I'm trying NOW to revise my first thoughts, relating them to qualitative study:

1. feedback on writing & its effect on students' revision (could collect student papers w/ teacher comments throughout the process of writing)
2. gender differences (teachers to students) – Who calls on whom? How often? Who is ignored? If it’s not too much, in what way are students of one gender engaged with their opposite0sex teacher (rambunctious, disparaging, cocky, respectful, etc.)
3. different teachers’ classroom procedures for starting &/or ending class and their relative/perceived effectiveness for the purpose of settling students down and getting them on-task quickly
4. how teachers use modern music (audio, written lyrics, videos) to teach literature (analysis, comparison, etc.)
5. students' opinion of English as a subject and the correlation with teacher attitude towards them and towards English as a subject (reading, writing, grammar, vocabulary)

. McCoy and Dr. Milner - I think these are more specific and "do-able" but . . . which ones are the better ones to choose, given our observations??? I really love #4, but #2 or #3 seem most "observable." What do you think???

I *almost* have a question... 3rd time's the charm.

Ok, let’s see here… I know I want to look at the effects of the use of multicultural literature on student achievement and/or attitudes towards class, with an interest in students’ cultural background as well. I am beginning to imagine a research question that might sound something like this (but with a lot of tweaking to make it better and more researchable): “What is the effect of the use of multicultural literature on students’ attitudes towards class and their achievement?” Since I am still having a few issues making concrete decisions about my research, I think that I may have to choose either attitudes or achievement. Any ideas?

Now that you’ve beaten that out of me, I think that there are several ways to tackle the data collection. In order to find out about student attitudes towards class, I will need to survey or interview them. The interviews would yield quite a bit of narrative data, and then I would be able to perform some qualitative data analysis. It would also be helpful to collect data through observation in order to see students in their “natural” habitats. These observations will help me see how students interact with each other, the teacher, and the literature that they read. The data that I collect from these observations will also provide me with more narrative data that I can qualitatively analyze.

Back to my first love.....#3

Being a sociology major and having taken a few anthropology classes, qualitative research is more up my ally. I love people and culture watching...well observing. Observation will not only lend itself well to our research project but our career as future teachers. The qualitative method works well with my study because I am not forming a hypothesis but rather asking a question. I agree with Dr. McCoy though in her reiteration that research is not black and white and I do believe that my research could benefit from using a few methods (if that is feasible or necessary). Observation would lend itself well in analyzing student motivation. Using one of the structured observation methods would be useful in producing data that could be compared and contrasted in classrooms that used canonical lit. versus ones that did not. In the study that my quantitative group presented it classified student behavior as on task or off task. I could mimic that study but figure out what student behaviors illustrated motivation (posture, involvement, etc). In an ideal world, I would like to use observation and still create a student survey or interview in order to have thorough data. We shall see how that plays out in the fall though when reality sets in!

Blog 3: A Little More Reflective

As someone coming from the sciences with a research background, I find the word quantitative very comforting. However, the more I consider the nature of my study, I think that at least incorporating some qualitative aspects would add a great deal of interesting data that answers my questions about how teachers could and do incorporate relevant issues into the science classroom. While I chose this topic with some specific ideas in mind already, I think that interviewing science teachers about how they already do this and how effective they think it is could bring some enlightenment to my own teaching. Although I realized today during our exercise in class that I may quickly amass more information than I can handle through an open-ended question, the potential value of the data far outweighs the difficulty. I have accepted that my research project may not result in a breakthrough for the educational community as a whole; however, I increasingly feel that if I really listen to what expert science teachers are telling me, then I will have a personal breakthrough.

A Third Piece of the Puzzle

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...

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!!!

third time around

So, at first this week I became pretty excited about the discussions of Qualitative Research. First of all, I find SPSS to be rather confusing and generally unpleasant to a non-math oriented individual such as myself, but more importantly, I thought that Observation sounded like a good way to really get some good information about discussion, especially if I wanted to zero in not only on how frequently discussion is used, but what kind of questions are asked as well as what kinds of answers the students respond with. I also like that with Qualitative Research you don't have to have as much of a hypothesis as just a good question, which is what I have right now. I pictured myself going into some classrooms this fall with my notebook and pen and easily scribbling down a bunch of coherent observations about discussions. And then...we tried it today. I found the practice exercises very challenging. Not impossible by any means, but tougher than I expected. While I am not ruling out Observation for my research, it is certainly good that we practiced a bit so that I will not be quite as idealistic about what will happen when I enter the classroom to observe.

Interviewing, as I mentioned last week, will likely be a very important tool for gathering data. At this point I don't see the value in a "talk aloud" necessarily, but a group interview would be beneficial as it might allow me to easily see the differences between different teachers conceptions of discussion. Now that I think of it, observation would be useful to see just how closely teachers practice what they preach. So, there is surely room for it after all!

three's a crowd

I think I'm switching gears. Teacher student warmth is subjective and does not sit quite right with me. BUT for my group's presentation, we had an article on desk arrangement. I think this is so interesting. It is still related to the dynamics of the classroom. I think a good question could be, "Does a student's placement (desk location) in the classroom effect his or her achievement?"

