Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis

Thesis: While this first week of June will go down in history for its record-breaking hot temperatures and as the week we first met each other and therefore changed each others lives for the better, something else of perhaps a bit more historical significance occurred this week. As I’m sure we all know by now, Barack Obama is now officially the “unofficial” democratic candidate for president. This headline along with the fact that we will be doing our research projects during an election year has me wondering how social studies teachers I will be observing will discuss and follow the election in their classrooms. Will and if so, how will teachers motivate their students who are of voting age to take advantage of their right to vote?

Antithesis: The more I toss around these thoughts however, the more I realize that these are pretty specific questions. And while I’m sure civics and US history teachers would love to spend class after class discussing the historical presidential election, the importance of voting, and turn their classroom into a CNN-type election center newsroom, the reality is they simply don’t have the time to do that when there are state objectives to cover. I really don’t think I could collect enough data or make any kind of generalizations with such a narrow scope. In my experience, it is always better to start broad and pare down.

Synthesis: Therefore, I think I would like to look at how social studies teachers incorporate current events, such as, but not limited to, presidential elections in their classrooms. A question we will all hear from our students no matter what our content area is, “Why do I have to learn this?” or “Why does this matter?”. For social studies teachers at least, I think a great way to answer this question and get our students to take an interest in the subject at hand can be showing our students how events of the past are shaping what is happening today. I’m looking forward to exploring how teachers are accomplishing this in classrooms today.

Motivation, Techology and Active Learning in Biology

I’ve had a unique experience being in Wake’s education department for the past two years. Last year I got see the MTFs go from ideas to research proposals to published documents. So I’ve had the great fortune to think about topics that interest me. Additionally, student teaching has really helped me see the difference between the theories we learn in method class and “real life” teaching. For instance, the picture to the left shows how you can bring real life to the class room. Thats a human brain I brought in from the medical school during my student teaching. But what do you do to motivate students when you don't have a spare human brain laying around the house? The answer is not to give notes everyday on the white board. You have to keep the students active. What better way to bring the world to their fingertips, but technology.

I am especially interested in the connection between student performance and technology and motivation. Dr. Cunningham’s class on Educational Technology has shown me the value of technology in the classroom, and I have been able to experience its results in the classroom.

I have seen through the use of SMART board technology encouragement and interest from students who are usually “just a body” in class. Many public high school teachers are scared or rather intimated by technology. The fact of the matter is that black boards don’t intrigue nor excite today’s learners. We as educators must reach out to our ever diversifying population of learners. One way is to appeal to current and popular media and software.

So in my research I would like to see how technology motivates students and encourages active learning. I would also like to look at how test scores compare between students who are taught using technology and those taught with more traditional “old school” ways (white board, group work). I am assuming this investigation will be a mix of qualitative and quantitative research. One part will involve surveys and possibly interviews. And the second part will look at test scores as a direct relation to the use of technology.

On a side note, I am sure that ERIC will become a dear friend soon (which as an undergraduate I would have never said). It was very nice to finally get a lesson on ERIC. In my biology courses we were just thrown into the system. We would often research topics like animal behavior, chemical analysis and such. I can now finally have an appreciation for my research. Because for once it is research I’m really interested in, and something I want to investigate. So thank goodness, I can finally enjoy reading academic research.

The value of discussion

As I think back to the classroom experiences that have been the most interesting and the most rewarding for me, I realize that the majority of them have incorporated a certain level of class discussion. While it is certainly very important to learn about particular aspects of history and there are some of the often quoted “names, dates, and places” that must be memorized, in my opinion being able to understand the broader trends and why certain events occurred is just as important. Perhaps even more important. When looking into the past, though, it is important to realize that there is not always a right or wrong answer concerning why something occurred or why something is important. A teacher can lecture on an event or a figure’s importance, but individuals in the class often have other equally valid ideas. Discussion is an important medium through which students can voice their opinions. This is getting long winded, so I’ll cut to the chase…

With the focus on standardized testing as a result of the NCLB legislation, the story, as I’ve often heard it, is that many teachers are having to do away with class discussion in order to make sure that all of the key facts are covered in class. I think this is a problem, and I would like to research the topic. This could be approached through a variety of questions. How do teachers work discussion into their curriculum? How often does discussion take place? Is it a class discussion or in groups? Do students like/value the discussions? Does it affect their opinion of social studies class? What are teachers thoughts, is it valuable? How many students participate? How do the test scores of classes that focus more on discussion compare to those that do not? Does discussion have a place in the social studies classroom or is it a waste of time? Am I too idealistic and too accustomed to the higher level of thinking that takes place in history classes on the college level? Should I just go chat and sing Kumbaya around a campfire with a bunch of other history nerds and then get down to the gritty details in my high school class? Clearly I don’t know exactly where I’m headed, but, I think it would be an interesting topic.

First Thoughts...

Usually when it comes to big tasks like this research project, I am a big dreamer. I brainstorm major undertakings with noble findings that never come to fruition. However, I’ve been able to rein in my daydreams so far and focus on ideas that I can actually accomplish and even benefit from in the years to come.

Since Sunday’s orientation, I have been thinking about my own learning styles and interests. I’m hoping to turn those into a meaningful research project. So far, I’ve thought about how I respond better to teachers and their instruction style when I feel like they have a plan. Though high school teachers don’t hand out syllabi like in college, I felt more comfortable in classrooms when the teacher established a routine, or at least gave us students the day-to-day plan. My research would focus on observing the teachers’ styles, whether or not they seemed to have a plan or were just drifting through the class period. Also, I could interview or survey the students to see which style they preferred or at least made them perform better.

