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.
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4 comments:
Jennie,
I am in the MTA program and thought your research idea was very interesting. In my school, we have a class set of newspapers delivered daily to every history teacher in the building. Since we had thirty newspapers at our disposal it motivated many teachers to incorporate current events almost everyday. I do like the log idea as it would give you great data. On the other hand, as a teacher, I have so much paper work to do during the week that I think it would be an added burden. The good news is that most teachers LOVE to talk about things that they are doing in their classroom. I think teachers would be more inclined to talk about their use of current events through a weekly interview. Another idea would be to construct a survey that would be easy to fill out on a weekly basis. Something that allowed you to get a sense of when/how teachers were using current events but that was also not time-consuming for teachers. You could create questions using the Likert scales that I don't think teachers would mind filling out since they are relatively easy to complete. Just a thought!
I think that it would be realistic for most teachers to keep the log. I probably would have helped out someone in our situation when I was teaching. I think that you just need to be careful about how much work you are going to expect the teacher to put into the log. If it is something that is quicker and easier, I think you will a better experience. In my experience, most people in education are really helpful but sometimes we get overwhelmed with all the paper work we have to do. I say go for it! Find some good teachers and just build a good relationship with them. I think that will be key.
I think I would have to echo the previous comments. Katie is probably right: paperwork can be very overwhelming. I agree with Leslie too: if you think the logs would be essential to your research, seek to build relationships with reliable teachers and I'm sure you will find that they will want to help you out. Of course you could make copies of the lesson plans, but sometimes the conversations about the current events may be very brief, informal, and not planned ahead of time. Are you looking at the use of current events strictly in your content area? It might be interesting to look at it across the curriculum. Just a suggestion :)
Jennie, this current events topic is still very interesting. I am glad that you are exploring many different data collection methods. You probably won't do all of them, but you will find one that fits.
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