I think it could be a good qualitative study by simply interviewing teachers. I am most interested in how students can be maximally engaged in the classroom. The interview questions could be geared towards this. What seating arrangements do you feel maximize the classroom experience for all students? With or without this ideal, are there areas of the classroom seem to produce more attentive students? Do you take this into account when/if you assign seats? Are the high performers in a class clustered in any particular area (front/middle/back/corner etc)?

I guess it would also be possible to do a narrative study on a few students. Ideally, they would have a variety of seating situations in their classrooms. I could ask them a number of questions about their experiences in those classes. This might be too detailed, but I remember science classes in high school having lab tables most of the time (rather than traditional desks). These were sometimes mixed in with sinks used for lab. Does this effect students' ability to remain engaged? How about high stools vs. lower tables when your feet can touch the floor.

I'm not sure if the student perspective or the teacher perspective would be more beneficial. Anyone? I feel like I'm not getting anywhere.

3. Extracurricular reading habits and adolscents' sense of why reading is important

Considerations of qualitative methods have helped coax me towards a topic. I'm having difficulty completely detaching topic selection from considerations of "how the heck am I gonna do that!?!?" Thinking more about investigation into adolescent readers' motivations I'm considering a research question along the lines of "how do extracurricular reading habits/tendencies of different level readers influence an adolescent's sense of why literacy is important." My hope is that the implications might point towards how a teacher in a classroom setting might be able to affect both the adolescent's tendency to read (beyond the classroom hopefully too, but more immediately in the classroom) as well as to help him/her internalize why it's REALLY IMPORTANT to be able to read well!!!!

So with that vague destination in mind...a simple quantitative assessment of who are strong, average and weak readers based on achievement will help me select a stratified (and small) sample. Using one or two select representatives from each group, I'd administer an in depth survey/interview that will provide insight into what the students extracurricular reading habits/tendencies are as well as questions to measure their sense of literacy's importance using an attitude scale. This would preferably be done early during the research period so that I could observe those same students and their classroom behavior patterns.

This all feels pretty nebulous but it's a topic I'm intrigued by. I fear that it will be difficult to generalize though. The findings/implications may have some value as an ethnographic study to me as an English teacher in Winston-Salem as well as point towards more focused/sophisticated research in the future.

Three

Ok, so as I said last week, qualitative seems to be the best route for me and my topic. I am very interested in interviews. (And not the video kind!) So far, I’m thinking of interviewing both teachers and their students. I would ask teachers questions to figure out if they consciously manipulate time and plan to be either rigid or flexible in their daily use of it. I plan to ask students if they prefer teachers who are rigid or flexible in their routines. I would also be interested in knowing if they think those teachers who appear to be flexible have a plan or not.

In addition to interviewing teachers and students, I would also like to use an observation component. After today’s exercise, I realized that the naturalistic approach works best for me but that a Flanders Interaction grid like we did today would be practical too. I’m curious to find out if those categories are specific or if I could tailor them to fit my study better. I like the ones about the lecturing, asking questions and dead time. I would like to add some about “housekeeping” time, review time, and independent study, for example.

I also liked what Dr. McCoy said today about there being a specific culture in the classroom. I think that a teacher’s use of time can contribute to this idea of a class-by-class culture. Each teacher may have specific uses for time on a daily basis that can contribute to a culture that the students understand and predict. I’m thinking of this as when then students walk in everyday, for example, they know to complete the bell-ringer on the board, turn in homework in a specific box, or work on some independent reading. Dr. McCoy, can you please comment on who you said wrote quite a bit on this idea?

Sarah Lovejoy, I figured it out.

All you have to do is click on the little picture icon that says “Add a Picture” in the screen where you enter your text. It’s right above the text box, next to the
“spell check” icon—you can’t miss it. ;) FYI, my picture has nothing to do with this post. I just thought we could all use a laugh.

As far as my research goes, I’m seriously thinking about running with this smiling idea. I think I will probably have to make it a broader topic, as Dr. McCoy suggested, and maybe talk about “positivity” in general or something similar, but this one really interests me. And I think that’s pretty important. My biggest worry is that I won’t be able to find enough related literature…but we’ll see how that pans out.

In trying to think of this study qualitatively, I could definitely conduct teacher interviews or surveys to see how much they think they use positivity in the classroom. Combined with observation and possibly student surveys or interviews, it would be interesting to see if there is any significant disparity between the teachers’ and the students’ responses. For example, do teachers think they are very positive while students do not perceive them as such? Honestly, though (and I know this may shock you, Dr. McCoy), when I first started thinking about this study, I thought of it mostly in terms of data that would end up looking rather quantitative. I thought about just making a modified version of something like the Flander’s analysis we did in class—making tic marks for each time the teacher smiles and for each time that a teacher's smile elicits a “positive” bodily response (e.g. a smile, a laugh, a nod, etc.). Or something like that. Anyhow, I will welcome any comments or suggestions with open arms—and a warm, fuzzy smile, of course. ;)

#3 anchor my balloons

I'm now in the refining and narrowing stage of picking my research topic. So briefly, here is what I've got:

Topic: What are the rationals that students give for turning in or not turning in their homework, and, does the class atmosphere at the actual time of assignment and collection effect the amount of homework that gets turned in?

