FLANC ideas, 9/25

• do a wiki for the Juniors for their notes (as they read at home) - Do they ALL have internet access?
• do a wiki for the literature circles for the Banned Books unit
• e-mail Teryn Bivens and pick her brain about using blogs!!! :)
  

#4 better late than never

Finally, I think that I have put together some of the pieces to my research. (At least I have tried!)

Research question: How do teachers successfully implement inquiry-based activities into the classroom and how does this implementation impact student achievement?

Subjects: 10th grade Biology teachers in Forsyth County

Measures: Survey as well as teacher interviews and observations.

Analysis: Qualitative analysis using the Mac Method for the open-ended survey questions, interviews and observations. For the other survey questions, I will generate percentages based off the data from each question.

Blog Entry 4

I’d never done a blog for a class before and initially I was skeptical about the project. Having done it I think it has worked quite well for me and I have benefitted from the suggestions. I also hope some of my ideas were of use to others.

I think I am coming out of the course with a fairly good understanding of what my project is. There is no question that i’ve found the topic I want to write about. I will be writing about electronic primary sources because I really think I could use them to spark student interest and teach critical thinking skills in my own classes. The only question is whether or not my current ideas about the best procedures for gathering data make sense or not. I think I might be biting off more than I can chew by using four different methods to attack my problem. I might have to drop one but all seem very valuable so i’m not sure which one. I'm also still trying to figure out how focused the survey should be. I might have to make it fairly broad to make sure that I have the ability to fallback on another part of the question of mine doesn't seem to be panning out.

beating tina to the post.

Research Question:What is the relationship between high school biology students’ misconceptions of molecular genetics and those students’ performance on a molecular biology test?

Subjects: Students will be chosen from a regular level biology course in a school in Forsyth County. Nine students will be chosen at random from within that particular classroom.

Measures/Procedures: The students will take their normally scheduled test on molecular genetics. The test scores for the nine students will be gathered. Within one day of that test, a one on one interview will be conducted with each of the nine students. The interview questions will prompt them to show their understanding of the large concepts covered on the test. The questions will be very broad, urging the students to explain all that they know about topics with minimal guidance and scaffolding. After the interview, the researcher will rank the student’s understanding of the material based on a rubric scaling system. The student will be classified as having one of the following five levels of understanding: very thorough, thorough, moderate, lacking, very lacking.

Analysis: The results from the understanding assessment and the scores on the tests will be compared through a correlation.

Nothing like 11:24 to post my blog!

Research Question:
How do novice and experienced high school Social Studies teachers differ with regards to following state-issued curriculum guides?

Subjects:
4 high school Social Studies teachers will be chosen from different schools in Forsyth County based on years of experience. Two will be “novice” teachers, preferably with 1-3 years of teaching experience. Two will be “experienced” teachers, preferably with 10+ years of experience.

Measures/Procedures:
In-depth, qualitative interviews will be audio-recorded with each of the four teachers. Questions will be focused on discovering how closely the teachers follow the support document issued by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) for their specific content.

The researcher will also conduct classroom observations to collect more data on how closely the teachers’ lectures follow the state-recommended curriculum.

Analysis:

The interviews will be qualitatively analyzed to determine the teachers’ general tendency to follow the state-issued curriculum guides. Common and contrasting themes will be extracted to determine the differences among novice and experienced teachers in regards to the curricular guideline. Additionally, the observations will be analyzed to compare the teachers’ curriculum and use of outside resources to the state-issued curriculum guide. This additional comparison will allow the researcher to further understand the teachers’ curriculum.

Yay for researach! #4

Research Question: How do engaged learning activities influence students' attitudes towards world history and its applicability to their lives?

Sample: 4 focus groups of 6 students each, hand-selected by their teachers and the 4 teachers themselves.

Analysis: Using focus groups, interviews, and classroom observations (for triangulation), I would determine the various types of "engaged learning" activities (operational definition--any activity that forces the student to manipulate information, whether in role-play, research projects, media use in the classroom, etc.) that take place in each classroom and judge its influence thereof. Through talking to students and teachers I would like to find out how different types of activities influence their views on social studies.

#4

Research Question: Does the classroom environment at the time of
homework assignment and collection affect the likelihood of homework completion, and what rationales do students give for completing or not completing homework?

Subjects: 16 students, 2 teachers. The students will be broken up in to 4 groups of 4. 2 of the groups will classified as having frequent homework completion, and 2 will be classified as having infrequent homework completion.

Measures/Procedures: surveys with Likert scaled and open ended questions, audio-recorded focus group interviews, observation

Analysis: Study and analyze the data collected from the surveys, interviews, and observations; look for common feelings and ideas about homework, as well as behavior patterns of both students and teachers.

Four your consideration...

I still feel a mile wide and an inch deep but it's at least a better vector than I've had to date. I really want to make this a resource I (and dare I be so optimistic as to say "and my classmates") might reference when teaching literature and reading skills in WSFCS (or other) English classrooms a year from this fall. While there is some literature, none I've found yet addresses the "so what" of how to use the clear trends of recreational readers and non-recreational readers, to help all teens be better readers and have better attitudes about reading. Soooooooo....

Research Question(s):

1. What role does recreational reading have in adolescents' attitudes about literacy in the classroom and its importance in their lives?
2. What characteristics differentiate recreational readers and non-recreational readers in an English classroom?
3. What teaching methods are/are not effective with recreational readers and non-recreational readers?
   

Subjects:

• Four recreational readers from high school English classrooms
  
• Four non-recreational readers from same high school English classrooms
  
• Four English teachers in those high school classrooms

Methodology: I will select for student subjects by administering confidential surveys and consultation with teachers to find four recreational readers and four non-recreational readers. The survey is intended to illicit responses to questions about how frequently students read for fun, why they do so and what their attitudes about reading are all in general terms. Next, detailed observation of their participation in an English classroom will characterize how their attitudes manifest in the school environment. Next, in-depth interviews will be conducted to clarify what was observed and further expand on both the students' responses to the initial surveys and their classroom behaviors. Finally, interview of the teachers who led these classes will be conducted to gain insight into the teachers' perspective of how recreational and non-recreational readers participate in the classroom environment.

Analysis: This data once organized will hopefully inform classroom methods and characteristics/behaviors to be encouraged in order to improve the attitudes towards, and performance of reading.

neat!

Last Chance to claim insanity...

Ah, the final chapter…er… blog. Writing this blog has been an interesting experience and at times, overwhelming. I’m kind of sorry to see it go. As things are wrapping up and I continue to stress about the research project as a whole, I think I’ve come to some conclusions. As stated previously, I would like to do some research about student attitudes and motivations toward their history classes. I would like to incorporate the issue of gender, which of course makes everything more complicated. Most likely I will be using a series of surveys and possibly a few interviews. I’m having a hard time finding research addressing gender, but I am making headway finding research about student motivation in history classes. Let me know if you come across anything!! It seems that more research is being done about student motivation and gender in science and math classrooms in order to increase women in that particular field. That’s funny to me because I remember having mostly female teachers, except in history.

I still am hesitant to approach this topic because I am afraid, in all honesty, that it will peg me as a “feminist” teacher or a “women’s history” historian. While I don’t perceive either of these ideas as inherently negative, I’m afraid the negative association will affect my career choices. Smaller and more conservative communities may not be impressed with my research topic choice and be hesitant to interview me. Hopefully that will not be the case and I will be able to explain to them my rationale: I see gender playing a role in my classroom and I want to find out more about how to make sure the playing field is level. The best example I can give was my AP US History class. Because of the recent curriculum shifts toward social history, I have found female students are easier to engage in the material (and feel more comfortable with) than my male students. Maybe I’m just thinking too much. Here goes…

Research Question: What are students’ attitudes and motivations in regards to their history classes? Do these factors vary according to gender?

