DD Shift

I am hearing the song “Keep on Singing” by Helen Reddy.  It makes me think of listening to the Helen Reddy’s Greatest Hits album on our gargantuan record player when I was little.  Yeah, it was a behemoth machine.  What can I say… it was the 70’s.

I read through the next reading for my course:  an article is called “Research Methods: Qualitative and Ethnographic” from StateUniversity.com.  I didn’t find this article to be particularly helpful for my current task at-hand.  At this point and time I am looking for something with concrete recommendations on how to structure a methodologically-sound teacher research project (this article was too high-level to provide this guidance).

The article attempts to outline featurs of “qualitative and ethnographic” research methods.  Here are the features that stood out when I read:

• Draws on methods from sociology, anthropology, and other humanities and social and behavioral sciences,
• Adapts methodologies to address educational goals and concerns,
• Is pitted against quantitative and experimental methodologies,
• Attempts to include the voices of research participants in the research,
• Gathers information in a way that is specific to the goal attempting to be achieved,
• Interacts with data,
• Defines and redefines guiding questions,
• Recognizes that research is coming from a “situated perspective”, i.e., that research is coming from a localized scenario that may not be generalizable,
• Asks for permission to use artifacts generated by participants in the research,
• Utilizes observation and interviews as the most common methods of gathering information,
• Focuses not so much on the artifacts themselves, but the importance of the artifiacts in the context of the research,
• Reviews and analyzes field notes,
• And reports findings.

One of the things that I thought was good about the article is that it addressed (although briefly) the need to ask for permission to use study participants’ artifacts, interview answers, etc.  What surprised me is the scope therewith.  The article indicates that you need to acquire permission from parents, students and district personnel.  I had thought about the parents, but I had not thought through district personnel.  I will have to get on that and ask the director.

One of the things that I did not find helpful about the article is the way that it ended.  I think that the author is attempting to make an important distinction, but it is not written in a way that is clear to me what is meant.  Specifically:

“The researcher does not seek to generalize from the specific case. Rather, qualitative or ethnographic researchers provide in-depth descriptions that lead to general patterns. These patterns are then examined in other situations to see if, when, and how they occur and what consequences they have for what members in the new setting can know, do, understand, and/or produce. In qualitative and ethnographic studies this is often referred to as transferability, in contrast to generalizability.”

It seems to me that the author is trying to make a distinction here between generalizability and transferability.  This caught my attention because I agree that generalizability should not be a goal of teacher research (in the way that teacher-research has been presented thusfar in this course).  But, what is transferability if it is not generalizability?  I suspect that the author is attempting to make an important point here, but I’m not currently in a position to grasp it.

Yes, I am hearing the song “Sweet Child o’ Mine” by Guns and Roses.  I have the TV on in the background, and apparently this song is in a movie called “The Wrestler” which was just reviewed by Larry King on Larry King Live.

Allrighty, down to brass tacks.  I have just reduced the amount of time that I spent researching a topic by using two (free) web tools.  The first one is:

• Diigo – This allowed me to read through several web pages and highlight (online) the things that I thought were useful.  This saved:

  - Time: I didn’t have to write everything out or copy it by hand, and later when I wanted to refer to my notes I was able to look them up through my tags!

  - Trees:  I didn’t have to print out to save my highlights…

  - Space:  I can always go back to my highlights, and I don’t have to save them anywhere on my hard drive or in hard copy!!!

• Zotero – In the end I needed to create a bibliography.  In general, I regularly have to create bibliographies with two completely different systems:  MLA and APA.  Zotero will automatically bookmark and generate these bibliographies for you.  And, with the simple selection of a dropdown box it will generate the correct bibliography format for you.  This is helpful in three ways:

  - Saves Time: Zotero can generate a bibliography faster than I can.

  - Encourages Better Tracking of Sources:  You can easily keep track of web resources with Zotero.  At the minimum it requires the press of a button.  And, as you are researching, you can manually add other resources as well.  If you are in practice of bookmarking all of your web resources, you are more likely to also be more cognizant of capturing other types of resource information (especially since it is so easy to generate a bibliography with all of it in the end).

  - Better Bibliographies:  You don’t have to think with Zotero.  For the different types of sources, it prompts you for the correct information for the bibliography.  And, when bibliographies are generated, it does it in the correct format.  No more corrections due to bad formatting, missed commas, missed information, etc.  Zotero does it for you.