Subjects: 2 groups from 2 of the classes that I'll be observing, 1 classified as steady homework-turner-inners, and the other classified as pretty consistent NON homework-turner-inners (8 groups total).

Measrues/Procedures: I would like to do some sort of written survey amongst the two groups, and I would like to do group interviews with the two groups as well (would this be a "focus group" or a "talk-aloud"?) I would also like to observe student and teacher behavior at the time of homework assignment and collection.

Hopefully I will find some insight that will enable me to steer attitudes about homework in a direction that will encourage the most turn-in of assignments.

I really like the idea of using different types of research and data collection (quantitative: survey/qualitative: observation, interview). I think my next step is deciding on my operational definitions and really fine tuning my procedures.

As for what we've been going over in class, I have obviously been more interested in learning about qualitative research because I understand it better and it's just more Lia. I have though, realized the importance of quantitative data and how it can serve as an anchor when you feel that all your qualitative data is just kind of floating all around you like balloons.

Yay for research! #3

After a small panic last week, I decided that I will stick with my topic because it is the most interesting to me. I want to be the most effective teacher I can be and getting inside the heads of students now will help in the future. Part of my problem last week was that I was searching in ERIC with bad terms. I had a temporary ditz moment and was not thinking that a student's "attitude" is similar to their "perception" or "view" or "affect." Therefore, after plugging in that golden word, I found a plethora of information focusing on different aspects of student attitude toward social studies. I have a few more solid ideas about how to go about obtaining pertinent information as well as what exactly I want that pertinent info to be.

I like Dr. McCoy's suggestion of using a focus group (although I am still considering the survey). I am interested in the attitudes of students who perform well and poorly in social studies and come from a variety of backgrounds. Maybe one or two focus groups for four schools. Is that too many? The focus groups could contain six students from a world history class. Could I ask the teacher to hand pick a few students who they think will participate and add to the discussion? I would want to ensure that the 6 students do not all hold the same opinion towards the subject. I also would like to observe classes in a few different schools, perhaps as different as Reagan, Atkins, Reynolds and Parkland, to get a good spectrum. I would like to watch a wide variety of teachers--more experienced and less experienced, those with many high-performing students and others with low-performing students.

I realize a lot of different aspects affect attitude. I am interested specifically to see how teaching methods, testing, class discussion and arrangement, as well as teacher attitude, passion about their subject, and overall class environment affect students' attitudes. Some of my favorite teachers would have a couch, a lamp, a candy bowl, and some sort of artistic collection (pictures, cows, timelines, etc.). How do aspects like that affect the learning environment? My teachers all claimed that those small details made a difference, and I enjoyed their classes. So I am interested in viewing such classrooms from an outsider's perspective.

I may now have to return to the problem of narrowing my topic!

Blog #3

It is still early and I still want to keep my options open, but the assessment idea is really starting to grow on me. If I think about this research project in a very practical sense, researching student assessments in the social studies classroom could really be beneficial to me as a teacher. And believe me, I am all about being practical and making this project as useful to me as possible.

I have received feedback from Dr. McCoy and my piers on the possibilities of approaching this from either the student or teacher perspective, or possibly both. As I start to think about research design, I can see benefits to interviewing and/or surveying both teachers and students and comparing the two sets of data to draw conclusions. This could allow me to gain insight into the types of tests that both teachers and students prefer and which ones they typically dislike, exploring the reasons for each. By comparing the two perspectives, I would imagine that I would find that more often than not teachers and students have very different reasons for preferring a particular type of test. For example, teachers may prefer to use multiple choice tests because they are easy to grade and students may like multiple choice tests because they can make better guesses through the process of elimination. Nonetheless, I would want to set up the methodology so that I could collect good information that would allow me to gain insight into the best ways to fairly and accurately assess student competency in social studies. I see this as being my main goal in researching this topic and feel that exploring both the student and teacher perspective would best help me reach this goal. As I mentioned before, survey construction and the way in which I structure my interview questions would be critical in making sure that my data is valid, and thus I am meeting the goal mentioned above. I'm open to anyone's ideas!

Starting to refine my topic-Blog 3

I talked to Dr. Friedman this week and I think I am starting to move beyond the question of what I want to study to the question of how I can best study it. My main interest at this point is looking at how teachers use electronically based primary sources in their history classes.

Dr. Friedman had an interesting idea of combining multiple research methods to have a multi-tiered approach. We were thinking of doing a survey and then selecting a handful of teachers to interview in depth on these issues and to observe for a class or two. I would also gather documents such as lesson plans. I do worry though that that may be too many methods to try to employ in a short time period but it would make it a better study and it might prove useful to me as I think about how I want to run my own classes.

I’m also starting to go from my macroquestion to the smaller questions it encompasses. One issue related to electronic primary sources that I am interested in examining is what factors help influence a teachers decision to use these sources (i.e depending on year of student or type of course). I also would like to try to figure out what types of sources they use and if they are choosing to give the students the documents or are they having the students find their own (say in an assignment in the computer lab.)

