Curiosity Sparks Students’ Independent Research
When a pandemic closed his college, Isaac Newton is said to have developed the early foundation of calculus and theories on optics. Similarly, Shakespeare wrote three of his most dramatic plays during a year of self-isolation due to a plague. Over the last year, these examples emerged on social media posts in the form of tweets and memes.
But what hasn’t been highlighted, and what you haven’t seen on social media, is the tireless work of students in the AP Research course at YISS. These students each grew in their tenacity and college-readiness skills, as they read and analyzed thousands of words, planned and executed a research method, overcame writer’s block, wrote draft upon draft, and completed all the other mundane tasks of research. In the end, they presented and defended their word to a panel of faculty members and submitted their own original research to Collegeboard in fulfillment of the AP Capstone program.
Lauren L. evaluated the current criterion on poem-selection for receptive poetry therapy among teens suffering from parental divorce. Her study mainly focuses on whether or not personalization should be implemented in poems used in poetry therapy. She even composed her own original poem.
Sydney C. examined the racial attitudes towards Black and White people of YISS elementary students using the Child Implicit Association Test. She found that YISS elementary students on average had less bias towards White people compared to American students of the same age.
Alex L. created and published a Likert-scale and open-ended questionnaire to examine the factors that motivate students to pursue a music education. The study was specifically conducted with American-International school students in South Korea from grades nine through twelve. She found that while parental encouragement and college admissions are prevalent motivation factors, personal motivation and growth was the strongest motivating factor.
Abigail O. investigated the various textual and non-textual structures of a certain influencer apology that rendered audience support, indifference, or public scrutiny based on the Benoit Image Restoration Theory.
Kazi H. investigated the toll of the coronavirus on the global aviation industry and how the increased implementation of various cleaning technologies may address increased concerns about onboard passenger safety. His study evaluated the implementation of certain cleaning technologies as a catalyst for improving the recovery rate of the aviation industry's financial profitability.
Katherine H. analyzed how Post-Korean War literature could be applied to Narrative Medicine, an interdisciplinary field investigating patients’ stories of illnesses, in order to see how Post-Korean War literature might fill in the limitations of narrative representations.
Genie K. analyzed the reasons for the differences that occur in celebrity-endorsed YouTube advertisements in the United States and South Korea, and the similarities and differences between the advertisements in both countries. Her study utilized the Hofstede Cultural Dimension and Cultural Comparison scale and concluded that the different cultural values identified by Hofstede in the U.S. and South Korea influence the differences between celebrity-endorsed YouTube advertisements in each country.
Ryan R. compared multiple NBA basketball seasons to the 2020 “bubble” season, which was played under isolated environments, to see if there was any impact on how individual players performed. He found that when playing under isolated environments, professional basketball players played more efficiently (in terms of PER).
Anne L. analyzed the gendered narratives of an ancient and modern Amazon, specifically Penthesilea from Greek mythology and Diana Prince from Wonder Woman (the 2017 film). She aimed to uncover how Western perceptions and fictional depictions of women in traditionally male realms of public power have developed throughout history.
To read and learn more about these areas of inquiry, check out the first volume of Guardian Scholastics: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Research.
Each of these students can be proud of the learning and growth they achieved. To complete their year-long labor, they took one final moment with their “brain babies” in the form of a mock paternity/maternity photoshoot (inspired by social media posts by Ph.D candidates).
