All good research starts with hypotheses which grow into theories. This video will introduce you to the characteristics of both. But it all starts with the hypothesis. The word hypothesis derives from a Greek word meaning proposal or supposition. A hypothesis should be phrased as a specific statement, not a question, which means it should end in a period, not a question mark. People think that hypotheses have to come from scientific review of literature, but that's not actually the case. Hypotheses can come from anywhere, and the best hypotheses often comes from your own personal experience. So all of you are probably interested in this MOOC because you have had some observations about the world around you. Maybe you have predictions of why some people are more successful than others. Or perhaps you have observed situations which lead you to have thoughts on how we can increase happiness and human flourishing. These types of personal experiences or casual observations can lead to powerful hypotheses. Hypotheses can also come from, and then grow from a review of the literature. So you may start with some personal observation, and then see what other research has been conducted, and revise your hypothesis accordingly. And finally, you might engage in what's called a thought experiment, where you imagine certain scenarios and make predictions about what might occur in those hypothetical situations. While hypotheses can come from any number of places, they do have a few characteristics in common. First, they are relevant, which means that someone has to care about your hypothesis. It could be relevant for a particular field, like psychology, healthcare, or education, or a particular stakeholder group, like teachers, or doctors, or kids. So you should think about, who would care about whether your hypothesis was true or not? Second, hypotheses should be specific. They can't answer everything. A good hypothesis focuses in on some narrow interest. Third, strong hypotheses should be plausible and likely backed by some prior research. Now this isn't to discourage someone from being innovative or creative. But if no one has ever thought of something related to what you're interested in before, you're either a genius, or not doing something particularly worthwhile. So stick to the things that have some basis in reality. And finally, hypotheses need to be testable. So you need to consider how you might collect data on a specific hypothesis, to determine if it was true or false. If you can't determine a way the test the hypothesis, then it's probably not a particularly strong one. So let me share an example from my own background. I begin my careers a third grade teacher in South Houston, which was the most challenging and rewarding experience I've ever had, or will likely ever have. That first week of school, my first year, I arrived full of energy and hope like a typical recent college grad ready to save the world. Soon thereafter, I realized the magnitude of the challenge in front of me, when I gave my students their beginning of the year diagnostic test. While the majority of students in the neighborhood I grew up in, which was right down the road, were reading Harry Potter books, most of the students in my class struggled to read the Cat in the Hat. And only 2 of the 23 students were on grade level, and two did not know all 26 letters of the alphabet. So those stats you read about that students in low income communities are already three years behind their peers in suburban communities. That wasn't a statistic. It was 23 real kids in my classroom that I was responsible for. But this is precisely what I had sign up for, so I got to work. The first few months of my teaching experience involved every little else besides teaching. I would wake up at 5 AM to be at school at 6 AM, and leave after 7 PM, only to come home and plan more. And when I wasn't sleeping on weekends, I was working. So needless to say, that when the first benchmark test my students took came back the Friday before Thanksgiving break, I was pretty confident that they would do well. I still vividly remember the sensation of opening this tightly sealed results in the manila envelope that were dropped off to my classroom. And then proceeding to sink into the bean bag chair in the reading nook in the corner of my third grade classroom, because 0 of my 23 students had passed. Now I wasn't completely naive. I knew what I wouldn't do perfectly, but I hadn't expected zero to pass. I don't think I've ever felt as much frustration as I did in that moment. I remember thinking about how hard I had worked. I had put in so many long nights printing leveled readers, grading different cheated homework packets, and making math games rather than relying just on worksheets. And still zero had passed. Somewhere in the middle of my meltdown, the janitor who had become a friend of mine came into my classroom, and she seems very concern by my state. Which was understandable given the fact that I can only imagine, I must have looked like a mess. Hurdled over in this bright neon pink bean bag chair in the corner of my library in the dark. And she ask me if I was okay. And I told her that I would be fine. As I uttered those words, I had profound realization. I would in fact be fine. But probably for the first time in my life, this actually wasn't about me. Sure, I had worked hard the results hadn't validated that effort. But this was about my students, and the numbers were stacked against them. Statistics show that only one out of every ten students growing up in low income communities will graduate from college. So of those 23 kids in my room, that meant that maybe two or three were likely to make it. I would be fine, but this wasn't about me. Once I had what I liked to call my bean bag chair epiphany, I was re-energized and recommitted to the work. But rather than just work harder, my work was more focused. I isolated the obstacles that stood in the way of my students' progress, and focused intensely on those obstacles until we had addressed them. And then we would move on to the next obstacle. Slowly but surely my students began to make progress. By the end of the year, all but 2 of my 23 students had passed the test, growing over two years on average in one year. I walked away from that personal experience with two key beliefs and hypotheses. First, teachers matter. A great teacher can make a significant impact in the lives of kids. But second, teaching is incredibly challenging work. It requires being other oriented and tirelessly committed in the face of challenge. After I left the classroom I worked as a teacher trainer working with dozens of teachers across schools. And what I saw was that the teachers I worked with varied considerably in both their approach to challenge, and also in their ability to cope with failure. Which as any teacher will tell you, happens constantly. So I became very interested in the question of how certain non-cognitive skills, skills like passion and commitment. What I would come to know as grit could predict teacher performance and retention. When I started looking into the topic, I realized that other research had supported some of what I saw from my own personal experience. So there's plenty of education research to show that teaching is incredibly challenging work, which leads to high rates of teacher turnover, particularly among novice teachers in high needs schools like the one that I taught in. There's also research that shows that principals don't know how to select for teachers that are likely to be successful at the time of hire, and could use better information to apply when making those critical hiring decisions. When I turn to the positive psychology research, I found grit or passion and perseverance for long-term goals. Grit had been shown to predict success in other challenging domains such as West Point Beast Barracks. So this research supported my hypothesis that grittier teachers would perform better in the classroom and stay committed to the profession. This hypothesis which started with my own personal experience, formed the basis of the true grit article we'll follow throughout this course. So let's look at our characteristics of quality hypotheses and see how my hypothesis stacks up. It's relevant because teacher effectiveness is a major focus in the education field. Policy makers and principals want to know how better to select for teachers that can improve student learning. It's specific because it only focuses in on one potential predictor, grit, without trying to answer all questions of interest at once. It's plausible because there's research on grit and other challenging fields, and based on what others know about the challenges of teaching, it passes the common sense test. And finally, it's testable because we can collect data on both variables, grit and teacher effectiveness, and examine the relationship between the two. So if that's a hypothesis, what is a theory then? Well a theory is a set of related hypotheses that grow over time. It goes beyond just explaining a phenomenon, it gets to the deep causal mechanisms. It starts to explain why certain changes happen. The PERMA model developed by Martin Seligman is an example of a theory. It has five core elements of psychological well-being and happiness. P for positive emotion, E for engagement, R for relationships, M for meaning, and A for accomplishments. Marty Seligman believes that these five elements can help people reach a life of fulfillment, happiness, and meaning. PERMA was developed over years of research, and initially based on multiple smaller hypotheses. So researchers start with these smaller hypotheses and then work over time to build a theory. So this brings us to the end of this video on hypotheses and theories. All of you are coming to this course with very interesting personal experiences and observations about the world around you. So think about a hypothesis that you have, and use that hypothesis throughout this course to apply the concepts to your work and your life.