Blogggggg #3

I have to admit that for awhile, I was really hesitant about the idea of passing out a survey as a possible research method; I just wasn't sure that I could truly obtain an in-depth look at student attitudes and motivations in Chemistry, and more importantly how various instructional methods influence those attitudes. However, I recently read an article that used a Likert scale to assess student self-efficacy, learning strategies, attitude towards the importance of science, etc. and this is exactly the type of information that I was interested in looking at. I think that by combining these elements with additional sections about perceived teacher attitudes and instructional methods, I can gain a lot of useful information about what students think of various elements of their Chemistry classes.

Another consideration would be who to send these surveys to, and would students even bother to respond? Would class level (AP, regular) skew any possible correlation between student attitudes and instructional methods? For example, AP Chemistry students are likely to be intrinsically motivated, regardless of the quality of instruction. And what about school demographics (ie, Reagan versus Atkins)?. I am hoping that by accounting for a variety of factors in my questionnaire (such as self-efficacy), I can eliminate some of that possible error/bias in the results.

Is this "meaty" enough of a study? Is that even a word? I really want to do something multifaceted, where I can study correlations between multiple variables. Basically I want to make things more complicated for myself... :)

I need help!

As others have noted, I think I am going to abandon the EOC issue as well. I guess I was holding onto the topic since I was in the heart of testing my own students and was feeling stressed / overwhelmed by the whole situation…haha. Thank goodness they are over so that I can move on. I am going to focus solely on the teacher attrition question. As Dr. Mac suggested, I want to interview new teachers and try to determine what factors are pushing them to stay or leave teaching. Although I have determined the general topic, I am still questioning where to go from here. I guess I am wondering how I would be able to interview enough teachers that are leaving the field and whether teachers would want to talk about the reasons why they were leaving? I am anticipating that this would be a quantitative study as I would want to interview teachers to get their personal opinions. I am struggling with how to incorporate this issue within my social studies content. I could narrow my research within teacher attrition to include only social studies teachers. It would be interesting to see if there were consistencies among social studies teachers and why they are staying or leaving. My question to my peers and my professors is whether the question of “What are the causes of teacher attrition for secondary social studies teachers?” is too broad or not?

Analyzing the lesson planning process - #3

I know that my study is going to be qualitative, but I’m not exactly sure what that will look like. My ultimate goal is to study how social studies teachers decide what important details to include in their daily lessons. One chapter in a US History book often contains multiple important events, people, and facts. How do they discriminate important details from non-important details?

One way would be to sit down with teachers and ask them particular questions about their lesson planning. Some example questions would be:

1) By looking at a chapter in the students’ text book, how do you pick out the important details to cover in class?
2) Are there any characteristics of facts or details that you know you should definitely include?
3) Are there characteristics of certain facts or details that you automatically know you should not include?
4) When you are lesson planning, do you often look at other resources other than the teachers’ textbook guide?
-What resources do you commonly use?

Another method of studying the development of lesson plans would be to essentially do a “talk aloud” with multiple teachers as they planned their lessons. I could either sit and observe them as they did this, or give them tape recorders so they could do it on their own time. Tape recorders might be a good option because teachers might start and stop their lesson planning multiple times throughout the process.

Further note: Lesson planning would probably differ depending on the teachers’ experience. It would be nice to interview or observe teachers with different amounts of experience.

Blog x 3: Attention MTAs

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.

With a little pushing in the right direction from Dr. McCoy's comments, I am now leaning toward examining whether there is a significant correlation between student-teacher relationships and students' performance/achievement in math classes. I would like to focus more on low SES students, specifically perhaps trying to draw data from students with harder family lives, because my line of thought would be that teachers would be able to have more of an impact on these students (this may or may not be true).

Qualitative? You want us to write about that? You must be joking! No, I'm only kidding. I think the best research study would incorporate both quantitative and qualitative data. Particularly with this topic I am considering, it would be best to be able to sit down and interview students one on one or perhaps even do a group interview to find out more about their relationships with their teachers. Do they consider their teachers friendly, loving, and understanding? Do they believe that their teachers genuinely care about them or are able to relate to them?

In my teaching experience last summer, our boss most emphasized building relationships with the students, but this was relatively easy when we ate with them at lunch and played with them at recess. In reality, teachers only have about an hour or an hour and a half at most. I guess another thing to consider could be how do teachers go about building effective relationships with their students, but perhaps that would be a study for another time. First things first- determining just how much of a difference those relationships can make!

Blog 3 – Moving on to a Better Place

After discussing my research topic with Dr. McCoy, I think that I have reached a better place. I agree that I do need to take some time away from the EOC. It is a really big deal in my school especially now with the proficiency standard in Biology. But I’m letting it go. This seems to be the theme of my week!

My original interest to start with (even though I tied it to the EOCs) was how inquiry based learning in science specifically Biology effect student learning compared to traditional lecture methods. I think that I will focus more on impact of inquiry in Biology students’ achievement and teacher perceptions of the effectiveness of inquiry.

I think that my study will be more qualitative than I originally anticipated. I think that observations of teachers will give me a good idea of what inquiry methods they use as well as how these methods impact student learning. I personally am really excited to be able to observe other teachers in my field! Based on the observations, I will probably do follow up interview with teachers about their perspective of inquiry methods affects on student achievement as well as any “bumps” observed in class.