Another possible topic would be to observe how the teachers start class everyday. This topic would also research how teachers use time, but here I’d be more interested in how they set the tone for the day. Do the teachers jump right in and get down to business as soon as the bell rings (or even beforehand, with bell-ringers)? Or do they spend those first few minutes chatting and making relationships with their students? I observed a young teacher in my undergraduate work that started class by asking students, on a volunteer basis, to share one good and one bad thing from their day or week. The students really looked forward to that time and it kind of became a privilege.

So that’s where I am so far in this brainstorming process. I’m not so good with statistics and I’d really appreciate any help in making a plan I could really stick to in order to get consistent observations. Please, comment away.

blogular.

The main reason why I even want to teach is the fact that I had such a stellar high school biology teacher. She took an active interest in me as well as everyone in the class. And she was just plain good. She cared about us. Her constant feedback, approachability, and charisma made me want to work hard like never before. With this in mind, I think the effort that a student puts into a class is inextricably linked to the way he or she feels. I cringe hearing myself say this because, as a lover of science, I would expect to be drawn toward a clear cut study with no room for misinterpretation…aka quantitative. But I am so intrigued by harmony, group dynamics, and unity I guess. If a student feels known, loved, but also challenged in the classroom, will performance be affected? And not just performance, but desire to learn?

Another class experience I had was in college. It was so hard, but I felt little connection to the teacher and students. I signed up for a tutor… which turned into regular meetings with a group of three students and a grad student tutor. Here, I felt known, loved, and challenged… even if it wasn’t by the teacher. There was accountability, but also acceptance if I was truly lost on a concept. So I busted my tail for that grade. Maybe accountability is the crucial factor? Does a warm teacher student relationship necessary? Is that just my personality? Do I have bad self-motivation? These questions worry me. I do not like vague wishy washy answers to questions with all kinds of disclaimers. Is this even research-worthy? Talk to me.

How to teach history...?!?!?

For those of you who don’t know, this past year I have been somewhat scrambling to take my required amount of history classes in order to teach social studies. I realized a little too late that Psychology wasn’t exactly the course of study I wanted to pursue. I love the aspect of understanding people and their thought processes; however I want to actually get involved in people’s lives!! I wanna get my hands dirty!

However, my major was not completely fruitless with regards to teaching. I can’t even tell you how many classes involved some sort of research methods! So here I am, now able to use this research to do what I really want to do: teach! However, I am a little...how do you say…scared out of my mind to teach history, when I didn’t even major in it! (There's a lotttt of history!) So I really want my research to help me in this process of being confident to teach history. Am I just going to stay one step ahead of my students and read the book the night before? Should I be reading primary sources on top of the textbook to make sure I really know what I’m talking about? Should I be reading other books written by historians as well? I fear as if every night during my first few years of teaching I will have loads more homework than my students will.

So, I think I want to study and compare successful teaching methods in Social Studies. I’m not exactly sure how to do this, but it will probably be a mix between qualitative and quantitative. Maybe something like how often teachers use their books, do outside research, etc. I’ll probably even ask them to remember back to their first years of teaching. This still needs to be revised, so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!

¿Qué?

As of now, I plan to research oral proficiency development of Spanish in first year high school classrooms. I would like to see what methods have been created by linguists to help students learn to speak fluidly. Specifically, I am interested in how teachers aid students in learning a Hispanic accent.

To me, accent is very important because even if a person learns how to speak according to the grammar rules of the language, but is missing the accent, it is still very difficult for a native speaker to understand him/her. Upon moving to Miami my junior year of high school, I encountered this problem. At that point, I already had five years of classroom Spanish under my belt, but it was all for naught when it came to actually speaking with the many Hispanics in Miami. My accent was very American, I spoke very slowly, and I was so nervous every time it came time for me to open my mouth that all the existing holes in my vocabulary and grammar were magnified to huge gaping chasms full of errors.

As a result of this experience, I would like to emphasize oral proficiency in my future classroom and this thesis gives me a chance to research some techniques. As I mentioned before, I will examine published resources to discover what methods theorists have come up with to teach oral fluency. Also, I plan on observing and interviewing teachers to see what methods are actually implemented in the classroom. I am interested to see what teachers say about which techniques are feasible and which, for one reason or another fail.

My beginning...

In attempting to brainstorm a potential topic for my research, I have found myself spending a considerable amount of time reflecting on my four years of teaching. The opportunity to associate myself with this program is meant to be a chance for me to grow as an individual and professional. I want to choose a topic that interests me, but I find myself coming back to one question: How much will this benefit my students when I return to the classroom? Doing an in-depth study on gender in the history classroom may be of interest, and would no doubt have an impact on my teaching methods; but I question to what degree? I keep coming back to my arch nemesis, my Brutus—the EOC (End of Course) test. What could I evaluate that would help all teachers—not just me—improve their EOC scores? (Please understand, “teaching to the test” is a loaded statement with many negative connotations. I encourage you to discuss this sometime with me in class.) This year in my classroom I’ve toyed with the idea (and even some implementation) of emphasis non-content and specific content related vocabulary, as well as using various remediation tools for all students throughout the course. Both of these ideas seem ripe for research. It seems, however, that both of these ideas, as well as many other would require a certain level of experimentation, which would be a difficult and unlikely route for this particular assignment. I’m struggling to determine what factors already present in a classroom I could evaluate. Most of my colleagues are winding down and are therefore less interested in helping me brainstorm. I look forward to class to hear other ideas and potentially bounce ideas off my new peers.