Subjects: 6 classes (2 World History, 2 C&E, and 2 US History)
Note: I can’t decide if I want to have them all be College Prep or vary the levels. Comments?

Methodology: All students would complete a survey about attitude and motivation in their class. These would be followed up with student surveys. I would also like to interview teachers about their own experiences with this issue. Lastly, I would like to observe each class to observe students attitude in class. I think I have too much to do…

Analysis: I would like to use SPSS (yikes!) to work with the survey data and include that with any qualitative data I have gathered, probably using the color-coding method to find common themes.

Last Post

Research Question: How are social studies able to balance discussion in the classroom with the need to prepare students for the content centered standardized tests?

Subjects: 5 high school teachers

Procedures: Observations and Interviews

Analysis:
Will use the interviews to learn about teachers’ conceptions of discussion and how they implement it in the classroom The observation will be used to see how closely teachers’ expectations match up with their practices

SMART BOARD CONCLUSION

Research Question: Does student interaction with SMART Board technology effect student achievement?

Methodology:

Subjects: Four regular high school biology classes in Forsyth County.

Procedures: All classes will take a pretest to measure their current knowledge. In two classes students will be given a SMART Board activity for two days. The other two classes will be given a PowerPoint activity for two days. The four classes will receive the exact same lesson using PowerPoint. The PowerPoint activity will be adapted to become a SMART Board activity. After two days of instruction the students will be given a post test to access what they have retained.

Analysis: The four classes' test results will be compared using a t-test. The results will be compared to see if there is a significant difference between the groups.

Four

Research Question: What strategies do teachers employ in order to integrate socioscientific issues into the biology classroom?

Methodology
Subjects: Biology teachers within Forsyth County
Procedures: Structured interview questions will be posed to all participants in order to determine the amount of time teachers allocate to teaching and discussing socioscientific issues, to collect data regarding student attitudes toward these issues, and to identify the nature of the relevant issues being discussed.
Analysis: Codification to identify themes

I remembered to put a title this week!

Disclaimer: I'm not 100% sold on this idea and fully intend to change my research topic (as I've been doing every week until now), but here's what I've got:

Research Question: What effect do students’ perceptions of the teacher-student relationship have on underprivileged high school students’ motivation and achievement in the classroom? I'm interested in this because I would like to work in a high school with students from lower SES families. I want to know how much significance they place on their relationships with their teachers and how that affects their motivation and achievement in school.

Methodology: The study would be qualitative and consist of individual student interviews using a pre-determined set of questions. I would also sit in on classes and observe the teacher-student interactions.

Enjoy the week off everyone!

A Research Question, or, Blog: Part the Last

Ok, so, here goes:

Research Question: How does the use of multicultural literature affect student attitudes towards English classes and literature in general?

Subjects: Local high school English students.

Methodology: I will use a combination of classroom observations, a survey, and student interviews to collect data. The observations will be analyzed and coded to gather insight into students' attitudes towards their classes. The survey will be used to determine student attitudes both towards their class and towards literature in general. After the survey, I will interview some (around 10) students to gain some depth of understanding.

Have a nice week off!

#4 - Research plan

Research question: What strategies do teachers use for developing students' oral proficiency, what are their perceptions of the relative strengths and weaknesses of various methods, and how is students' oral proficiency evaluated both formally and informally?

Method: Twelve French teachers in Forsyth county public schools will be interviewed, six from the elementary and six from the secondary level. Interview questions will include "What specific pedagogical strategies do you use to promote oral proficiency in your students?" and "What, in your opinion, is the most effective way to promote oral proficiency?" Classroom observations of randomly selected interviewed teachers will attempt to reveal concrete examples of their responses as well as evaluate the accuracy of their perceptions. Data acquired will be coded to reveal recurring themes among respondents. Such analysis should provide a clearer picture of when and how French teachers use methods that promote students' oral proficiency skills and how students' skills are evaluated.

# 4

I recognize that I still need plenty focus and refinement with my methodology, but here it goes....

Research Question - How can teachers fairly and effectively assess student performance in the social studies classroom?

Methodology - Interview 5-10 social studies teachers in varying local public schools. The interview will contain questions concerning their motivation/preference to use certain types of tests (multiple choice, short answer, essay, etc...) and to find out how often they test and the variety of test types they use throughout the school year. 10 students from varying social studies classes will take a short survey to to answer questions about the test types they prefer and what they perceive as a fair way to be assessed of their performance. Survey construction will be critical so that I can gain some sort of consistency in student's responses.

Fourth and Final

Research Question: What is the attitude of Hispanic students toward school, and in particular, mathematics?

Subjects: 3-6 high school students in the local school system

Methods/Procedures: The research will be conducted through a case study, possibly along with follow up interviews. The students will be categorized by their teacher as high, average, or low achievers, with at least one student in each category. Each student will be observed in-class, and based on those observations, I will decide whether or not an interview is necessary.

Analysis: The in-class observations and interviews will be analyzed for common themes.

#4 - El último

Alright, the last blog. Here goes:

Research question: What are the specific strategies employed by Spanish instructors to elicit oral language in their foreign language classrooms?

Subjects: about 10 High School Spanish teachers of various levels from “a school district in Central North Carolina”

Measures/Procedures: Administer a structured, audio-taped interview to each of the subjects and follow up with classroom observations to see the strategies in action.

Analysis: Codify and categorize the responses and observations from the field-notes taken during observation and the audio-taped interview. Extract common themes from all the subjects; perhaps compare frequencies of different strategies reported and observed.

El Blog-o #4

Research Question: How do secondary Spanish teachers promote reading proficiency? What kinds of reading materials are used in the classroom, how is reading incorporated into grammar and writing lessons, what are reading strategies used during instruction, and how are proficiency and/or comprehension assessed? Subjects – 6-8 high school Spanish teachers in Winston-Salem; all who teach different levels of Spanish

Measures – Teachers will be interviewed using research-designed interview questions. Class periods of Spanish 1-AP will be observed to compare and contrast reading strategies and texts used in the classrooms.

Procedures – Interviews will be audio recorded. A focus group may be used. Questions will focus on areas such as: What types of reading materials do you use in the classroom? Do you incorporate pre-reading, reading, and post-reading techniques while instructing reading? How do you incorporate pre-reading, reading, and post-reading techniques? How do you teach grammar through reading passages? Do you use collaborative techniques to allow students time for cooperative learning while reading? How do you assess comprehension of texts? What level of comprehension do you look for? How do you stimulate students' schemas before beginning reading passages? Do you collaborate with teachers who teach higher/lower levels of Spanish to ensure that reading techniques are shared and built upon throughout students' careers?

Analysis – Interviews and field notes will be coded according to the Mac method. From the coding, general themes will be extracted and traced using Inspiration. Researcher is looking for common themes: techniques to teach reading, types of texts used, frequency of reading in the classroom, and proficiency and comprehension/assessment of such after completion of passages/texts.

Haha, still not sure this makes sense.... :)

I think I still have a ways to go before nailing down my final procedure/methodology, but as of today, my research question is... *drum roll please*

How do various instructional methods influence student perceptions of learning chemistry?

