''Inquiry-based investigations depend upon your willingness to suspend judgment long enough to discover what you think.” (B.Ballenger)
Ballenger asks us to suspend judgment until you see what you come up with. “One of the things college teaches is critical thinking—the instinct to pause and consider before rushing to judgment. I’ve learned not to automatically believe in the validity of what an author is saying,” states Ballenger (Ballenger 76). To understand how a problem works and how has it arisen, means suspending judgment to defer your certainty while you explore doubt and new possibilities. Stopping to adopt a new point of view, and reflect from this new vantage point and adopt a broader reference frame. Allowing inquiry to displace certainty makes you willing to disclose your own doubts. With a curious attitude you can identify and examine your assumptions and theirs. Being open to explore alternative meanings and motives, will integrate new ideas and reject polarized thinking.
Knowing that there can be inaccuracies in printed, I tend to search for further supporting information for the base of my research. “A good researcher always takes a skeptical view of claims made in print; she should be even more wary of claims made in Internet documents,” states Ballenger (Ballenger 82). I begin to search for other sources of information that compliment my original source but are not sited together. To me, it is important to find material that is essentially the same but with different authors, written as someone who has experienced the subject matter. This helps clarify the information, making each source have a level of credibility. When working the assignments for this class, I keep with the idea of constant research to solidify the given information, so as to use quality sources. This ensures that I do not have a conflicting view in my writing about a subject and assures me that I have the right source of information.
Works Cited:
Ballenger, Bruce. Ballenger, Bruce. The Curious Researcher: A Guide to Writing Research Papers. Pearson Education, Inc., 2009.