I think that these two tools are essential for efficient research and resource-tracking.  I strongly recommend them for teachers and students.  They are easy to use and they make life easier!!

I am hearing the song “Egoist” by Falco.  I have absolutely no idea why this little tune is stuck in my brain.

I have spent time this morning reading through the Teacher Research site from George Mason University.  The site contact is managed two individuals:

• Dr. Diane Painter and
• Dr. Leo Rigsby

although the site seems to rely heavily on the writings of the following teacher research advocates:

• Marion MacLean,
• Marian Mohr,
• Brenda Power and
• Ruth Hubbard.

The site promotes a structured view of teacher research.  Teacher research includes having three key elements:

• questions for investigation,
• a place to record thoughts on the questions,
• and colleagues with whom you share thoughts.  (The Process of Teacher Research)

While this seems deceptively simple, the site goes on to outline a six step process.  These are the items that I have pulled out as key to their recommended process:

1. I need to come up with a reliable way of logging my observations, and I need to find colleagues with whom I will be able to share findings and reflections.  This is problematic for me on two fronts.- Organization:  I am organizationally challenged.  There, I have said it out loud.  I have tried keeping notebooks with notes on classes like this before– just for my own edification.  And, although well-intentioned, I end of leaving the notebooks in inopportune places, at home, etc.  This is exacerbated by the fact that I rarely teach in the same classroom.  The site does recommend some ideas from a book by Brenda Power, Taking Note: Improving your observational note taking, such as using sticky notes to quickly jot down ideas and then putting them in a centralized notebook for reflection later (Collecting Data).  Perhaps I need to invest in the book to get better ideas on how to organize the recording of my observations.- Finding Suitable Colleagues:  The next challenge that I will have will be with finding colleagues.  I am the only teacher in my school for the majority of the subjects that I teach.  This means that I will have to find colleagues outside of my school to help reflect on the subject-specific issues that I am attempting to address with my teacher research.  I will have the additional challenge of finding appropriate colleagues from a time and attitudinal perspective.  Most people who teach my subject are like me: they have other administrative responsibilities in the school which take up significant time and energy (IT).  Additionally, I have (on more than one occaission) run into colleagues who insist on teaching computer science (specifically programming) in only one way; i.e., the student either “gets” programming or he/she does not.  And, it is the student’s fault if he/she does not “try hard enough”.  I think that I can try to solicit colleague support through ECIS IT network and through ISTE.  Hopefully there will be someone open and willing in these arenas.
2. The next step is generating questions.  The questions that are currently plaguing me are the following:- How can I get strongly visual & global learners to perform logically-complex programming in java?- Can working with a more visually-oriented programming language (such as Scratch) assist with this?- Can translating algorithms from Scratch to Java be beneficial for these types of learners (with the goal of being able to program more complex items things in Java)?

   - What are the advantages and disadvantages of this visual-translation approach?

   - What other tools can I use to help students who don’t just “get it”?  For example, a colleague who helps students who are struggling with writing suggested that I put programs together where there are missing pieces.  So, students who can just “get it” can write the program from scratch while students who are struggling can have a bit more scaffolding.  What sort of effect does this have?  Does it help students in learning the logic?  Can they generalize this learning to new situations?

   - Another idea is to simply give students who cannot grasp the logic of the program is to have them “trace” a finished algorithm.  This would give them the opportunity to “see” the logic working, help the teacher understand where there are problems in understanding the logic, and possibly help identify further areas for investigation.  Does tracing help?

   One interesting thing to note about the teacher research question is that it can form and mutate as the school year goes on.  They provided an example from L. Shafer in the “The question cycle lies at the heart of research” section.  What was interesting for me in this example was the lack of specificity in the questions that were generated by Shafer.  My gut-feel is that a guiding questions need to be focused and manageable, otherwise the focus is too dilute and the “research” that results is not helpful for anyone else because there are too many variables to manage (and probably that have been left unspecified).

