Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, recently spoke at my graduation and stated that one of the most powerful characteristics of undergraduate graduates around the world is our naïveté. It is perhaps due to this naïveté or lack of concrete experiences that prevents me from believing that I.Q. testing is solely correlated to school achievement. Research is essential to our work as educators and human beings because we tend to desire to use our individual experiences as universal truths. Methodological literature suggests that a researcher should be fairly open minded before conducting his/her study in order to prevent beliefs or desires of standing in the way of producing accurate data. However, I would like to use this research opportunity to prove my alleged “naive” beliefs wrong. My research, hopefully, will look at the correlation between intelligence testing, academic achievement, and environmental factors. I would like to do a correlation study to see if there is a stronger correlation between I.Q. scores and academic achievement or environmental factors such as socio-economic factors, parental involvement, parent level of education, etc. and academic achievement. This initial research proposal is me thinking “big” and I realize that for our program purposes may not be feasible. I am particular interested in this topic because in my personal experience I have watched so many children and young adults perish because of environmental factors such as poverty. I have also encountered many of my fellow college peers who were pulled out of their poverty stricken environments through programs such as Prep for Prep and have excelled. My heart is for all the students who are receiving poor education, but even more specifically for the children who are naturally gifted but whose potential is being crippled because of situational circumstances.
3 comments:
Jessica, I find your ideas very interesting. In fact, your correlation study sounds very similar to my Master's thesis a long time ago!! Given our time constraints, I would suggest that you think about how you might study your interest inside the classroom, and bear in mind that personal issues are often confidential. You might think about identifying some low-achievers and interviewing them to see what environmental factors influence them....
Jessica, I think this is such a great idea for a research topic! I think it would be so interesting to see if there is a correlation between academic performance and environmental factors, especially parent involvement. I have tutored a lot of children from economically-disadvantaged backgrounds, and it's interesting because many of them are incredibly bright, but they struggle (I think) because their parents show no involvement or even enthusiasm in their children's schooling. I think it could also be interesting to look at whether parents' lack of involvement stems from a lack of time, apathy, or maybe the idea that they don't feel "smart enough" themselves to help their children with school work...
Jessica, this sounds really interesting. It's evident that this is a passion of yours and that passion will surely help keep you motivated for the task ahead. I also applaud you for thinking about a correlational study, while many people are shying away from the quantitative stuff and just going for interviews and observations (that's good research too!). Just make sure that you don't commit to too many variables that could extend the project over more than a few months. This research is needed out in the field. This is exciting!
Post a Comment