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!!!