3. The next step, once the questions have been generated, is data collection.  This site seems to emphasize the importance of qualitative data.  Teacher peforming research should keep journals to log their observations.  They also mention, but do not emphasize, using quiz and homework scores, keeping checklists to track student response, portfolios as sources of data for collection (Data Collection).  They dedicate an entire section to an anthropological process of “triangulation” which is supposed to help use qualitative data reinforce (or negate) findings from quantitative and qualitative studies.  Although the site does not address the actual process.  It rather indicates that it exists and points to other places to learn more about it (Triangulation).It is interesting to me that there is so much emphasis on qualitative evidence here.  This is riddled with a whole series of research-problems-waiting-to-happen.  Two major ones (and, I know I’m not the first to point this out):- Observer effect:  Do the students behaviors change if they know that they are being observed?  My assumption is that you must let students know if they are subjects of research.  If this is the case, does the sheer knowledge that they are being observed for something special change the way that they behave?  Does it change (in unnoticed ways) the way that the observer behaves and thus the childrens’ reactions to the observer?- Confirmation bias:  Does the teacher researcher see what he/she wants to see when making observations?  This is human nature.  How should a teacher address this in his/her research?
4. One of the nice highlights of this site is the second on analyzing data. At this stage, you should confer with colleagues and assess the data that you have.  What is nice about this section of the site is that it provides several different ways to assess the data.  This is a page to bookmark for use at the end of the research process.The site recommends a piece of software from NVivo.  Checking into it, I see that there is a trial version available.  I will download the trial version to see how it assists in organizing data.  One of the inhibiting factors about the software is the price: 465€ for the full version (educational), 180€ for a 12-month student version.  The pricing here is pretty steep if research is not your core competency (I will not argue in this journal entry whether or not teacher research should be a teacher’s core competency.  I will do this when my administrators make this level of formalized teacher research a part of my job description and give me the time to do it in my time schedule.)
5. The next step is to create a working draft of your findings.  This includes reflecting on what has already been done, drawing conclusions on whether or not things worked, and identifying the implications of your conclusions. Reflection includes thinking carefully about the “validity” of your findings.Teacher research “validity” is oftened called into question.  The site mentions some of those issues, and gives recommendations for solving some of them (Drawing conclusions and implications).  But they do not explicitly address all of the issues where I have concerns.  In addition to the issues listed above (observation effect and confirmation bias), there are questions of sample size, variable controls, and ethics and human subjects.- Sample Size:  If only one teacher is engaging in researching a particular investigation question, then the sample size for the investigation will be too small to make a generalized recommendation.- Control Variables:  Further, it is difficult, if not impossible, to control variables in the classroom.  Focus questions and observations need to be carefully constructed to reduce the number of impacting uncontrolled variables.  And, further, the teacher researcher needs to identify the impacting variables in this research scenario.  And, a teacher researcher may have trouble identifying all of the key variables in a given scenario.

   - Ethics and Human Subjects:  While it is great to talk about sample sizes and control variables, one has to also keep in mind that teacher research is being performed where there are humans as subjects.  And, these humans are children.  Teacher research should be limited by this factor.  A teacher needs to be careful when egaging in “research” to protect students from inadvertent harm, isolation and alienation.

   I don’t think that the question of research “validity” here is even necessary.  Teacher research, as it is represented here, is simply a teacher’s testimonial either supporting or denouncing  methods of teaching and learning.  Theoretically, the testimonial is backed up with a teacher’s anecdotal experience in a classroom.  Hopefully, the teacher researcher has given careful thought to the testimonial and has gotten feedback from other peers in that specific area before promoting that testimonial.  From this perspective, a teacher research cannot provide generalized, educational maxims by which all teachers can act.  At the best, it can provide ideas about strategies for helping students learn.  Teacher research is simply a summary of what another teacher thinks worked for them.  It is up to the teacher receiving that testimonial to decide whether or not that experience is relevant in his/her case or not.

6. The last step to teacher research is to share the results of the research.  Naturally, this can be done by publishing in journals, in books, on websites.  You could also make a presentation at a conference.  What was interesting for me in this section was the example papers.I focused specifically on the “SWAT Savvy” writeup because it had to do with technology.  What surprised me about the writeup is the narrative nature of the writeup.  What would have been more useful for me would have been to have a “methodology” along with a “summary of findings” closer to the beginning of the writeup, but it was interesting to read through the teacher’s progress throughout the course of the school year.  This example reinforced the idea for me that “validity” is not a way to measure teacher research.

This site was helpful in outlining the steps of teacher research.  I would like to see more information about methodology and ethics.  Also, the idea of triangulation is quite interesting, so I will most likely find more information about this method of data analysis.  Probably the most important part for me in this site was identifying that I need to come up with a data collection strategy (given my organizational challenges) and finding colleagues with whom I work.

Painter, D., & Rigsby, L. (2009, February 15). Teacher Research. George Mason University Graduate School of Education. Accessed February 15, 2009, from http://gse.gmu.edu/research/tr/.