1st Blog

As someone who enjoys brainstorming, developing ideas for a research topic is not an issue for me. My struggle lies in bringing my big research dreams down into the realm of reality. However, I am currently focusing my attention on developing a workable research topic, and I will bring myself down to size later.

I am toying with two different plans for my research, but they both relate to a general research question: if students understand what they are studying and why they are studying it, will their achievement and retention of knowledge increase?

Integration of current events, ethical debates, and elements of popular culture with the biology curriculum is one way of explaining to students why they are studying a particular topic. In my own experience, courses with relevance to my life peak my interest in comparison to lecture courses discussing only topics that seem far-removed from reality. So, I am very interested in research involving the concept of integration.

I have also considered research involving what impact clearly outlining student expectations has on achievement. As a recent college graduate, I am very accustomed to getting a syllabus that outlines what is expected of me in a class, including a description of what is being covered, all assignments for the semester, and what areas of my performance factor into my grade. When I think back to high school, however, the majority of my teachers never clearly stated this vital information for their courses. A study of the impact of providing students with a well-designed syllabus on achievement seems to be an interesting area of research for the high school classroom.

As I said, I am a little worried about bringing either of these topics down to scale, or fitting them into the time restraints required, so I am open to suggestions.

blog it up

Alright, week one... no big surprises here.  Mostly, I keep going back and forth between thinking that the research is going to be really hard, and thinking that I actually have a handle on it.  Right now, I fell that I've got a slight handle on it, but I'm sure that will flip-flop again.

I really enjoyed doing the ethics reflections, because it ties in with the line of thought I have about students, which is that in all that they do, they are budding moral philosophers.  I like anything that is morals/ethics related.  

I think the most helpful thing that I have heard in class is the notion of not picking what kind of research you are going to do, (quantitative vs. qualitative), but rather picking a topic/question first and letting that dictate what kind of research you need to do in order to answer the questions that you're asking.  Qualitative research appeals more to me, but I realized that many of the questions I was coming up with lent themselves more to quantitative research.  

I liked the in-class ERIC tutorial; it was very helpful.  Since I am no good at almost all things computer-related, it was nice to get some hands-on experience.  I find myself zoning out a bit when the discussion gets a little too mathematical, i.e. ratio data, so next week I'm going to work on honing my focusing skills.  I'm wondering if this is because I haven't been a student for the last two years.   Did anyone else notice the overlap in classes when we talked about  the reliability and validity of test scores?  I did, and I felt really smart for a hot second.  Alright, that's all I got in me for now, see y'all at Rose's.

Finding meaning in social studies...

I have always thought of history as a huge story. Sometimes it is a tragedy, other times a comedy, but regardless of the genre, we all have a role to play, and we can also learn from the lives of others. You may be wondering what that has to do with choosing a research topic. It may be a stretch, but I would like to study different meaningful learning opportunities in social studies. Students often do not make the connection between themselves and the lives of others who lived hundreds of years ago or more recently in history. Meaningful learning opportunities, as I think of them, would do just that.

From what I am thinking, this may take the form of service-learning opportunities and in-depth projects connecting academic knowledge to the real world. My main experience with service-learning opportunities has been in college, which may contribute to the impracticality of choosing it as a topic. However, at different times in high school and junior high my classmates and I were required to perform a certain number of service hours and turn them in to our social studies teachers. Our teachers, however, never explained why the two were connected. I am not sure if any of the local schools have such requirements or any service-learning projects, so the meaningful learning opportunities I would like to study may need to take another form. In-depth projects might include any sort of long (a month or more) project that incorporates technology, current events, and historical events--the type of projects from which you can recall information years down the road.

Also under the umbrella of finding meaning in social studies, I have thought about researching students' and teachers' perceptions as to why history matters. Friends, relatives, and children that I have tutored often doubt that knowing anything about Ancient Rome applies to their lives today. Such a study would serve as a great tool for teaching and inspiring kids to love history. This topic may be my most feasible one thus far.

My problem in choosing topics for papers or projects has always been narrowing down my ideas. It looks as if this process has just begun again!

Looking for Ideas

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!

Blog 1

Schools in my home county are dealing with a lot of problems right now, so several research topics popped into my head shortly after I learned about the assignment. Because graduation rates and test scores are extremely low in Tift County schools, administrators have been trying out strategies to raise slower learners' grades. Note the word "grades"--not exactly the same thing as comprehension or level of achievement.

One of the techniques for raising slow learners' performance that is being emphasized (especially in Tift Co. middle schools) is the use of mixed-ability group work and mixed-ability classes. I have clear memories of working in assigned groups like these, and though I would like to say that it was a positive experience, I can't. The only time I was a discipline problem in school was in an assigned, mixed-ability group in eighth grade, when I became fed up with my fellow group members and lost my temper.

Now, after reading about different methods of grouping by ability and the practice of full inclusion in classrooms, I would be interested to take a second look at mixed-level ability grouping. It helps that it's a political hot topic right now, because that means that there will probably be lots of literature available on the subject. One of the abstracts we analyzed on the first day of Educational Research stated (I think) that working in mixed-level groups proves "beneficial" to students. I would like to examine these benefits more fully. Who benefits? How do they benefit? At what cost? I'm afraid that I've made myself seem terribly biased, but I think that if I found that these projects really can be beneficial, I would be receptive to that information.