The samples will be drawn from "regular"-level chemistry classes taught by WFU Master Teachers in Forsyth County. Students will be asked to fill out a Likert-scale questionnaire that assesses their perceptions of learning on three levels:
1. self-efficacy (does the student think he has the ability to do well)
2. science learning value (does the student think chemistry is relevant)
3. learning strategies (does the student attempt to understand material on a deeper level)

Students will also be chosen at random from each classroom to participate in a short interview to gain student feedback about his/her teacher's methods of instruction. This feedback will be compared to the results of the questionnaires, to see if any trends are evident.

Final Blog

So many research topics…so little time! I have moved away from teacher attrition and on to the use of technology in social studies classrooms. I think I have finally arrived at a topic that will work out. I had first thought that I would want to study the use of the Class Performance System (CPS) technology and its impact on teachers and students. I had the opportunity to use this technology in my own teaching and found that it was effective in engaging all students. It was an excellent resource that facilitated student centered learning. Unfortunately, I have found out that this technology is not being used in Winston-Salem schools (as of yet). I have since changed my research study to look at how a current unit topic in social studies is being taught with technology in social studies classrooms (more detailed description of the unit in my proposal for Friday). This study would take place in several 9-12 grade classrooms in Forsyth County school district. Semi-structured interviews, in class observations and field notes would be taken to collect data. I am also going to do a pre and post test as another data collection method. I have not quite figured out all the issues involved with the study but I feel like I am on a better path. Hopefully, this will be the topic that will become my fall project!
I am so excited to finally be done with teaching and headed to Winston-Salem soon! Can’t wait to meet everyone!

Blog #4 at 4:30 am

I'm getting ready for my 6:30am flight out to DC and remembered that I had one final piece of business to take care of before I could bid summer 1 classes farewell:

Research Question:

How do high school social studies teachers integrate current events into their classrooms?

(and more specifically...)

a. How often do social studies teachers incorporate current events into their classrooms?

b. At what point during the instructional period are teachers most likely to incorporate current events?

c. What sources or teaching materials do teachers use or encourage their students to use to access current event information?

d. Do, and if so, how, do teachers assess their students’ knowledge and comprehension of current events?

Subjects in this study will be six to eight high school social studies teachers in the Forsyth County school district. Two to three teachers will represent each of the three primary social studies content classes: world history, civics, and US history. I will collect my data using three qualitative measures: collecting teacher logs recording their use of current events, teacher interviews, and in-class observations.

I'm pretty excited with this topic, so I would have to come across something super fascinating to change it for the fall. And now that I have said that, that's probably what will happen. Well folks, this is Biser signing off. See you in July!

Crossing the finish line... only to begin another race?

Time for that final blog. Still not feeling entirely confident with this research business but at least I’ve got a question.

I’ve decided that I am interested in how teachers use their daily time, whether it be 45 minutes or 90. Do they see themselves as having a particular style? Is that perspective reflected in reality? How do students feel about that use of time? Do they prefer one way over another?

I plan to collect my data by observing the class periods in the fall and coding the usage of time. I’ll be looking for categories such as time spent on “housekeeping” duties, lecture, discussion, questions, awkward silences, and time the teachers give students to work, rather individually or in groups. Next, I want to interview teachers and ask about their plans for each day. I am curious to see how much each teacher plans his or her class periods and if they see themselves as controlling time or flowing with it. I hope that my observations will be able to correspond with their own perspectives. Next, I plan to ask each teacher to choose 3-5 distinct students to do a group interview with me. I would ask them how they felt about the way their teacher uses time. I’m also curious to find out if students realize they prefer one way or another.

I’m still also interested in this idea of the “culture of the classroom,” as I mentioned last week. I must admit I haven’t looked it up yet but I’m going to try to make the idea work with this question of time. I think that an argument can be made that each teacher creates a culture in his or her classrooms through their use of time, especially if there is a daily routine involved. This, to me, can include students being used to a bell-ringer, personal reading time, or putting their homework in assigned boxes.

Four better or four worse.

I have come up with a research question, and it's been a surprisingly not-horrible experience! I consider this a major success, since I came into the program fairly hesitant toward research (thanks to my awesome science background). Anyway, here it goes:

Research Question
What types of motivational techniques do teachers use in the classroom, and how do students react to these techniques?

Not bad, eh? My sample would be local high school classes. For methods, I'm going to go with strict observation with some coding on the side. The analysis will likely be time consuming, but so it goes with qualitative studies. Thanks for all the feedback; it helped a ton.

The end...or just the beginning?

Ok, so the final research questions are:

1. Do students perceive differences in the way that teachers treat them based on teacher expectations?
2. What are these differences and how do these perceptions affect the student’s motivation and performance?
3. Does achievement level affect responses?

They are pretty open ended, but that's okay! Because qualitative questions can be general and open-ended, right?

As far as methods go, I plan on interviewing eight students. I want to get input from two different teachers, and have each of them pick 4 students - 2 high achieving and 2 low achieving because I am interested in the different responses based on achievement levels. I will record and transcribe the interviews and then analyze the data using the Mac Method!

Blog #4 Final Product

Research Question: In what ways and for what purposes do secondary mathematics teachers integrate writing into their curriculum? What professional training do they receive to prepare them to implement writing strategies?

Methodology: Subjects for my study will be secondary mathematics teachers from all courses ranging from Algebra I to AP Calculus. I will distribute a survey that asks the respondents to indicate the types of writing exercises they use in their classroom and the reasons they have for using those exercises (i.e. review, assessment, student resource, expression of creativity, etc.) The survey will have structured item responses, and then it will also have questions at the end that allow for free response. The free response questions will ask them to detail a most successful writing exercise and how schools of education can better prepare prospective mathematics teachers for using writing in their content area. I will analyze the data from the surveys to calculate percentages. I will report these percentages as a summary of my findings.

#4 El fin

Research Question: How do teachers use culture to influence the development of oral language proficiency, particularly in the area of pronunciation?

Methodology:

1. Subjects – 6 high school Spanish teachers from different levels
2. Measures – Teachers will be individually interviewed and at least one class period observed, using field notes (purposive convenience sample).
3. Procedures – Interviews will be audio recorded. Questions will focus on areas such as: What techniques do you use to develop oral proficiency? How often do you introduce a native speaker’s voice into the classroom? Are there any techniques that you would like to implement, but do not have the resources/time to do so? Do you make any effort to encourage a near-native pronunciation? How often and in what ways to you teach culture? Do you find that this has any effect on the students’ receptiveness towards gaining oral proficiency?

Field notes will concentrate on noting teachers’ implementation of cultural awareness and oral proficiency techniques, especially those which promote a near-native pronunciation. Special attention will be given towards noting areas in which the teacher failed to implement techniques which he/she espoused during the interview.

4. Analysis – Interviews and field notes will be coded according to the areas mentioned in the interview questions. From the coding general themes will be extracted using the Mac method and traced using Inspiration.

Blog #4 - Gender differences, questioning, and student engagement

As a self-proclaimed, "mother of boys," I am feeling more and more interested in the gender differences in our classrooms. I think that I could do my tiny part in helping close that type of achievement gap with some study about the following.

Gender differences, questioning (teachers to students), and student engagement

• Gender differences & questioning: Who calls on whom? How often? Who is ignored?
  

- This could be measured through a talk chart, similar to the one that Dr. Milner gave us for use during our Governor’s School observations.

- I could also make a checklist of some type in Excel format: students’ names, number of times called on individually, number of responses, etc.