On the quantitative side (since I wasn’t at this point last week), I will definitely use a survey to gather information about inquiry from teachers – do they use inquiry methods, what type, in which classes, what problems they have had, how student achievement has been affected, etc. I also would potentially like to survey students to see if inquiry methods engage them more in science than traditional methods and if they learn more from inquiry. Scenario situations would be good here.

I am still more interested in standard students than honors students. It would be interesting to see if there is a discrepancy of inquiry use in between the two types of classes.

Third time's a charm...

So after some wishy-washiness with my topic, I think I have settled down on exploring how student’s perceptions of teacher expectations affect their motivation and achievement. I initially thought that a survey would be the best way to go about this study; however, I feel like taking a qualitative approach and interviewing students might be more useful because I would be able to gather more specific information from them. It would probably be best to go into the interviews with a more structured approach – questions could include if they respect their teacher, if they feel like their teacher respects them, what kind of expectations they feel their teacher has for them and how they feel these expectations are portrayed, if they feel they are treated differently than other students and how, and if they feel motivated to achieve, just to name a few. Basically, I will be trying to get at the nature of the student-teacher relationship and see if this relates in any way to how motivated a student is to achieve in that class and their performance in the class. Today we talked about the usefulness of focus groups; however, I am unsure if that would be the best approach to this study because I feel like students might be less likely to admit their feelings about a teacher in front of their peers, especially if these feelings are much different from their peers. That said, gaining the trust of the students will be crucial for me to be able to have successful interviews with them. It might be necessary to have ongoing conversations so that we can build this trust.

SMART Board for Dummies (3)

~Looking more specifically at what my SMART board activity will involve.

I had first imagined a problem based learning activity with the classes but have come to the conclusion that PBL brings to many variables into the equation. So I think I will structure the lessons in a way that the students will interact with the material in the lesson through the SMART board. In the classes without the SMART board they will be given the exact same information just without the technology to back it up. So they will essentially be taught by the more traditional white board, with little or no interaction with the material other than just writing the material in their notes. The pre and post tests will assess what knowledge they gained from the lessons.

I also think that the comments everyone has made helped me look at this study a little different. I also think that I could measure qualitatively the motivation of students during the lessons. I could interview students and teachers to measure their interest in the lesson, or I could observe classes and measure the student motivation through variables such as participation, cooperation and receptiveness. I am more inclined to look at this study quantitatively, but I am open to a mix of the two methods.

As I think more about technology I am starting to realize that it comes at a cost. You can’t always rely on the projector to work or a file to open. This leads me to believe that at the core of things you have to be able to use the essentials: overhead and white board. If all else fails you have to be prepared to get the job done whether that's on a fancy SMART board or on a chalk board. Either way the information has to get into the minds of the students.

#3 - Rambling about language

I’m still sold on the topic of investigating the specific strategies that teachers use to promote oral language in their foreign language classrooms. Ana suggested that perhaps I find a way to integrate my interest in linguistics into the topic, which I think is a good idea. I could include into my research instrument a manner of asking instructors about their own background in linguistics and if they integrated that knowledge into their lessons (for example, explicitly telling students how to hold their mouths and in what position to place their tongue to produce more authentic and accurate speech sounds [phonemes and their allophones included] in the target language). I’m inclined to think (fully aware that this is a supposition based on my ignorance) that few k12 foreign language teachers in this region get that specific in teaching strategies to approximate a native sound. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting aspect to integrate into my study.

This week, the focus of our reading has been qualitative studying, so I will approach my topic from that perspective. Dr. Redmond, in our correspondence, has suggested that qualitative research, with a focus on in-depth one-on-one with foreign language teachers, would be the best approach for answering my general question. Besides the pitfalls of low response rate from questionnaires and surveys (which Dr. Redmond indicated is a problem from her experience), the practical insight (for my own teaching) gained from a questionnaire is likely much less than what I would gain from an interview. I must concede I believe that to be an important point. I’m inclined toward my topic not only because I find the oral aspect of language interesting, but also because I personally believe foreign language teachers (generally) could do a better job of teaching it. While a perfect accent is far from necessary, a persistent, good accent can go a long way in making yourself understood in a foreign language. Thus, I want to gain practical information I can personally use for my own classroom. That said, I could include more structured elements to an interview, perhaps a few Likert-scale type questions administered orally. I could those questions to quantify certain attitudes or the frequency of implementation of various strategies. Pairing these interviews with classroom observation, to see these oral focused strategies in action, would give me added insight of seeing how the ideas I’m exposed to from interviews are implemented in a real-life classroom.

I’m inclined to focus my study on teachers of older students, as older students would be most receptive to explicit manners of promoting oral language accuracy. Older students may have an easier time with following instructions on tongue placement or to understand specific criticisms of their pronunciation. Also, promoting accurate grammar in oral language also seems more geared towards older students, as grammar is much less of an emphasis on the elementary school level.

Now presented in 3-D!

Well, not exactly 3-D, unless you look at your surroundings, too, which I guarantee will be! Back on topic, however, after looking at some of the literature (and specifically Dr. McCoy's comments) I found that it really is hard to find ANYTHING on the beginning of classes and motivation. So, as she suggested, I'm going to broaden the motivation topic and see how I can work it into a good study.