Topics

Generally my greatest problem when it comes to research is finding a topic. One reason is that I am someone who has trouble directing myself when i’m not sure what is expected of me and where i’m going. Because of that, the initial phase of finding a research topic can sometimes prove difficult for me. I tend to spin my wheels a lot. Once i’ve got a topic I am generally proficient at building a research project but I'm a little less confident about this project because I really haven’t done this sort of research before. I’m used to more traditional historical research based on documents and not research based on interviews, observation, or raw data.

What worries me the most about the project is that i’ve never been someone who is very comfortable in settings where I have to approach complete strangers to enlist their help in any sort of project or to solicit information. I’ve had jobs and internships where i’ve had to do a fairly heavy amount of contacting people out of the blue to help with various political issues and it is something that I’ve always had real trouble with and always put off as long as possible.

I am most interested in doing something related to primary source material in history classes, how teachers use them, how much they use them, and how effective it is in both teaching the content of history and in teaching the analytical skills that students need outside the classroom.

While I have a general area that I'm interested in, I don’t really have a great idea about how to go about looking at this topic. It seems that regardless of how I choose to go about my research my sample size will be too small to draw any valid conclusions and I have no idea how to quantify topics such as how effective someone uses primary sources or how students respond to them. Because of that I may well have to switch my basic topic.

The more I think, the less I know...

I must admit that I am having a hard time even beginning to choose a topic for this research project. It is not that I do not have any ideas; it is that every time I think I might be settled on a possible topic, a new and different (and sometimes better) topic appears. Reading through the textbook has given me some ideas and has also scared me away from some studies that I might have considered. In the past, I have chosen topics for literature based research papers that were almost impossible to substantiate with current research. While my undergraduate professors understood my desire to write papers that almost exclusively contradicted previous research, I doubt that the same is going to go over so well in the realm of educational research, which is much more fact and data based.

That said, there are certain aspects of education that intrigue me and that I would like to investigate further. Some sort of study about classroom management practices and routines and the effects on student behaviors might be plausible. I am particularly interested in observing, surveying, and interviewing students and teachers about classroom start-up routines. In my limited experience with teaching, I have found that the first five minutes of class are integral to determining how a class period is going to go for the day. A study that compares different teachers’ routines and the students’ behaviors and responses to those routines could help me when I start teaching. On a completely different note, I am interested in the use of multicultural literature in an English class and its effect on minority student involvement in the classroom. Both of these possibilities present a lot of work with operationally defining the variables to be studied and finding a way to categorize or numerically explain those variables.

While I am still mulling around ideas for topics right now, I know that it is imperative that I begin thinking about which topics will work best in my research situation. I do not have an entire school year to complete this project, and it might be difficult to determine just how much multicultural literature is used in a classroom in a single semester. I am also trying to link my possible research topics to methods of data collection so that I can estimate how many participants I may need and how much data, numerical or otherwise, I may need to collect. The more I think about the upcoming project as I write this, the more overwhelmed I become. I feel sure that as I continue to read the course textbook and talk with others that my ideas will continue to morph and I will eventually be left with something concrete and doable.

My Thoughts

Our textbook states that one way of selecting a research topic is to think about a question or area of interest that has resulted from personal experience. As I think back on my personal and professional experiences in education, several things of interest come to mind. First, I am always curious as to what factors, whether they be sociocultural, biological, etc... lead a student to prefer one subject over another. More specifically, what kind of commonalities are there in students who claim History as their favorite subject? Single-sex education is another broad topic that is of particular interest to me. I'm not sure that there are any single-sex classrooms in the local school system here, but I would be interested to research and compare possible discrepancies in achievement between student's in single-sex classrooms vs. co-ed classrooms. Also, given my personal experience in private and public high schools, I have always been intrigued by the differences between the two. A possible research topic here would be to compare curriculum or teaching in social studies classrooms at private and public schools.

I realize that the above topics are probably too broad and thus difficult to research, they just represent my general, broad interest. I have also been advised by former MTF students to focus your topic on something that will be of particular use to you as a teacher in your field instead of trying to conduct some kind of breakthrough in educational research. I want to make this experience as useful and smooth as possible! Therefore, I plan to research studies done in my field and try to come up with a topic that is not only of interest, but also practical and manageable.

Blog Numero Uno

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.

Decisions, Decisions...

When I first heard about the opportunity to conduct educational research at Wake Forest, I was incredibly excited to learn about real-life trends in local school systems. From previous experience, I know that many students view Chemistry as 'boring', 'difficult' or 'irrelevant'. As a true science nerd, this pretty much breaks my heart, so I have developed a great interest in discerning how science education can become more engaging for students.

However, now that I actually have the opportunity to implement my own research project, I find myself a bit overwhelmed by the many possibilities! Should I focus on student attitudes towards Chemistry? Perhaps I could examine student preconceptions of this particular subject (ie, it's "too hard", it’s "uninteresting"), so that I can work to dispel some of those myths as an educator. On the other hand, I could also assess a possible correlation between methods of classroom instruction (ie, lecture, class-discussion, lab work) and academic performance, to determine what might be an "ideal" learning environment. I am most worried about conducting a study that has been carried out countless times, or perhaps creating an experiment that is too simplistic for a graduate-level course. At the very least, however, I know that I want my study to provide insight as to how I can make Chemistry fun and relevant for students who never thought that they could enjoy it in the first place!