• Gender differences & student engagement: In what way are students of one gender engaged with their opposite sex teacher (rambunctious, disparaging, cocky, respectful, etc.).

- This could be done with the checklist/continuum too, or maybe with field notes about the observations : student behaviors would be multiple choice format (head down/head up, looking at teacher/looking elsewhere, leaning forward/slumped, awake/asleep, participating verbal/not participating verbally, etc.)

- This would require some operational definitions:

· Head up, looking at teacher, verbally participating is all categorized as engagement

· Head down, looking elsewhere, not verbally participating is all categorized as being disengagement

• Gender differences: I’ve thought about doing something with the “Gender Equity Quiz” that I found on ERIC. (some kind of case study of one class)

- What are students’ perceptions of gender equity in their class?

- Do the boys perceive this differently from the girls?

- What is the teacher’s perception?

Blog 4

Research Question:
Why do secondary English Literature students fail to complete homework assignments?

Methodology:
Questionnaires will be distributed to students in four English Literature classes. Participants will give brief written responses to questions including,
"How often do you complete all of your homework for this class?"
"Do you have about the same amount of homework every night?"
"How many hours per school day do you generally spend on assignments for this class?"
"In how many extracurricular activities do you participate?"
"What are some of the reasons why you don't finish your homework?"
"Imagine that you are having one of those days when you will not finish your homework for this class. Describe your thoughts as you decide not to do your English homework? (What are your feelings? Are you pleased, discouraged, resentful, guilty, justified? What are the reasons you give yourself for not finishing your homework?"
"What could your English teacher do to ensure that you do your homework?"

In order to ascertain the reasonableness of student responses, I will ask the teachers of these classes if I can record their homework assignments.

FINAL FOUR ... hoping to make it to the 'ship

1. RESEARCH QUESTION: How do Algebra I teachers effectively make use of calculators to present content
   1. How has the EOC tests changed these teachers use of calculators in the class?
   2. What is the effect of this calculator use on student achievement on EOC tests?

SUBJECTS
Subjects will be all Algebra I teachers and those teachers will be broken down into 6 for interviewing puposes.

MEASURES/ PROCEDURES All Algebra I teachers will be surveyed to see how they generally apply calculators in the classroom. Questions will first include background information about teachers’ experience with calculators, years teaching, any previous training, and types of calculators used in the classroom. Then questions will break into how and when teachers use calculators in classroom instruction and differing topics of the class. Then follow-up interviews will be used on 6 teachers in 3 specific high schools will be used. High schools will purposively be selected to represent different SES, ethnic and racial make ups of schools. Interviewees will be separated as 1 male and 1 female teacher when possible at each school. Questions for the interviews will be based on responses to the survey as a means of following up survey data and adding additional explanation to general trends from the survey. Interviews will be recorded and later transcribed, where interviewees will have the opportunity to clarify any statements.

Going with culture

A few ideas have been swirling around in my head this semester. The first of these was culture. I have a huge passion for learning about the culture of a people, about their histories, their customs, and what they do from day to day. I appreciate the cultures of the Spanish-speaking world because of the diversity it presents to the world. I'm big on diversity. So that's the first thing. The second theme that ran around in my head for while was the way that FL teachers can get their students engaged in the material, how they get them hooked, how they get their students to realize the importance of learning about foreign language and culture. Dr. Redmond and Dr. McCoy have been instrumental in steering me back to a research topic that is doable within the semester we have. I want to look at how the teaching of culture can influence student attitudes about foreign language. At the same time, I want to see how the integration of technology into teaching culture in the Spanish-speaking world can help students in their understanding and how technology may also act as an attractant and a way for students to be brought into the learning environment.

In the procedure, I would conduct interviews with high school teachers. I would ask them broader questions about teaching culture, if they see it as an important aspect, how they go about it. This would get at their attitudes about it. I would include questions about student attitudes in the Spanish classroom. Other questions would focus on their use of technology, what kinds they use, how often, what they think this does for their students. The second key part to the procedure would be observing a sample of those interviewed to see their thoughts about teaching culture, their methods of teaching culture and integrating technology in action.

I feel like this topic still may be a bit too broad. I would definitely like to have a more confined area of research. Hopefully that will come before August!

BLOG #4-Finally a picture!!

I would like to examine the relationship between teacher incorporation of real-life math applications and student engagement. I would construct a set of interview questions or a survey that would assess how often and in what ways teachers incorporate math applications into their lessons. I would interview/survey as many teachers as possible within the county. I would also interview or survey students to examine their opinion on the using math in real life situations and how well they are able to apply math after experiencing or not experiencing real life applications in their classrooms.

The Last One...Blog 4

So this is all still a little tentative, but I think it will work:

Research Question: According to high school social studies teachers, what is the most effective method for student note-taking?

Methodology: I will obviously use the accessible population of high school social studies teachers in Forsyth County. To begin with, I will give them a survey (via mail, email, in person, I haven’t worked these details out yet). The survey will have a variety of questions such as; do you expect your students to take notes during lecture? Do you provide your students with an outline or graphic organizer to facilitate their note-taking? etc. I will look at these surveys and then, in a semi-structured format, I will interview teachers to get more information. I will be looking for things like, why do you give an outline or why do you not? Do you write important points on the board if you require the conventional style of note-taking? What do you think are the benefits to having your students take notes? Do most of your students know how to take notes, or do you spend some time at the beginning of the year making sure they understand the best way to do so? Eventually, I hope to be able to use something like the “Mac Method” to code my data and determine the most effective way to one day have my own students take notes.

I guess this is beginning stage of my major research project…scary!!!! Although it has been a great first month!

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu...

The fruits of my labor...

Research Question: How does teacher positivity affect student attitudes?

Methodology: For my sample, I will obviously be utilizing the students and teachers we have access to (accessible population) in the classes we observe. I will use Likert-scale surveys (of both teachers and students), coded observation, and audio tape-recorded interviews to collect data. I will make use of an adapted version of the “Mac Method” to chunk and analyze (divide and conquer?) the data I collect.

...and I hope this works out!

The Grand Finale...Numero Quatro

So here I go summing up the past four weeks of brain storming....how crazy is that guys? Man, we are almost complete with summer session one, what an accomplishment! Yeah us!! Okay, to my topic.
Research Question: Does the use of non-canonical/multicultural literature impact student motivation?
Methodology:
Clearly I will be using the classrooms that we have available to us in the fall. I will use a combination of observation and survey to analyze student levels of motivation. I am hoping that I can find classes in the fall where teacher curriculum is different. I am not sure how easy this will be because if the curriculum in North Carolina is fairly standard that it may be tough to do my research. We will see I guess. In terms of observation, I will hope to locate certain observational behaviors that measure motivation (head on desk, participation in discussion, questions asked by students, etc). The survey will really just ask the students what their favorite books they read in school and why they liked them. I also hope to ask what books did they dislike the most and why. Perhaps an additional question would be, if you could add one book to read in school what would it be?
That's what I got so far. I guess this is the end for now blog. (tear)...

I'm trying NOW to revise my first thoughts, relating them to qualitative study:

1. feedback on writing & its effect on students' revision (could collect student papers w/ teacher comments throughout the process of writing)
2. gender differences (teachers to students) – Who calls on whom? How often? Who is ignored? If it’s not too much, in what way are students of one gender engaged with their opposite0sex teacher (rambunctious, disparaging, cocky, respectful, etc.)
3. different teachers’ classroom procedures for starting &/or ending class and their relative/perceived effectiveness for the purpose of settling students down and getting them on-task quickly
4. how teachers use modern music (audio, written lyrics, videos) to teach literature (analysis, comparison, etc.)
5. students' opinion of English as a subject and the correlation with teacher attitude towards them and towards English as a subject (reading, writing, grammar, vocabulary)

. McCoy and Dr. Milner - I think these are more specific and "do-able" but . . . which ones are the better ones to choose, given our observations??? I really love #4, but #2 or #3 seem most "observable." What do you think???