By focusing on motivation, I could interview teachers (as Dr. Mac said) and see what they expected to work for motivation. What types of reinforcement worked, what sorts of activities kept students interested, or just what kinds of questions ensured on-task behaviors? Observation would be a great way to gather data for this, although student interviews (or perhaps a survey) could also work. At this point, I feel like I need to hit the literature again to find what sort of precedents I can work with. Hopefully by broadening my scope I'll have more luck in that search.

I wish I could come up with a fun title....Blog 3

I realize the topic of this week’s blog is to continue to discuss our evolving topic, this time focusing on qualitative results. However, I was one of the ones who did that last week (sorry Dr. McCoy)! At any rate, the more I read about note-taking the more interested I become in this topic. I figure the best way to go about gathering research for this is by surveys, interviews and perhaps a little observation. If it is not too much to focus on both teachers and students, I have a few questions in mind that I think I would like to incorporate.

In a survey form for teachers I would ask things like; do you expect your students to take notes while you lecture, do you give your students a graphic organizer to focus their note-taking, why or why not? Then perhaps in an interview setting I could get various teachers’ opinions on which style of note-taking they think is most effective, or if it really doesn’t matter to them as long as the students absorb the information.

For students I would ask things like; do you take notes while your teacher is lecturing, if so do you use colored pens, highlighters or other tricks (please list). Do you take notes in such a way that you can make sense of them later? Do you use your notes for homework and/or to study for tests? If so, do you ever consolidate your notes or compare them with a friend? Then perhaps if I interviewed students I could see which style of note-taking they prefer, graphic organizers or Cornell style? Again I would ask them why they prefer one to the other (I guess both of those questions could go on a survey as well). I would also be interested to find out if they have ever heard of the note-taking tricks in the instances when they are not given graphic organizers. Tricks such as writing down anything the teacher repeats more than once, or making sure you write down every name the teacher writes on the board, or points to on a map etc.

I feel like I will do better with structured interviews, but I may not limit myself to just doing a structured interview. I’m sure I will need to find more articles on note-taking to better structure my questions. I am also interested in the idea of doing a focus group. I’m not sure if it would be completely necessary for my topic? However I think it is interesting to have experience with students interacting with one another. At this point though, I just want to make sure I am on the right track with a topic that is broad enough to gather data on, yet not too narrow in that I won’t be able to get enough information?

Blog #3 ... Zeroing In

So after considering switching more focus onto how calculators are used in the classroom, I've done some more research and found a few studies specifically about Algebra I and calculators from the 2000s that have kind of peaked my interest. These studies looked at how are calculators used in the classroom, if that use is related to student achievement based on EOC scores, and also teacher's knowledge and background in calculators as well as teacher's ideas of learning algebra. These studies focused on survey use which doesn't exactly follow the qualitative section of the text we are going into in class, but it got me thinking on a more specific focus for a research question.

I want to study how Algebra I teachers use calculators in their classroom (using similar surveys to these studies), is there any relation to those teachers background or knowledge of calculators and use, and also use of calculators to student achievement. In this case achievement is based on EOC scores or a possible examination of a short calculator based exam. Knowledge and background would be related to teacher experience in using calculators and also any workshops they might have learned calculator use.

While most of this i can see being done by surveys obviously, i think i would be interested in interviewing a certain number of teachers to gauge a more personal and deeper answers to how they are implementing calculators in the classroom as an additional source of information possibly.

I wish i knew how to insert a cool picture on my blog post.....#3

So Dr. McCoy has helped facilitate the transition from a quantitative to a qualitative study with her suggestions on last week’s blog. Pertinent to the topic of real life applications of mathematics influencing student’s comprehension and motivation, she suggested that I have the teachers keep a log or share their lesson plans for a few weeks straight and then examine the data to see how often they incorporate real life applications. She also suggested surveying and interviewing students and teachers to find out how well they are able to apply mathematical concepts to practical tasks. I appreciate all of these suggestions. I am a little hesitant about asking teachers to keep a log as I know that teachers already have a lot on their plate and will probably not see the benefit to be gained of taking the time to keep a log. I do like the idea of having them share their lesson plans since they have to write lesson plans regardless of participation in the research study. Interviewing the teachers and students to test their ability to apply math would yield very interesting results especially seeing how well teachers are able to apply math.

The only part missing from the study is examination on how incorporation of real life problems in math affects the students. Does it have a solid impact (I avoided using the word significant) on their understanding of mathematical concepts and theories? Does it affect their willingness and desire to learn math and be in a math classroom? These constructs are difficult to assess and I welcome any suggestions.

#3 La cultura y el accento

While reading over my past blogs it occurred to me that what I would really like to focus on is the influence of a student's receptiveness (or negativity) toward Hispanic culture on his/her development of a native accent. During a past class linguistics class with Prof. Whitley he mentioned how the purpose for which one learns the language (eg. to become part of the culture or as a simple means of necessity) can greatly impact the development of an accent. I would like to research this concept more fully not only from the student's perspective, but also from the teacher's. Some possible areas of research spring from questions such as, is a student learning Spanish simply to pass the class or from a desire to interact with Hispanics? How does such a perspective influence the developed accent? Also, why is it that some Spanish teachers with an obvious love for the language and culture fail to attain a near native accent?