Another challenge I face is that this will be my first study using human subjects! As an undergraduate science major, I've had plenty of lab experience, but those labs did not entail the same level of ethical considerations that are inherent in educational research. I wonder how difficult it will be to obtain test scores or classroom statistics from a legal standpoint? What if I want to administer a survey or small exam to students? Will parents be okay with the notion that their children are my "test subjects"?

This discussion of ethics brings to mind a biology experiment that I conducted last year, in which my lab group accidentally killed one of the snakes that we were observing. About a million questions surfaced in regards to ethical experimentation, and the experience pretty much scarred me for life!! Basically, I am just hoping that everyone gets out of my educational research alive… :)

If I could, I would...

According to our educational psychology textbook, Vygotsky advocates for the idea of a dynamic assessment environment, in which a student is given problems to solve and then given further guidance - hints - if he or she is unable to solve them. Although this is probably not very common in a traditional classroom (issues of fairness come to mind, and "giving hints" isn't really something that's done when it comes to testing time) it seems like a strategy that would work especially well for students having difficulty learning a second language or with learning disabilities. It could not only motivate a child by showing him that he can arrive at an answer himself, but it could also similarly boost his self esteem and make the school environment a more inviting one.

But how can we operationally define a dynamic assessment environment? As a researcher, is it something I can even expect to see in a classroom? While ideally I would like to measure achievement in two groups - one in a dynamic assessment environment and one in a traditional direct instruction classroom - ethical issues as well as parental concerns would probably prevent me from doing this.

Several people in our program have already told me how much trouble they had learning a second language in high school. In fact, it seems that there is a distinct subset of the population that simply does not think in such a way that makes second language learning easy. I wonder how much easier being in a dynamic assessment environment might make that experience. Instead of a teacher marking an answer right or wrong, she could, during a test, encourage a student to consider whether a verb is regular or irregular, point out that adjectives need to agree with nouns in gender and number, and so forth. Thus, without explicitly giving the student the answer, the teacher could point that student in the right direction to find the answer for himself.

Perhaps more realistically, I could compare foreign language students who receive explicit phonetic training versus those who do not. As an undergraduate, I often struggled with the pronunciation of French words until I took a French phonetics course. While teaching phonetic symbols to high school students may not be completely effective, and certainly not interesting to them, there may be certain techniques to help students be able to use the language and be well understood by native speakers. My thought is that students who have a good grasp of pronunciation would be more inclined to participate in oral exercises in class, as they would not be so worried about making mistakes. This could certainly make class discussions more effective and rewarding.

Kelsey Lentz- Blog 1

My original thought was to carry out a study on gifted students, since most of my limited teaching experience deals with them. I realized after considering the schools in which I'd be carrying out the study that most foreign language classrooms don't distinguish "gifted" or "advanced" classes from regular classes. I could still obtain this information from school records, so I haven't completely discarded the idea. I also pondered the possibility of questionable ethics in obtaining records from the schools to determine the classification of the students in my sample; or how I would report the findings without offending or upsetting the subjects of the study.
I've been thinking about a few questions about reading; specifically the amount of reading assignments in Middle School Spanish classrooms and the effect on the students' overall acquired language proficiency. It would be easiest to test overall proficiency by either giving a test or assessing their performance on oral assignments after several weeks of additional reading assignments. Perhaps I should focus on the relationship between additional reading assignments and oral proficiency? My thought is to compare two groups to study: a control group that would complete the classroom teacher's typically assigned reading assignments versus a group given additional reading assignments to prepare outside of class (or in class). My thought was that the study group would consist of "gifted" students in the class, or rapid learners who may easily complete the regularly-assigned reading material and who may be intrinsically motivated to read more. My hypothesis would sound something like, "Do additional (or more challenging?) reading assignments improve overall acquired language proficiency in a Middle School (or grade specific) Spanish class? I realize I would have to provide operational definitions of "additional reading", "more challenging reading", and "overall language proficiency". I believe the hypothesis as it stands is more of a non directional hypothesis because I'm attempting to find a relationship between addtional reading and acquired proficiency. I assumed, prior to reading about research methodology, that a foreign language study would be qualitative; however, if I'm to compare two clearly defined variables, it sounds more like a quantitative experimental study. Thoughts?

The beginning always seems hard.

In my experience, beginning something new always seems hard. Preparing for a race, getting into a new routine, or even coming to this program: the start is always one of the most challenging times for me. Research is much the same, and as a previous-science-now-English major, I should be ready for it. At the same time, I'm worried about the question that will guide my research. I know just how important that question is to having a good paper, a strong study, and an enjoyable time carrying out either.

Mirroring what others have said so far in their blogs, I'm worried about having a study that can be measured at least somewhat meaningfully in only 40 classroom visits. I also wonder if we do need to limit ourselves to just those 40, or if we can (and should) extend our studies beyond that time frame. If not, some of my ideas for studies go right out the window -- mostly qualitative studies. However, I still have some ideas.

