To be honest, I thought the idea of coming up with a research topic would be much easier than I’ve realized. When thinking through ideas in my head, everything seems to make sense, but when trying to put it into a concise sentence, or onto paper, it doesn’t seem to be so clear. Let me start by explaining where I am so far.
For the past four months I’ve been substitute teaching within the local public school system, specifically in the middle and high schools. A benefit of bouncing from school to school, is getting to see all the different types of children, and how they interact and learn. One thing I found particularly interesting at a middle school was the Hispanic population, and their school performance. They would struggle in subject areas such as English, and excel in other areas such as Math. That may be due to Math being a “universal language”, but I still found it interesting.
So for my research topic I want to do something to relate minority populations within schools to success in Mathematics. I know we’ve read and been told race can be a touchy subject, but it really intrigues me. Studying the Hispanic population may be too narrow, so I wouldn’t mind including other minority races (i.e. American Indian, African American, Asian, etc.). I briefly looked at the 2007-2008 demographic stats for the school system, and Parkland High School, which Dr. McCoy mentioned as an option, seems to have about a 75% minority population. Therefore, I don’t think I would have too narrow a sample size to work with, but I can’t decide on what I’d want to do with that population. Maybe I could compare math test scores from teacher to teacher, and see how each of their teaching methods differ??
Like I said, I can’t quite pin it down, so any and all suggestions are welcome!
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6 comments:
Hey Katie,
First of all, missed you at Rose's!
But on with business--
I've been thinking about your entry, and a couple of things came to mind. All the talk in Ed. Psych. has made me think about how tough school can be for slow learners, and there was even a section on how tough it is to be bilingual in American schools. But it seems like, in the situations you've witnessed, Math would prove to be a big self-esteem boost for minority students who might be struggling in other areas. You're a Math person, so you might be more attractive to quantitative studies. But have you considered exploring how Math classes might provide a means of increasing minority students' feelings of self-worth?
Or, if you had enough native foreign language-speaking students, you could conduct a survey, trying to figure out whether they think in their native languages or English when they work problems.
Maybe you could just do a series of case studies with a few minority students who are successful in Math. (Maybe a few who are successful in other subjects and a few who tend to excel only in Math.) You could pick their minds and try to figure out what drives them, why they like Math, why they're so good at it, how they feel about their teachers, etc., and then try to put all that information together into some coherent thoughts on minorities in American Math classes.
Just some thoughts.
Megan Connor
Katie, I am very pleased that there are ideas running around in your head!! If you are interested in Hispanic students (or other minorities), I think you could identify ethnicities and interview them and/or their teachers about their interest and achievement in math. In some schools, there are ESL-math classes that might be interesting. Or you might survey or interview teachers and ask about different students. As I write this, I am uncomfortable about this topic.... It might be better to do a case study of one or two Hispanic students and avoid comparisons. I think it could work!!
This blog is very intriguing as an observation. Without having any real experience as a teacher or observing high school students achievement it was quite the unique perspective to gain from fellow students experience. My limited experience in primarily middle to upper class schools didn't fully represent the racial differences in learning so this topic really peaks my interest as sociocultural possibility. I definitely agree that math is a much more universal language in terms of it's set operations that must be followed and the universality of numbers. Specifically with the continued growing Hispanic population in North Carolina, I feel like this research might have some great observations.
Katie, As you observed in your quick look at the data Parkland and other schools like it are in need of help. I think a lot of it may be based at home, but thats a whole different research topic. I like your idea. I think that if you just wanted to study Hispanic students it would work just fine. It might be interesting to look at Hispanic students from different schools. My guess is that Hispanic students say at Reagan would have different test results from Parkland. Seeing that the Hispanic race is one of the, if not the most quickly growing races this research is quite important for the educational future of our minority students.
This may not be feasible, but it might be interesting to see how the Hispanic students perform in school in relation to the amount of encouragement and participation of their parents. I did an internship last summer in New Mexico where I was teaching mostly Hispanic children, and those who seemed to excel the most had families who were very encouraging and supportive of their education. Don't know if that's a direction you would want to go, but it might be interesting to consider.
Yo Katie. This sounds so very interesting. I agree with Megan that a qualitative study could be really cool... like a documentary where you follow around a few hispanic students. How are they in their other classes? Like Christina mentioned, what are there home situations like? Do they like math for a particular reason? I love this because it really does seem to show that the students aren't not smart... there is just a language barrier. And to me, that's something so encouraging. There is so much potential. I can't wait to see what you come up with!
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