I *almost* have a question... 3rd time's the charm.

Ok, let’s see here… I know I want to look at the effects of the use of multicultural literature on student achievement and/or attitudes towards class, with an interest in students’ cultural background as well. I am beginning to imagine a research question that might sound something like this (but with a lot of tweaking to make it better and more researchable): “What is the effect of the use of multicultural literature on students’ attitudes towards class and their achievement?” Since I am still having a few issues making concrete decisions about my research, I think that I may have to choose either attitudes or achievement. Any ideas?

Now that you’ve beaten that out of me, I think that there are several ways to tackle the data collection. In order to find out about student attitudes towards class, I will need to survey or interview them. The interviews would yield quite a bit of narrative data, and then I would be able to perform some qualitative data analysis. It would also be helpful to collect data through observation in order to see students in their “natural” habitats. These observations will help me see how students interact with each other, the teacher, and the literature that they read. The data that I collect from these observations will also provide me with more narrative data that I can qualitatively analyze.

Back to my first love.....#3

Being a sociology major and having taken a few anthropology classes, qualitative research is more up my ally. I love people and culture watching...well observing. Observation will not only lend itself well to our research project but our career as future teachers. The qualitative method works well with my study because I am not forming a hypothesis but rather asking a question. I agree with Dr. McCoy though in her reiteration that research is not black and white and I do believe that my research could benefit from using a few methods (if that is feasible or necessary). Observation would lend itself well in analyzing student motivation. Using one of the structured observation methods would be useful in producing data that could be compared and contrasted in classrooms that used canonical lit. versus ones that did not. In the study that my quantitative group presented it classified student behavior as on task or off task. I could mimic that study but figure out what student behaviors illustrated motivation (posture, involvement, etc). In an ideal world, I would like to use observation and still create a student survey or interview in order to have thorough data. We shall see how that plays out in the fall though when reality sets in!

Blog 3: A Little More Reflective

As someone coming from the sciences with a research background, I find the word quantitative very comforting. However, the more I consider the nature of my study, I think that at least incorporating some qualitative aspects would add a great deal of interesting data that answers my questions about how teachers could and do incorporate relevant issues into the science classroom. While I chose this topic with some specific ideas in mind already, I think that interviewing science teachers about how they already do this and how effective they think it is could bring some enlightenment to my own teaching. Although I realized today during our exercise in class that I may quickly amass more information than I can handle through an open-ended question, the potential value of the data far outweighs the difficulty. I have accepted that my research project may not result in a breakthrough for the educational community as a whole; however, I increasingly feel that if I really listen to what expert science teachers are telling me, then I will have a personal breakthrough.

A Third Piece of the Puzzle

Okay, I get it. Lay off the EOC. It’s like a bad song, once you hear it it takes a while to get out of your head. (If you remember Lambchop... “Here’s the test that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friend... some people start taking it not knowing what it was...”) After a very constructive conversation with Dr. McCoy, I think I’ve come to a topic that might bear fruit. I’m still doing some reading on the topic, but I am interested in investigating what might “hook” students to history content. Furthermore, does this vary by gender? Are female students more interested in social history topics? Do male students stay engaged when the topic is war? Yes, I realize the gender bias, that’s what makes it interesting to me.

In order to acquire data, I believe that most of the methods will have to be qualitative. Teacher interviews, student surveys and observations. In terms of the observations, I would really like to visit a classroom and make notes about students who appear to be engaged and who is not. I think that this topic will be very difficult to mearsure regardless of the method and is possibility too subjective. I’d be very open to hearing ideas on how to make this all a little more concrete.

In the long run, I’m hoping that I can use this information to better reach my students throughout a lesson and be more aware of what might cause them to “zone out.” While experience has taught me that it is virtually impossible to have all students completely engaged 100% of the time, every percent I can get closer to that is a victory. I can see in my EOC (opps! I said it!!) scores where I’ve had the “good” lessons, but I don’t understand completely what makes them “good.” I hope that this study might help me figure part of that equation out.

On a different note; has anyone seen the promo for “The Baby Borrowers” on NBC? I hope that the IRB didn’t approve that...

Numero 3

In last weeks post, I had some fun and kind of veered off the path of FL education research. While focusing on the instructional dynamic may be completely necessary, I do not think that the time available could meet the scope of what would be required in answering the bigger questions of how Spanish teachers establish the sort of relationship that would magnetically pull students into their classroom. I am, as I said in my first post, very interested in the study of culture. I am pretty sure this is where my focus may rest for the remainder of this project. I am interested in culture of the Spanish-speaking world because there is so much of it and it is so incredibly diverse. When I talk about my excitement over teaching foreign language, I usually jump into those few sentences that, in brief, say that the average American student cannot pick out the culture they are a part of. They see nothing intrinsically special about it. It is sometimes only in studying the cultures of other places that students see that their customs, institutions, and behaviors work to make the world an incredibly diverse place. In studying the culture of the Spanish-speaking world, the goodness that exists within diversity cannot be avoided.

Dr. Redmond gave me examples of aspects to look at in relation to the teaching of culture that could definitely spice up the research question. I could look at the enthusiasm and the teacher attitudes about teaching culture. Can the culture lessons, while integrated with grammar and literacy, serve to create a passion for the study of foreign language? This is a possible approach along with the suggested pairing of culture with use of technology. The jury is still out as to what aspects of teaching culture I will focus on. But my understanding of the methodology needed is pretty clear. Understanding that my research question and my literature review will have to be cemented before I delve to deeply into planning the methodology, I do know that I would like to focus on the secondary classroom. Even though I will have the opportunity to work at the elementary school level, I feel that my calling is for secondary education, and therefore I think I should focus my time and research there. (I could be proven wrong, though, after student teaching).

In qualitative research, it seems that proximity is a positive thing, meaning that a researcher cannot always get a full, detailed response when questionnaires are sent out. They actually may not receive any response if the teachers aren’t inclined to take the time to look at the questionnaire and fill it out. I enjoy conversation and making a connection with the people I will be observing (keeping in mind that too much proximity could skew some results). Therefore, I think personal interviews, although time consuming, will be the most reliable measure. With a form of questions in place, I would leave room for insertion of follow-up questions to some of the teachers’ responses. After this step, observing a cluster of those teachers would be necessary to see if their classroom practices do follow what they say their methods and plans are for teaching culture. This brainstorming is becoming more and more helpful. Also, this research project is becoming more and more real with each passing day… scary!!!

third time around

So, at first this week I became pretty excited about the discussions of Qualitative Research. First of all, I find SPSS to be rather confusing and generally unpleasant to a non-math oriented individual such as myself, but more importantly, I thought that Observation sounded like a good way to really get some good information about discussion, especially if I wanted to zero in not only on how frequently discussion is used, but what kind of questions are asked as well as what kinds of answers the students respond with. I also like that with Qualitative Research you don't have to have as much of a hypothesis as just a good question, which is what I have right now. I pictured myself going into some classrooms this fall with my notebook and pen and easily scribbling down a bunch of coherent observations about discussions. And then...we tried it today. I found the practice exercises very challenging. Not impossible by any means, but tougher than I expected. While I am not ruling out Observation for my research, it is certainly good that we practiced a bit so that I will not be quite as idealistic about what will happen when I enter the classroom to observe.