As a potential teacher, I know what interests me particularly at this point is class management and encouragement. I want to see what works well for keeping kids involved in the learning experience. How do other teachers keep their kids from "checking out" mentally? On the list of potential topics Dr. Milner provided the English table at our initial meeting, I'm most interested in the questions teachers ask their students, the responses the students give, and how teachers respond to questions that students might have. I know those are all three very broad, but I also realize that this is our first blog entry, and we're just starting out. It's OK for the task to look daunting and to seem somewhat lost or overrun with possibilities. We've got a way to go yet.

The beginning...

While the idea of a study is a little overwhelming right now, my initial thoughts are to study something having to do with teacher expectations for students and how they affect student performance in the classroom. In an education class I took last year, we read an article about the Pygmalion effect, and I have been really intrigued by the topic ever since. Basically, a study was done that showed that when teachers had higher expectations for a group of students, they unconsciously acted in ways that led these students to higher achievement. Likewise, when teachers had lower expectations for students, their unconscious actions negatively affected student performance. Unfortunately, I’m not exactly sure how to go about measuring teacher expectations. Perhaps a survey? Also, will teachers really being willing to admit that they have lower expectations for some students? If these expectations could be gathered though, they could be compared to student achievement in the classroom based on some sort of assessment. Based on what we have talked about so far in class, I feel like my best bet right now is to just spend some time searching through ERIC and other databases and seeing if this is a feasible topic, or if I find something else that sparks my interest.

While my ideas for a study are still very tentative, I feel pretty sure that I would like to approach the study from a more quantitative angle than qualitative. Being a math person, I much more prefer to work with numbers and statistics than narratives J.

And so it begins...

I’ll be honest: I’ve been stressing about this paper since my acceptance letter came in the mail. I had no idea what I was going to write about, and since I assumed that we were each expected to come up with something novel and exciting (ground-breaking, even), I already felt overwhelmed by the time we did our orientation. So, when Dr. Milner handed us a list of potential topics the other night, my sigh of relief was probably audible to everyone at the dinner table. I felt even better when I was reading the chapter in our book on “Selecting a Research Topic” and the authors suggested that originality is not necessarily akin to greatness and that there is even a need for replication in educational research. Once I was halfway through the chapter, I was feeling exponentially better than I had during orientation dinner, and by the time I reached the list of resources they provided for helping student researchers find topics of interest, my confidence and determination were soaring to unprecedented heights: I would find something interesting to study!

Upon closer examination of Dr. Milner’s list, the first topic that jumped out to me was “Adolescent fiction’s effect on student engagement.” Having been a high school student myself once, I know how much high school students love to argue that the reason they don’t perform well or don’t participate in English class is because they aren’t being allowed to read what they want to read. I would be very interested in a study that demonstrated whether or not allowing students to read literature catered to their age group or even books of their own choosing (within reason, of course) had a significant effect on classroom participation or student attitudes. The problem with a study such as this, though (for our purposes at least), is that it is somewhat experimental in nature, and would be impossible to undertake if none of the teachers we observe are implementing this exact course of action in their classrooms. So…there goes that idea.

Having re-examined Dr. Milner’s list for more stand-out ideas, I’ve found that I’m very interested in studying the kinds of questions teachers ask (exploratory versus controlled) and who they question. I’m not sure yet whether I’d like to sub-divide the latter part of this question by gender, race, or some other variable, but I definitely feel like the idea at least has potential. Going into the classrooms with a spreadsheet set up for tally marks would be doable, and I, for one, would be interested to see the results. :)

So Many Options!

I regret that I did not write down all of the research options that popped into my head as I read through the text! There seem to be so many options out there, several that I have personally considered, but then actually nailing one down will certainly be the hardest thing. Dr. McCoy assured us in class today that it is very early in the process and not something to lose sleep over at this point, but as is apparent from the previous posts, it seems we are all at least a bit concerned. As others pointed out, I also would like to conduct a study that will have significance for me in my future classrooms as well as for my colleagues. One of my biggest fears is conducting a futile study that would have little or no benefit for anyone.

In brainstorming topics, I have considered different experiences I’ve had in the classroom through teaching as an intern last summer and through substitute teaching. As Matt mentioned in his blog, I also have been considering the effect of seating arrangements on student achievement, particularly in math classes. So far, the studies I have found seem to focus more on seating arrangements and discipline, but not very much on seating arrangements and academic success. In substituting this spring, I had a math class that was arranged at tables of five or six students, and I was appalled by what I observed! They tended to socialize more and simply copy the answers of the smartest child at the table rather than learn for themselves and do their own work. Obviously, I was only substituting and they certainly weren’t on their best behavior for me, but it still bothered me to see that happening, and leads me to question just how detrimental or, if I’m wrong, beneficial to the students such a seating arrangement could be in a math class. As I debate in my head whether or not this would be a good topic for me to pursue, I will continue investigating others as well and look forward to feedback and opinions from my classmates!

First Impressions and a Potential Research Area

I hate to sound like a broken record, but I have to agree with some of the blog posts of my classmates and say that the research task at hand is intimidating. The idea of whittling down a general interest into a manageable topic and conducting a research study in such a short amount of time seems near impossible at this point. While our text for this course explains, for example, the various types of qualitative and quantitative research in an understandable format, the sheer volume of ways to approach any given subject appears daunting. I suppose, however, that once my topic of research becomes clearer and my knowledge of the field increases, it will be easier to pick through the myriad of research options and choose one that will be right for me

As for topic, I’m drawn to oral proficiency in second language learning. I am not sure how to narrow that down. My motivation is personal experience and observation. I only began to study Spanish (the subject I wish to teach) in high school. I felt that my instructors did not put a great deal of emphasis on learning the phonology of Spanish. I realize that constraints of the environment (i.e. high numbers of students only motivated to fulfill a language requirement) limited my Spanish high school instructors. Still, it seems that a bit more emphasis on how a foreign language’s sound system differs from English’s would be beneficial to the students who do continue their studies. I would think that better oral skills could translate into better listening comprehension skills. Observing how instructors teach a foreign phonology could be qualitative, but if certain actions of the teachers codified and given numerical values it could very well be quantitative. Similarly students’ oral production of the target language could be studied, or scores from listening comprehension assessments could be compared. In any case, there are a lot of options and I can easily see myself moving in a different direction.

