February+7th,+class+three


 * __1.) Reading review__**


 * __2.) The research landscape: (power-point)__**


 * How would you write a research question from a**


 * Positivist stance?**


 * Anti-positivist/Qualitative stance?**








 * __3.) Looking at research questions:__**

What is the author’s big question? What are some sub-questions? Do you get an idea of what will happen in the study? Where the data might come from? What kind of study will this be? Do you get a sense of the context/background for the study? What’s the so what? What’s the burning issue?


 * __4.) Loop writing__**


 * Loop writing. //Writing with Power// (Elbow, 1981).**

a. First thoughts on a question/topic that’s most important to you –

b. What misconceptions or lies have you heard in conjunction with this question/topic?

c. Tell the story of how this question/topic shows itself in a classroom/school and create a vivid scene that includes people.

d. Explain to someone who is not an educator why this question/topic is important.


 * AND . . .**


 * How does your autobiography connect to the work you do (or have done or will do) in schools?**


 * What issue do you want to investigate? To better understand? To yield a “thick description?”**


 * How will answering this question have an impact on you?**


 * __5.) Charette/charrette__**

[|**http://www.nsrfharmony.org/protocol/doc/charrette.pdf**]


 * I need help drafting an initial research question.**


 * Can you articulate your question in a brief way?**


 * Is there a data source to help you answer your question?**


 * Does your question matter?**

(5-7) Person 1 presents. 5-7 minutes to share your initial ideas resulting from loop writing, with the intention of finding a question there.

(5) Person 2 provides feedback – “This is what I heard you say. . . this is what you might do“

(5) Person 3 provides feedback – “This is what I heard you say. . . this is what you might do“

(5) Person 2 provides questions/challenges – “This is what I wonder about. . . here are the challenges/limitations I see, what if you tried. . . “

(5) Person 2 provides questions/challenges – “This is what I wonder about. . . here are the challenges/limitations I see, what if you tried. . . “

(5) Person 1 – provides the group a summary of what s/he heard.

** What I Researched and Why **

In my fifth year of teaching, I’m still not sure where I land on the homework issue, but I assign homework , deciding that I can’t beat ‘em, so I might as well join ‘em. And evidently homework, defined here as work that students are to complete outside of class without the support of a teacher , has found its way into the culture of most schools: Langdon and Stout (1963) found that middle school students expect to have homework. Indeed, on average, students ages 13-14 are assigned 60-120 minutes of homework per day (Stern, 2006), yet one third of students don’t complete their homework (Cooper, et al., 1998). Therefore, I wished to know what I could do to help students, focusing on my strong students with inconsistent homework completion. When I first thought about this research, I myself w as so imbedded in the culture of my institution that I framed the problem of inconsistent homework as having to do with my students, or their families, or with what I assigned. I didn’t consider whether not doing homework was actually a problem.

- By the end of that fall semester with Hector, I was in favor of him skipping a level of basic-writing but his final exam did not display a strong enough control over ideas and mechanics (although he easily advanced to the next level of basic writing). I began to question, had I relied too much on his maturity in comparison to the rest of the class? Did I not give him what he needed?

- The voices above spoke in monologue form. In almost every instance, I was the sole audience. But as they spoke—as I listened, as I re-listened—these monologues became dialogues. And as I combed the literature on this subject, the voices of these interviewees talked back to the extant research. What follows, then, is my attempt to represent this conversation and my journey to figure out what these dialogues might mean—to the preparation and support of cooperating teachers, yes, but also to our collective understanding of teacher education.

-

The purpose of this article is to explore the responses to questions regarding English teachers’ perceptions of evaluation from members of my department at my high school and to contextualize their responses given the research being done in this area around the country. I asked interviewees what their thoughts were on assessment and how teacher evaluations could be improved for English teachers? How can teacher evaluations be used as a tool for effective professional development? In interviewing my colleagues, several themes emerged: 1) The need for collaboration; 2) Desire for clarity; 3) Time/context/follow-through for the evaluative cycle, and 4) Connection between evaluation and PD. Given these responses as well as the research being done in this area, I will conclude the paper with recommendations for how to change our current evaluative model.

- The extremes are the “bad girls” and the nerdy girls, and nothing seems to flow in-between. Do they know that more attention is on them because there are so few girls, thus making them feel competitive amongst each other? Are the boys not giving them what they wanted because they thought boys would be competing over them? Do the girls think they can get away with more because there are fewer of them? So being a successful //bad// girl essentially means you are a //mean// girl, yet everyone still wants to be your friend and teachers favorite you. But what happens when another bad girl is competing for your position? Can two bad girls exist at the same time?





Please read chapter 2 from your //The Power of Questions// book for Tuesday, class 3

For class 4, please read chapter 3 from //The Power of Questions// and the attached article.