Interviewing, as I mentioned last week, will likely be a very important tool for gathering data. At this point I don't see the value in a "talk aloud" necessarily, but a group interview would be beneficial as it might allow me to easily see the differences between different teachers conceptions of discussion. Now that I think of it, observation would be useful to see just how closely teachers practice what they preach. So, there is surely room for it after all!

three's a crowd

I think I'm switching gears. Teacher student warmth is subjective and does not sit quite right with me. BUT for my group's presentation, we had an article on desk arrangement. I think this is so interesting. It is still related to the dynamics of the classroom. I think a good question could be, "Does a student's placement (desk location) in the classroom effect his or her achievement?"

I think it could be a good qualitative study by simply interviewing teachers. I am most interested in how students can be maximally engaged in the classroom. The interview questions could be geared towards this. What seating arrangements do you feel maximize the classroom experience for all students? With or without this ideal, are there areas of the classroom seem to produce more attentive students? Do you take this into account when/if you assign seats? Are the high performers in a class clustered in any particular area (front/middle/back/corner etc)?

I guess it would also be possible to do a narrative study on a few students. Ideally, they would have a variety of seating situations in their classrooms. I could ask them a number of questions about their experiences in those classes. This might be too detailed, but I remember science classes in high school having lab tables most of the time (rather than traditional desks). These were sometimes mixed in with sinks used for lab. Does this effect students' ability to remain engaged? How about high stools vs. lower tables when your feet can touch the floor.

I'm not sure if the student perspective or the teacher perspective would be more beneficial. Anyone? I feel like I'm not getting anywhere.

3. Extracurricular reading habits and adolscents' sense of why reading is important

Considerations of qualitative methods have helped coax me towards a topic. I'm having difficulty completely detaching topic selection from considerations of "how the heck am I gonna do that!?!?" Thinking more about investigation into adolescent readers' motivations I'm considering a research question along the lines of "how do extracurricular reading habits/tendencies of different level readers influence an adolescent's sense of why literacy is important." My hope is that the implications might point towards how a teacher in a classroom setting might be able to affect both the adolescent's tendency to read (beyond the classroom hopefully too, but more immediately in the classroom) as well as to help him/her internalize why it's REALLY IMPORTANT to be able to read well!!!!

So with that vague destination in mind...a simple quantitative assessment of who are strong, average and weak readers based on achievement will help me select a stratified (and small) sample. Using one or two select representatives from each group, I'd administer an in depth survey/interview that will provide insight into what the students extracurricular reading habits/tendencies are as well as questions to measure their sense of literacy's importance using an attitude scale. This would preferably be done early during the research period so that I could observe those same students and their classroom behavior patterns.

This all feels pretty nebulous but it's a topic I'm intrigued by. I fear that it will be difficult to generalize though. The findings/implications may have some value as an ethnographic study to me as an English teacher in Winston-Salem as well as point towards more focused/sophisticated research in the future.

Three

Ok, so as I said last week, qualitative seems to be the best route for me and my topic. I am very interested in interviews. (And not the video kind!) So far, I’m thinking of interviewing both teachers and their students. I would ask teachers questions to figure out if they consciously manipulate time and plan to be either rigid or flexible in their daily use of it. I plan to ask students if they prefer teachers who are rigid or flexible in their routines. I would also be interested in knowing if they think those teachers who appear to be flexible have a plan or not.

In addition to interviewing teachers and students, I would also like to use an observation component. After today’s exercise, I realized that the naturalistic approach works best for me but that a Flanders Interaction grid like we did today would be practical too. I’m curious to find out if those categories are specific or if I could tailor them to fit my study better. I like the ones about the lecturing, asking questions and dead time. I would like to add some about “housekeeping” time, review time, and independent study, for example.

I also liked what Dr. McCoy said today about there being a specific culture in the classroom. I think that a teacher’s use of time can contribute to this idea of a class-by-class culture. Each teacher may have specific uses for time on a daily basis that can contribute to a culture that the students understand and predict. I’m thinking of this as when then students walk in everyday, for example, they know to complete the bell-ringer on the board, turn in homework in a specific box, or work on some independent reading. Dr. McCoy, can you please comment on who you said wrote quite a bit on this idea?

Sarah Lovejoy, I figured it out.

All you have to do is click on the little picture icon that says “Add a Picture” in the screen where you enter your text. It’s right above the text box, next to the
“spell check” icon—you can’t miss it. ;) FYI, my picture has nothing to do with this post. I just thought we could all use a laugh.

As far as my research goes, I’m seriously thinking about running with this smiling idea. I think I will probably have to make it a broader topic, as Dr. McCoy suggested, and maybe talk about “positivity” in general or something similar, but this one really interests me. And I think that’s pretty important. My biggest worry is that I won’t be able to find enough related literature…but we’ll see how that pans out.

In trying to think of this study qualitatively, I could definitely conduct teacher interviews or surveys to see how much they think they use positivity in the classroom. Combined with observation and possibly student surveys or interviews, it would be interesting to see if there is any significant disparity between the teachers’ and the students’ responses. For example, do teachers think they are very positive while students do not perceive them as such? Honestly, though (and I know this may shock you, Dr. McCoy), when I first started thinking about this study, I thought of it mostly in terms of data that would end up looking rather quantitative. I thought about just making a modified version of something like the Flander’s analysis we did in class—making tic marks for each time the teacher smiles and for each time that a teacher's smile elicits a “positive” bodily response (e.g. a smile, a laugh, a nod, etc.). Or something like that. Anyhow, I will welcome any comments or suggestions with open arms—and a warm, fuzzy smile, of course. ;)

#3 anchor my balloons

I'm now in the refining and narrowing stage of picking my research topic. So briefly, here is what I've got:

Topic: What are the rationals that students give for turning in or not turning in their homework, and, does the class atmosphere at the actual time of assignment and collection effect the amount of homework that gets turned in?

Subjects: 2 groups from 2 of the classes that I'll be observing, 1 classified as steady homework-turner-inners, and the other classified as pretty consistent NON homework-turner-inners (8 groups total).

Measrues/Procedures: I would like to do some sort of written survey amongst the two groups, and I would like to do group interviews with the two groups as well (would this be a "focus group" or a "talk-aloud"?) I would also like to observe student and teacher behavior at the time of homework assignment and collection.

Hopefully I will find some insight that will enable me to steer attitudes about homework in a direction that will encourage the most turn-in of assignments.

I really like the idea of using different types of research and data collection (quantitative: survey/qualitative: observation, interview). I think my next step is deciding on my operational definitions and really fine tuning my procedures.

As for what we've been going over in class, I have obviously been more interested in learning about qualitative research because I understand it better and it's just more Lia. I have though, realized the importance of quantitative data and how it can serve as an anchor when you feel that all your qualitative data is just kind of floating all around you like balloons.

Yay for research! #3

After a small panic last week, I decided that I will stick with my topic because it is the most interesting to me. I want to be the most effective teacher I can be and getting inside the heads of students now will help in the future. Part of my problem last week was that I was searching in ERIC with bad terms. I had a temporary ditz moment and was not thinking that a student's "attitude" is similar to their "perception" or "view" or "affect." Therefore, after plugging in that golden word, I found a plethora of information focusing on different aspects of student attitude toward social studies. I have a few more solid ideas about how to go about obtaining pertinent information as well as what exactly I want that pertinent info to be.