Blog 1: What will I do?

As of now, the research assignment at hand is a big question mark, mainly in the sense that I am having trouble nailing down a particular topic in Foreign Language Education, specifically Spanish, that I want to study over the next few months. I am consumed by what is truly realistic and practical, and so I am continue to ponder over themes and research topics that will create a feasible research project that will not only be beneficial to me, but for colleagues in the field. Not being a particularly creative person, adding a twist to an older study, as in replicating it, sounds attractive. But that seems to be a cop out at this point. Thinking back to my days in the middle school and high school Spanish classroom, I remember the days of hands-on cultural activities, such as art projects, cultural presentations, sampling of food, etc. Those were the fun Spanish days, but not necessarily the most useful in teaching students the actual history and culture of different Spanish-speaking countries. In what ways can those activities be structured so that foreign language learners are able to take away significant knowledge of Spanish, Mexican, or Peruvian culture? This is one idea I have been looking into. At this point, it seems most useful to me to continue to browse ERIC, ACTFL, and other Foreign Language journals to gather ideas. I am confident that an article out their will spark an idea in my head. With that idea in place, I am not too concerned about the actual gathering of research. Studying the different kinds of qualitative research has been very helpful in realizing that research is more than just numbers and percentages. Conversations can be meaningful, useful data, along with observations and interviews. This kind of personal interaction is very appealing. I am ready and eager to get into the schools, see how they have changed and remained the same, and then learn from them.

Blog 1

Being a history major, I should be prepared to do any kind of research thrown at me. This research project, however, has me a bit intimidated. I am comfortable with the looking through the journals, databases and ERIC for research to help shape my paper. The thought of actually going into the field and compiling my own research, quantitative or qualitative, is a different matter all together. Nonetheless, I am adapting and learning to quickly get over my apprehension. I want to pick a topic that will prove to be helpful to me in the future. Therefore, I am tentatively looking at the different ways in which students are required to take notes. From personal experience, I have found I learn better when I have nothing in front of me but a blank notebook. I find the more I’m forced to write down, the more information “sticks” with me. However, there is always the dreaded teacher who covers too much material way too fast. In that case, I don’t retain as much information because I always feel as if I am trying to keep up. I want to compare this style of note-taking namely with the fill in the blank, outline type of note-taking. Again, in my personal experience, handing me an outline often gives me free range to “check-out” of class more often than if I am taking all of my own notes. I have begun to search online to find articles; however, I am running into a slight problem with finding studies on secondary education and not undergraduate students.

Potential Research Topic

One of the reasons that I enjoy the subject of math is due to its objectivity. In contrast, educational research is entirely subjective despite the incorporation of operational definitions, reliability, validity, and statistics. Even quantitative research studies are not conclusive nor have one interpretation of results. This aspect of research makes me uncomfortable. I am also wary of the research process for other reasons that include the short amount of time to conduct our research, the variability of the environments we are studying, and the legality that is involved with dealing with student characteristics such as achievement or socio-economic levels.
However, I am also excited about learning more about math classrooms which will help me become a better teacher. Specifically, I would like to research the relativity of specific math lessons to real world applications. For example, how often the teacher states how this particular lesson is useful or beneficial to the student or the amount of times that the teacher gives problems that involve practical applications of concepts and not just computational assignments. Secondary math has the potential to become abstract and distant from everyday tasks that one performs. In actuality, math is everywhere from the prediction of the stock market to cost analysis in business to the building of skyscrapers. I believe that if students know the value or significance of what they are learning, they will be more motivated.

Blog #1 Chapters 1-6

For some reason, the very word ‘research’ fills me with fear. I am not sure why it has this effect on me. Perhaps I can blame it on my mathematical background. My undergraduate coursework often involved rote learning and the manipulation of numbers and theorems. I had very little experience in posing questions, searching for evidence to answer those questions, and then interpreting the results. It is comforting to think that I may not be alone in this feeling of inadequacy. As the authors state in Educational Research: Competencies for Analysis and Application (2009), many people are trained to solve problems rather than to identify problems (Gay, Mills, & Airasian, p. 66). These individuals may be so intimidated by choosing a topic for inquiry that they may not even venture into the uncharted waters of research. I do not want to fall for this! Instead, I am looking forward to using this opportunity to dive deeper into a topic that intrigues me and that will develop my skills as a teacher. After reading Chapter 2 Selecting and Defining a Research Topic, I learned that I can draw on my personal experiences, along with previous studies and theories, to direct my choosing of a topic. In considering potential topics for study, I am thinking back on my methods courses and student teaching. Through various assignments and experiences during these semesters, I found myself asking many questions about pedagogy, classroom management, and the use of multiple instructional strategies. I am curious about studying students’ reliability on calculators or alternative sequencing for teaching a lesson in math (other than the traditional warm-up, review of homework, lecture, and independent practice). I am also particularly interested in studying the incorporation of writing and other curriculums with the math curriculum. I know that I will find the most satisfaction in my research by choosing a topic that will hold my interest and answer one of these personal questions I have related to education.

