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...
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I think that could work, observing for student engagement and all that. I think you call also do a survey looking at teacher and students' perceptions of what is the most interesting content/topic in the course. That would be easy to do, i think. You could come up with several topics that they had already covered and then do a little Likert scale for each one.
P.S. I did see the "Baby Borrowers thing! Fabulous idea for teaching the teens, but who are the parents that allow their baby to be taken for 24 hours by idiotic wannabe-mommy/baby-daddy teens?!? the PARENTS are the ones who need an ethics lesson! I mean, there are adults there, cameras, whatever but . . . geez! That's a scary prospect for me, and I only have a dog! LOL!
Sarah, I think you are saying that your topic is student interest (or attitude or engagement) in social studies. I like the gender comparison aspect. I wonder if it is as simple as the topics that attract student attention, or whether the instructional activities also influence their attitudes. You will have to specify your research question and then choose the best data collection methods to answer it.
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