I like Dr. McCoy's suggestion of using a focus group (although I am still considering the survey). I am interested in the attitudes of students who perform well and poorly in social studies and come from a variety of backgrounds. Maybe one or two focus groups for four schools. Is that too many? The focus groups could contain six students from a world history class. Could I ask the teacher to hand pick a few students who they think will participate and add to the discussion? I would want to ensure that the 6 students do not all hold the same opinion towards the subject. I also would like to observe classes in a few different schools, perhaps as different as Reagan, Atkins, Reynolds and Parkland, to get a good spectrum. I would like to watch a wide variety of teachers--more experienced and less experienced, those with many high-performing students and others with low-performing students.

I realize a lot of different aspects affect attitude. I am interested specifically to see how teaching methods, testing, class discussion and arrangement, as well as teacher attitude, passion about their subject, and overall class environment affect students' attitudes. Some of my favorite teachers would have a couch, a lamp, a candy bowl, and some sort of artistic collection (pictures, cows, timelines, etc.). How do aspects like that affect the learning environment? My teachers all claimed that those small details made a difference, and I enjoyed their classes. So I am interested in viewing such classrooms from an outsider's perspective.

I may now have to return to the problem of narrowing my topic!

Blog #3

It is still early and I still want to keep my options open, but the assessment idea is really starting to grow on me. If I think about this research project in a very practical sense, researching student assessments in the social studies classroom could really be beneficial to me as a teacher. And believe me, I am all about being practical and making this project as useful to me as possible.

I have received feedback from Dr. McCoy and my piers on the possibilities of approaching this from either the student or teacher perspective, or possibly both. As I start to think about research design, I can see benefits to interviewing and/or surveying both teachers and students and comparing the two sets of data to draw conclusions. This could allow me to gain insight into the types of tests that both teachers and students prefer and which ones they typically dislike, exploring the reasons for each. By comparing the two perspectives, I would imagine that I would find that more often than not teachers and students have very different reasons for preferring a particular type of test. For example, teachers may prefer to use multiple choice tests because they are easy to grade and students may like multiple choice tests because they can make better guesses through the process of elimination. Nonetheless, I would want to set up the methodology so that I could collect good information that would allow me to gain insight into the best ways to fairly and accurately assess student competency in social studies. I see this as being my main goal in researching this topic and feel that exploring both the student and teacher perspective would best help me reach this goal. As I mentioned before, survey construction and the way in which I structure my interview questions would be critical in making sure that my data is valid, and thus I am meeting the goal mentioned above. I'm open to anyone's ideas!

Starting to refine my topic-Blog 3

I talked to Dr. Friedman this week and I think I am starting to move beyond the question of what I want to study to the question of how I can best study it. My main interest at this point is looking at how teachers use electronically based primary sources in their history classes.

Dr. Friedman had an interesting idea of combining multiple research methods to have a multi-tiered approach. We were thinking of doing a survey and then selecting a handful of teachers to interview in depth on these issues and to observe for a class or two. I would also gather documents such as lesson plans. I do worry though that that may be too many methods to try to employ in a short time period but it would make it a better study and it might prove useful to me as I think about how I want to run my own classes.

I’m also starting to go from my macroquestion to the smaller questions it encompasses. One issue related to electronic primary sources that I am interested in examining is what factors help influence a teachers decision to use these sources (i.e depending on year of student or type of course). I also would like to try to figure out what types of sources they use and if they are choosing to give the students the documents or are they having the students find their own (say in an assignment in the computer lab.)

Blogggggg #3

I have to admit that for awhile, I was really hesitant about the idea of passing out a survey as a possible research method; I just wasn't sure that I could truly obtain an in-depth look at student attitudes and motivations in Chemistry, and more importantly how various instructional methods influence those attitudes. However, I recently read an article that used a Likert scale to assess student self-efficacy, learning strategies, attitude towards the importance of science, etc. and this is exactly the type of information that I was interested in looking at. I think that by combining these elements with additional sections about perceived teacher attitudes and instructional methods, I can gain a lot of useful information about what students think of various elements of their Chemistry classes.

Another consideration would be who to send these surveys to, and would students even bother to respond? Would class level (AP, regular) skew any possible correlation between student attitudes and instructional methods? For example, AP Chemistry students are likely to be intrinsically motivated, regardless of the quality of instruction. And what about school demographics (ie, Reagan versus Atkins)?. I am hoping that by accounting for a variety of factors in my questionnaire (such as self-efficacy), I can eliminate some of that possible error/bias in the results.

Is this "meaty" enough of a study? Is that even a word? I really want to do something multifaceted, where I can study correlations between multiple variables. Basically I want to make things more complicated for myself... :)

I need help!

As others have noted, I think I am going to abandon the EOC issue as well. I guess I was holding onto the topic since I was in the heart of testing my own students and was feeling stressed / overwhelmed by the whole situation…haha. Thank goodness they are over so that I can move on. I am going to focus solely on the teacher attrition question. As Dr. Mac suggested, I want to interview new teachers and try to determine what factors are pushing them to stay or leave teaching. Although I have determined the general topic, I am still questioning where to go from here. I guess I am wondering how I would be able to interview enough teachers that are leaving the field and whether teachers would want to talk about the reasons why they were leaving? I am anticipating that this would be a quantitative study as I would want to interview teachers to get their personal opinions. I am struggling with how to incorporate this issue within my social studies content. I could narrow my research within teacher attrition to include only social studies teachers. It would be interesting to see if there were consistencies among social studies teachers and why they are staying or leaving. My question to my peers and my professors is whether the question of “What are the causes of teacher attrition for secondary social studies teachers?” is too broad or not?

Analyzing the lesson planning process - #3

I know that my study is going to be qualitative, but I’m not exactly sure what that will look like. My ultimate goal is to study how social studies teachers decide what important details to include in their daily lessons. One chapter in a US History book often contains multiple important events, people, and facts. How do they discriminate important details from non-important details?

One way would be to sit down with teachers and ask them particular questions about their lesson planning. Some example questions would be:

1) By looking at a chapter in the students’ text book, how do you pick out the important details to cover in class?
2) Are there any characteristics of facts or details that you know you should definitely include?
3) Are there characteristics of certain facts or details that you automatically know you should not include?
4) When you are lesson planning, do you often look at other resources other than the teachers’ textbook guide?
-What resources do you commonly use?

Another method of studying the development of lesson plans would be to essentially do a “talk aloud” with multiple teachers as they planned their lessons. I could either sit and observe them as they did this, or give them tape recorders so they could do it on their own time. Tape recorders might be a good option because teachers might start and stop their lesson planning multiple times throughout the process.

Further note: Lesson planning would probably differ depending on the teachers’ experience. It would be nice to interview or observe teachers with different amounts of experience.

Blog x 3: Attention MTAs

In thinking about how to do a qualitative study on how social studies teachers incorporate current events into their classrooms, I've come up with and received a few suggestions about how I might go about this. Last week, Dr. McCoy suggested that I have my participating teachers complete a weekly log detailing their use of current events. This log would be an artifact that I would then analyze to learn about how, when, and what current events teachers are using in their classrooms. I was really excited with the log idea, but I am a little concerned about how willing teachers will be to fill out the log - and how complete or detailed their responses will be. I've talked to a couple of current teachers about the idea and their honest response is that they would not be likely to complete such a log. So all of you MTAs out there, I guess I'm looking at you and asking - how likely are teachers to complete a weekly log over the span of four to five weeks? Rather than having teachers complete a log, perhaps I could simply ask to make copies of their lesson plans. The only problem with that route is that lesson plans may not account for the unplanned discussions about some breaking news issue that occurred the night before.