A Science Teacher's Point of View

Trying to pick a research topic for me seemed a little daunting at first. As Dr. McCoy has said in class, most people want to pick a research topic that will make a huge difference in education. I guess I am one of those people. I want to pick something that will be meaningful to the education community. In my reading and our class discussions, I think that I am going to try working on a research topic from my personal experience. Having taught four years, I have seen a lot of issues that I would like to change. For example, testing (regardless of how we feel about it) is a huge factor in being a teacher today. For me it is the Biology EOC. Every year, I have tried to look at my classes test scores and overall summary performance on each of the NC SCOS Biology goals. I try to find new ways to address my student’s weak areas and modify areas to improve student learning. I also offer LOTS of tutoring and one on one help. Maybe I could do research on the variables that would help Biology students be successful on the EOC. In particular, I am interested in how inquiry based lab activities could affect the EOC score or concept retention. This probably needs to be severely modified to actually work. Also, there are many other factors such as exceptional children, outside tutoring, and student motivation to consider. With students in NC now required to be proficient on the Biology EOC to graduate, any tool I can find the make them more successful the better. Don’t get me wrong – I do not “teach to the test” and am not advocating that. I just want my students to be successful and scientifically literate.

Blog #1 Chapters 1-3, 5-6

My initial impression of educational research is that it is a much more challenging and complex process than I originally had imagined. Moving from using articles, books, or journals of simple research papers or a thesis to actually running qualitative or quantitative research is a major switch from my previous experience. It seems on first reading that this would be a daunting task to focus on a specific topic from the wide array of possibilities and still manage to conduct significant research. From personal experience and background, I’m primarily having thoughts on investigating technology use, specifically calculators, in the classroom and somehow relating it to student attitudes and/ or achievement. While currently a broad topic, and may lead more to teacher attitude and pedagogy rather than students, I hope to find previous research to guide me more. The research required would be of both quantitative and qualitative nature possibly requiring interviews, survey, test scores, and general classroom observations. A much more general topic that I find interest but slightly away from my mathematics background is the continuing argument about student seating in class and it’s affect on performance or achievement. This theory is something that is generally thrown around a lot to students, and has some interest to personally see for myself in research its validity. It will become important for either topic to specify and operationally define in detail what specific traits I want to compare as I move forward toward a more focused research question.

Response to Chapters 1, 2, and 3

Hello EDUC 721 class! I am writing to you from Virginia and wish I was in class discussing these wonderful topics. I can’t wait to join everyone in July!

My initial impression after reading the first three chapters is that educational research provides opportunities for a very wide range of topics using a vast array of methodologies. While this should not be surprising, considering the range of topics that are relevant to education (i.e. everything from the science of brain function to the politics of school funding to the concept of culture), it is somewhat intimidating to consider all that one must know in order to conduct meaningful and ethical research in education. Based off of the descriptions between qualitative and quantitative research, I feel as if my natural inclination is to be geared towards a qualitative research project. I like the idea of conducting research through interviews as a method of collecting data. As the text suggests, research methods should match research objectives. The importance of a well articulated and carefully crafted research question seems especially important. The question should be explicit, without foreshadowing the outcome and it should not “overextend.” Information about the process called “ literature review “ that is provided in the text is a reminder of the importance of building on and extending work that has gone on before in the education profession and a reminder of one of the fundamental purposes of research in any field. At this point, I have interest in investigating teacher attrition/retention of first year social studies teachers. My curiosity with this topic is based off of my own observations and experiences since I started teaching. Although I like this topic, I fear that it might be too broad.

If flexibility is the key to teaching, indecision is my key to flexibility!

While there are several topics that intrigue me that would best be served by a qualitative study, I'm a little bit concerned about how feasible they are given the brief observation period and the fact that I (all of us really) won't be able to influence the material that is covered during the fall term to "optimize" our data collection opportunity. The study of how textual irony is taught in literature would be great but would be very limited if no texts including that learning objective are taught during the fall for instance.
I love the idea of studying the impact of technology on the student writing process in general and the revision steps specifically. The nature of word processing makes it much easier for a student to skip many steps in the writing process. They can go straight to the keyboard and wail away, revising as they go, depending heavily on the spell and grammar check functions inherent to most applications. I suspect that the accessibility and reactive nature of these tools makes the writing process and revision process require less foresight, planning or deliberation. I could also imagine finding that it saves students a great deal of time on the mundane and most common revision problems (like spelling) and allows them to focus more on sentence structure, coherent and connected threads through an assignment, etc. It will be hard to conduct this type of research as a comparative study followed by observations and interviews without impacting students' work or the teacher's expectations (i.e. I can't have one group use pen and paper for assignments and compare their work and process to a group using word processors).
I'm leaning at this early point towards how a teacher uses contemporary issues in literature instruction or the use/efficacy of reader response versus text centered instruction. Both can be approached with extensive observation, interviews of both students and teachers and surveys to accomplish the aims of a qualitative study. I'm not sure how to focus the hypothesis within that broad topic yet. Unless of course I can figure a creative methodolgy to avoid the previously mentioned limiting factors. Its only June, right!?