I would like to concentrate on high school because by this point, many biases, both positive and negative, toward the Hispanic culture have already developed. I am interested to see how a teacher responds to a student’s set view of the culture and how this affects the development of an accent. Certainly in my interviews with the teachers I plan to ask them about their students’ prior experience with Spanish in the lower grade levels. This will give me a more complete understanding of the students while still allowing me to concentrate on the high school experience.

When I am a teacher I hope to create an afterschool tutoring program that matches up a student from my Spanish class with a Hispanic student in the school who needs help with English and/or another subject due to language difficulties. This would have the tri-fold effect of helping the Hispanic students learn English, helping the American students learn Spanish (by hearing and responding to a native speaker) and helping the American students gain an appreciation for the Hispanic culture. I hope that a by-product of the tutoring is that many of the American students will become friends with the Hispanics. Friendship is one of the best ways to learn about a culture: it helps break down stereotypes by creating an authentic, engaging, and positive learning experience.

With this new turn in my research topic I feel as though I have opened up can of new possibilities, but I am hopeful that I will be able to continue narrowing it as time goes on.

hot diggity blog #3

After reading and re-reading Dr. Redmond's suggestions and after carefully considering the labor- and time-intensive quantitative studies we've all been talking about in research class, I'm definitely inclined to focus on a qualitative study of reading in a high school Spanish classroom. I'm becoming increasingly anxious to sift through extraneous information and narrow my focus before I begin a formal literature search. I'm still interested in examining reading, and I'd like to tie it to the instruction of grammar. I'd also like to look at collaborative learning in tackling reading passages. I originally thought I'd be interviewing teachers about the kinds of reading they give to students, how often they give reading assignments, how they teach pre-reading strategies, how they assess amount/level of comprehension, and how much they expect the students to apply what they've read to a grammar activity such as a post-reading written assignment. Because I like the idea of connecting reading passages to grammar instruction, I thought I'd focus my study on Spanish 2-3. Those two years are extremely grammar-intensive. After Dr. Redmond read my ideas, she suggested I study levels 1 - AP because, logically, the building blocks that students are taught by their Spanish 1 teacher will (hopefully) guide them through more difficult literature passes as they progress to upper level Spanish courses. In the absence of a strong foundation, students in AP Spanish may be able to write beautifully constructed compositions but may not be able to determine the main idea of a Spanish poem. Unfortunately, I anticipate a lack of structured pre- and post-reading instruction in all levels because of time constraints and because of efforts to focus on vocabulary and grammar. In my own middle school classroom, I only assigned reading as enrichment for students as they finished writing or grammar activities. That approach, I expect, does not yield results of high student comprehension or retention of material. I intend to speak with high school teachers of all levels because it makes sense to determine if reading strategies are taught by teachers of all levels and to what extent the strategies are continuously reinforced as students move through upper levels. Regarding classroom reading instruction techniques, I'll examine collaborative learning versus independent studying of reading passages and whether or not teachers provide adequate preparation before assigning such passages. I hope this makes sense?? I'm having trouble articulating my thoughts....

I have been giving a lot more thought to how I can conduct different studies with my generic topic of incorporating writing in the math curriculum. Although we are supposed to write on qualitative ideas this week, I would first like to share one more quantitative idea. Since we spent a lot of time talking about surveys, I’ve been trying to envision my topic from this approach. For my quantitative research article, I found a study that used a questionnaire as the venue for collecting data about a population, specifically teachers at the elementary, middle, and secondary level. The teachers were asked to fill out a questionnaire and return it to the researcher, anonymously. The questionnaires asked the respondents to rank their attitudes toward the use of writing in math, their beliefs on the importance of using writing in mathematics, and their frequency for using a variety of writing practices. In the article, it included the actually document that was used as the questionnaire. Most of the questions were structured on a 5-anchor Likert scale, but it also allowed teachers to give additional comments. In completing my article review, it was very helpful to see the wording and format of the survey. I realized that a survey does not always simply poll on the concrete things, but it can also be used to collect information about intangible things, like attitudes and beliefs. As I had written in my last blog, I wasn’t sure what question to pose if I were to choose a survey approach for data collection. I feel like now, after reviewing this research article, I could possibly do a replication of the study, asking: What are mathematics teachers’ opinions and abilities for incorporating writing with their curriculum?

I could also see the value of approaching this topic qualitatively by interviews, either with students or teachers, or with observations. I am a little hesitant in going this route, especially with the time constraints and my natural tendency towards the numerical nature of quantitative research. In one article that I found, an interesting qualitative study explored the relationship between writing and low-achieving students’ mathematical understandings. The researchers followed the progress of four students who were identified as low-achieving. Their study revealed an important similarity between the students: they all contributed irregularly to class and small-group interactions, yet in written assignments and journal entries, the students demonstrated adequate mastery of the math goals. The basis of the research was observations. Perhaps in my own research I could observe students of a different population, for example: ELL students. If the teacher uses writing in the classroom, I could observe those students as they develop their mathematical understandings. Any other suggestions for a qualitative approach?