I am certain that if I used the log, that I would still do observations and interviews to give me a more complete picture of how current events are being used in the classroom. Different types of artifacts that might be available to me will depend upon the teacher. I remember in my high school civics class, we were required to bring in current events articles every Friday. Ideally, the teachers I will be observing would have student work related to current events that I could review and analyze. Classroom displays and posters may also be telling about a teacher's propensity to incorporate current events in his or her classroom. Just some half-baked thoughts.

With a little pushing in the right direction from Dr. McCoy's comments, I am now leaning toward examining whether there is a significant correlation between student-teacher relationships and students' performance/achievement in math classes. I would like to focus more on low SES students, specifically perhaps trying to draw data from students with harder family lives, because my line of thought would be that teachers would be able to have more of an impact on these students (this may or may not be true).

Qualitative? You want us to write about that? You must be joking! No, I'm only kidding. I think the best research study would incorporate both quantitative and qualitative data. Particularly with this topic I am considering, it would be best to be able to sit down and interview students one on one or perhaps even do a group interview to find out more about their relationships with their teachers. Do they consider their teachers friendly, loving, and understanding? Do they believe that their teachers genuinely care about them or are able to relate to them?

In my teaching experience last summer, our boss most emphasized building relationships with the students, but this was relatively easy when we ate with them at lunch and played with them at recess. In reality, teachers only have about an hour or an hour and a half at most. I guess another thing to consider could be how do teachers go about building effective relationships with their students, but perhaps that would be a study for another time. First things first- determining just how much of a difference those relationships can make!

Blog 3 – Moving on to a Better Place

After discussing my research topic with Dr. McCoy, I think that I have reached a better place. I agree that I do need to take some time away from the EOC. It is a really big deal in my school especially now with the proficiency standard in Biology. But I’m letting it go. This seems to be the theme of my week!

My original interest to start with (even though I tied it to the EOCs) was how inquiry based learning in science specifically Biology effect student learning compared to traditional lecture methods. I think that I will focus more on impact of inquiry in Biology students’ achievement and teacher perceptions of the effectiveness of inquiry.

I think that my study will be more qualitative than I originally anticipated. I think that observations of teachers will give me a good idea of what inquiry methods they use as well as how these methods impact student learning. I personally am really excited to be able to observe other teachers in my field! Based on the observations, I will probably do follow up interview with teachers about their perspective of inquiry methods affects on student achievement as well as any “bumps” observed in class.

On the quantitative side (since I wasn’t at this point last week), I will definitely use a survey to gather information about inquiry from teachers – do they use inquiry methods, what type, in which classes, what problems they have had, how student achievement has been affected, etc. I also would potentially like to survey students to see if inquiry methods engage them more in science than traditional methods and if they learn more from inquiry. Scenario situations would be good here.

I am still more interested in standard students than honors students. It would be interesting to see if there is a discrepancy of inquiry use in between the two types of classes.

Third time's a charm...

So after some wishy-washiness with my topic, I think I have settled down on exploring how student’s perceptions of teacher expectations affect their motivation and achievement. I initially thought that a survey would be the best way to go about this study; however, I feel like taking a qualitative approach and interviewing students might be more useful because I would be able to gather more specific information from them. It would probably be best to go into the interviews with a more structured approach – questions could include if they respect their teacher, if they feel like their teacher respects them, what kind of expectations they feel their teacher has for them and how they feel these expectations are portrayed, if they feel they are treated differently than other students and how, and if they feel motivated to achieve, just to name a few. Basically, I will be trying to get at the nature of the student-teacher relationship and see if this relates in any way to how motivated a student is to achieve in that class and their performance in the class. Today we talked about the usefulness of focus groups; however, I am unsure if that would be the best approach to this study because I feel like students might be less likely to admit their feelings about a teacher in front of their peers, especially if these feelings are much different from their peers. That said, gaining the trust of the students will be crucial for me to be able to have successful interviews with them. It might be necessary to have ongoing conversations so that we can build this trust.

SMART Board for Dummies (3)

~Looking more specifically at what my SMART board activity will involve.

I had first imagined a problem based learning activity with the classes but have come to the conclusion that PBL brings to many variables into the equation. So I think I will structure the lessons in a way that the students will interact with the material in the lesson through the SMART board. In the classes without the SMART board they will be given the exact same information just without the technology to back it up. So they will essentially be taught by the more traditional white board, with little or no interaction with the material other than just writing the material in their notes. The pre and post tests will assess what knowledge they gained from the lessons.

I also think that the comments everyone has made helped me look at this study a little different. I also think that I could measure qualitatively the motivation of students during the lessons. I could interview students and teachers to measure their interest in the lesson, or I could observe classes and measure the student motivation through variables such as participation, cooperation and receptiveness. I am more inclined to look at this study quantitatively, but I am open to a mix of the two methods.

As I think more about technology I am starting to realize that it comes at a cost. You can’t always rely on the projector to work or a file to open. This leads me to believe that at the core of things you have to be able to use the essentials: overhead and white board. If all else fails you have to be prepared to get the job done whether that's on a fancy SMART board or on a chalk board. Either way the information has to get into the minds of the students.

#3 - Rambling about language

I’m still sold on the topic of investigating the specific strategies that teachers use to promote oral language in their foreign language classrooms. Ana suggested that perhaps I find a way to integrate my interest in linguistics into the topic, which I think is a good idea. I could include into my research instrument a manner of asking instructors about their own background in linguistics and if they integrated that knowledge into their lessons (for example, explicitly telling students how to hold their mouths and in what position to place their tongue to produce more authentic and accurate speech sounds [phonemes and their allophones included] in the target language). I’m inclined to think (fully aware that this is a supposition based on my ignorance) that few k12 foreign language teachers in this region get that specific in teaching strategies to approximate a native sound. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting aspect to integrate into my study.

This week, the focus of our reading has been qualitative studying, so I will approach my topic from that perspective. Dr. Redmond, in our correspondence, has suggested that qualitative research, with a focus on in-depth one-on-one with foreign language teachers, would be the best approach for answering my general question. Besides the pitfalls of low response rate from questionnaires and surveys (which Dr. Redmond indicated is a problem from her experience), the practical insight (for my own teaching) gained from a questionnaire is likely much less than what I would gain from an interview. I must concede I believe that to be an important point. I’m inclined toward my topic not only because I find the oral aspect of language interesting, but also because I personally believe foreign language teachers (generally) could do a better job of teaching it. While a perfect accent is far from necessary, a persistent, good accent can go a long way in making yourself understood in a foreign language. Thus, I want to gain practical information I can personally use for my own classroom. That said, I could include more structured elements to an interview, perhaps a few Likert-scale type questions administered orally. I could those questions to quantify certain attitudes or the frequency of implementation of various strategies. Pairing these interviews with classroom observation, to see these oral focused strategies in action, would give me added insight of seeing how the ideas I’m exposed to from interviews are implemented in a real-life classroom.

I’m inclined to focus my study on teachers of older students, as older students would be most receptive to explicit manners of promoting oral language accuracy. Older students may have an easier time with following instructions on tongue placement or to understand specific criticisms of their pronunciation. Also, promoting accurate grammar in oral language also seems more geared towards older students, as grammar is much less of an emphasis on the elementary school level.