in the box below. If no, then copy the question you started
with into the box below.
How does gender, age, culture, socioeconomic background, and personal beliefs
morph an individuals definition of success?
Natasha-Hmmm.
First, we think you mean affect rather than morph. That word use is awkward in the
essential question.
This question in many ways is the same as your other projects question; its just about
people in general rather than girls in a school setting.
But what we are still not sure about is the so what. Lets say you find out that gender
affects whether people think they are more or less successful. Why would that be an
useful or important discovery? Lets say that some children are less confident about
their future success because they were not given lots of parental support when they
were younger. Again, is that a surprise? And if so, what is the significance of the
finding?
Your research questions are too general, even though they are ultimately what you will
draw conclusions about if you pursue this project. You need to figure out specifically
what you want to research. Your description right now is too vague and unfocused.
Imagine you are asking questions for this project of individuals; what would those
questions look like? Here your task is similar to the task you have for the Rwanda-Sri
Lanka-US set of secondary research questions.
You need to rethink this project fairly significantly, we think.
Ms. Freeman + Mr. Mikalaitis
4. Research questions that you would investigate in relation to your revised essential
question for project #2 (please include as many as you think are relevant to your project).

1. What pressures go into forming an individuals definition of success?

2. Why do people choose their specific professions?
3. How does an individual who attended higher education define success compared to an
individual who did not?
4. What do similarities between individual definitions of success say about our society?
5. How does ones perception of success affect his or her happiness in life?
6. What role does gender play in an individuals definition of success?
7. What role does age play in an individuals definition of success?
8. What role does culture play in an individuals definition of success?
9. What role does socioeconomic background play in an individuals definition of
success?
10. What role does personal beliefs play in an individuals definition of success?

5. Give us a brief, one-paragraph description of your proposed project for project #2.
For this project I would use Boston as my sample size. I pick several individuals, varying in
gender, age, culture, socioeconomic background, and note these variables for my research
effort. I would ask them questions such as How do you define success? and Do you
consider yourself successful? I would then analyze all this data, looking for underlying
similarities and/or differences, and I would then try to draw a correlation between my variables
and these answers. As a final product, I would present this project with a photography book,
including pictures of the individuals I questioned, along side their responses, and graphs
analyzing my data. I find this question to be essential and important to the world, because we
are all after success in this life, but we seem to take for granted that everyone defines
success the same that way we do. I hope to come up with a conclusion showing that there are
varying types of success, and all these types of success are crucial to understand when
parenting, educating, and being supportive of one another.