Blog #3 - Qualitative

Initially I was concerned about incorporating a Qualitative method in my research, but now I am starting to wonder how I would do a Quantitative study. When I think of Quantitative, the first thing that comes to mind is test scores, either in-class or standardized. Maybe I would be ethically safe using this data if I only compared test scores among Hispanic students. Perhaps I could analyze the effect a student’s attitude has on their academic achievement. This is just an add-on to last week’s topic, but after reading the comments, I wanted to brainstorm a little more.

So, as far as Qualitative research goes, I completely agree with Dr. McCoy’s suggestion of conducting interviews instead of surveys. There is a high probability there will be a language barrier with some students, and questions on a survey may be misinterpreted, as well as their responses. After reading about Qualitative methods in the text, I think both Observing and Interviewing would be beneficial for my study.

Initially I would want to sit in on the math class and observe the students and their behaviors, participation, etc. From my observations, I think I would be able to create valuable interview questions. Throughout my research, I would like to conduct both structured and unstructured interviews, because both seem they would produce important data. If I am sitting in on a class one day and observe an interesting behavior or reaction from a student, I would love to be able to sit down with them after class and ask about the situation, thereby conducting an unstructured interview. After observing for a while, I should be able to come up with some specific questions, and would then conduct a structured interview. Or should questions in a structured interview come from previously read research, and be given to the students on day one? After reading the text I am not sure.

I am feeling better about my topic, so hopefully within the next week I will be able to tie everything together.

A Very Long, Much More Coherent Blog #3

Another week means another blog. I didn’t give a very thorough explanation of my research goals and plans in the previous entry, so I’ll try to go a little more in-depth with that, plus I’ll be sure to highlight the qualitative aspects of my (potential) study to satisfy Dr. McCoy’s request.

As I said before, I want to examine the relationship between the amount of homework assigned in literature classes and students’ responses to that homework. What I would like to know is whether there is a generally distinguishable point at which students “check out” and decide not to read. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to have a goal, but here’s mine: I would like for this study to provide insight for teachers on the way that students perceive homework. I think that a better understanding of the way students think about these tasks would help teachers to come up with homework assignments that are more likely to be completed.

I realize that that point of fatigue probably will not translate into a specific number of pages (as in, “I don’t read if it’s over 25 pages”). It might be dependent on the work’s level of difficulty. For example, a student might give up more quickly when trying to read “The Wasteland” than when he/she is trying to read “Like Water for Chocolate.” (Not that I would assign “The Wasteland” as part of a homework assignment. That’s cruel and unusual.) Maybe students have observed that the material assigned as homework is seldom covered in class or on tests, and so decide not to do it. Do students see their homework assignments as integral to their classes? Do students who do not complete their homework tend to read as much as they can, or do they generally decide not to do homework before attempting to read? As Amber pointed out (thanks, Amber!), this will probably vary according to students’ ability level, so I may want to use stratified sampling, taking a certain number from a regular class, an honors class, and an AP class.

As Dr. McCoy suggested, it may be helpful, especially if this ends up being a primarily qualitative study, to interview teachers so that I can discover teachers’ perceptions of their homework assignments and compare them with students’ perceptions. Right now, I think that it would be a good idea to take a relatively small sample of students and interview them.

#3 - A struggle

So in my previous blog entries, I've mentioned two topics that I would like to study. I still can't decide between them, and I think each one will take me in a completely different and exciting direction. But I've decided to explain each one in more detail and how I could take a qualitative approach with each.

1. Dynamic assessment. I enjoyed reading Erin and Kristina's comments regarding how they liked getting "hints" in their previous foreign language classes. Indeed, even if this is not something teachers regularly do, it definitely seems like something students would be interested in. And as future educators, our number one concern should be the opinions and intellectual progress of our students! I think this study would best be conducted through interviews with French teachers at various levels and observations that could corroborate or flush out the information gained from the interviews. For this topic, it would also be useful to survey students, as I could very specifically define "dynamic assessment", ask them if they have seen examples of it in their foreign language classes, ask them if they would prefer to see it used more, and ask them how they think teachers could incorporate it. This would be a mix of open-ended and constructed response questions that I think would paint a very good picture of the state of dynamic assessment in today's schools. Also I might prefer this topic as my second idea seems very similar to Greg's and I don't want to be stepping all over his research...

2. Oral proficiency. This is a more general research area that might be interesting to study, and thanks especially to Dr. McCoy and Dr. Redmond for their comments. Specifically in this area I would like to look at formal and informal phonetics training and also accuracy of students' pronunciation. This might also be related to teacher pronunciation, as Dr. Redmond pointed out that many foreign language teachers have not had formal phonetics training. This type of study might best be conducted through observations, though it might be hard to establish criteria for evaluating pronunciation and oral proficiency. It would probably be beneficial in this situation to make audio tapes of French classes that I could review later. I would also look at how teachers evaluate students' oral work. In some of my college French classes, we had to make mp3s that the professor would then evaluate, as well as in class oral presentations and regular conversation. At lunch today, Jessica mentioned how she disliked her foreign language classes because so much emphasis was on reading and writing and not actually using the language. While I think this trend is definitely changing, it might be interesting to compare teachers' emphasis on oral proficiency in the classroom. Perhaps there might be some generational differences here.