I've had the opportunity to observe two of my student teachers this week, so I'm starting to feel like I will have “so much,” as Beth puts it. I think the problem I'm going to run into is having “too much” and feeling like I've got perfectly good data going to waste.
I started with the rough research question, “How can I best help my student teachers maintain their identities and learn to teach the way they want to teach, despite the restrictions of their school environment and/or mentor teacher's influence?” It's a poorly worded question, I know. I think one of my initial difficulties has been the fact that rather than having a real question, I had a preconceived idea that the student teachers would find themselves beleagured by “dinosaurs” who would be very rigid, somewhat like the experienced teachers described in Price and Valli's article “Preservice Teachers Becoming Agents of Change” and Wunner's study “Great Expectations,” found in Chapter 8 of Inside/Outside. What I am discovering as I observe and interact with the student teachers and mentor teachers is that each pair is inspiring new questions and entirely divergent lines of inquiry for me.
For instance, one pair is a 35-year veteran of IPS and a student teacher who specifically asked for an urban placement working within a system that is very rigid but finding ways to subvert that rigidity and still allow students opportunities to engage in some inquiry learning. I am very interested in what my ST will learn about out-smarting the “teacher-proof” curriculum forced on underperforming schools. This ST also came up with a neat idea. She said she wrote a list of ideals she didn't want to “lose” by the end of the experience – like her love of working with kids. She felt that if any of those ideals went away, then teaching would not be for her. I think I'm going to ask her to use her journals to talk about how those ideals are holding up under pressure.
Another ST is a gentleman who is older because is a National Guardsman who has been deployed 3 times througout his extended undergraduate career. He's also married and a father. I'm interested in how his life experiences are influencing his relationships with his students. My questions in regards to his teacher identity development have more to do with whether or not his age and experience make him more likely to be successful as a beginning teacher than his counterparts
The last pair I'm really interested in right now is a young woman paired with a 41-year veteran teacher whose schedule consists of half honors classes, half general ed classes. I got a treasure trove from the two of them – the MT has been observing in the back of the classroom nearly every day and keeping notes for improvements, so they gave me photocopies of those. This is closest to the original scenario I had in mind, but I'm feeling very uncomfortable with focusing on that because of the article from this week by Burn. I'm concerned that I'm falling into the same trap of not properly acknowledging the MT's expertise. I look at the notes she's kept, and they seem like the most nit-picky things; but then I ask myself, what is her motivation in making comments like these? Am I not giving her enough credit for knowing what ought to be noticed? I mentioned to my husband that it seems as though she sees herself as the teacher-teacher, rather than as a mentor and coach. I suppose here I am most interested in the MT's identity.
So that's where I am at. I feel like I'm floundering, but I guess I have to do that for a while before I start to see what is really important to me. In the meantime, I'm giving it my best go at “thick description” :-)
First, Courtney, wow, you have SO much you could do. It sounds like there are a lot of good directions you could take, but I do still like the idea of looking at the supervisor/s.t. relationship because people interpret this role in so many different ways. That said, the others sound really interesting too...so maybe it's a personal choice of what you're most interested in. I'm sure you'll have plenty either way.
As for my project, I've decided to do the one I've mentioned in class, which is a little bit different from what I originally mentioned about doing the methodology proposal, which is the project one does in the 630 class. After finding out that I can use my students reflections from last semester (originally thought I couldn't because I did not do IRB but apparently can since they're were my students, and I didn't have them do anything I wouldn't have otherwise), I'm going to attempt to write an article theorizing my students' "service-learning" experience using the reflections they wrote. What I mean is that I want to code their responses conceptually to find out their thoughts on the experience and then go from there. At this point, I've split them into a couple of categories based on their comments, including overall thoughts about the experience as a whole, things they "learned," how they thought strategies learned in the class did/did not help, issues, and criticisms. I'm also considering going through their blogs throughout the semester, which they had to do with every reading, to see what I can gather about how their experience may or may not have affected their initial thoughts about literacy.
I would like to try to answer a question about how service-learning affects students' understanding of literacy - what it is, who determines it, how one becomes "literate," etc. but don't know that I have enough to do that well. My other thought is that I'm just curious about students' responses to the experience and how this fits with other research on service-learning experiences and what it hopes to accomplish. Another thing that complicates the research/reflection is that it was volunteer so some students participated once of the five times we went and others only once...
Anyway, that's where I am at this point...with more questions than answers (:
Beth, it sounds like you are going to have a lot of material, too. I'm looking forward to this experience because, as several of the articles and chapters we've read so far have noted, one learns how to conduct action research by doing it. I'm glad I'm learning now and not while I'm trying to conduct thesis research! :-) I'm sure I'll continue to learn every time I do this, but it feels good to have a chance to dip my feet in the water before diving in.
I've had the opportunity to observe two of my student teachers this week, so I'm starting to feel like I will have “so much,” as Beth puts it. I think the problem I'm going to run into is having “too much” and feeling like I've got perfectly good data going to waste.
ReplyDeleteI started with the rough research question, “How can I best help my student teachers maintain their identities and learn to teach the way they want to teach, despite the restrictions of their school environment and/or mentor teacher's influence?” It's a poorly worded question, I know. I think one of my initial difficulties has been the fact that rather than having a real question, I had a preconceived idea that the student teachers would find themselves beleagured by “dinosaurs” who would be very rigid, somewhat like the experienced teachers described in Price and Valli's article “Preservice Teachers Becoming Agents of Change” and Wunner's study “Great Expectations,” found in Chapter 8 of Inside/Outside. What I am discovering as I observe and interact with the student teachers and mentor teachers is that each pair is inspiring new questions and entirely divergent lines of inquiry for me.
For instance, one pair is a 35-year veteran of IPS and a student teacher who specifically asked for an urban placement working within a system that is very rigid but finding ways to subvert that rigidity and still allow students opportunities to engage in some inquiry learning. I am very interested in what my ST will learn about out-smarting the “teacher-proof” curriculum forced on underperforming schools. This ST also came up with a neat idea. She said she wrote a list of ideals she didn't want to “lose” by the end of the experience – like her love of working with kids. She felt that if any of those ideals went away, then teaching would not be for her. I think I'm going to ask her to use her journals to talk about how those ideals are holding up under pressure.
Another ST is a gentleman who is older because is a National Guardsman who has been deployed 3 times througout his extended undergraduate career. He's also married and a father. I'm interested in how his life experiences are influencing his relationships with his students. My questions in regards to his teacher identity development have more to do with whether or not his age and experience make him more likely to be successful as a beginning teacher than his counterparts
The last pair I'm really interested in right now is a young woman paired with a 41-year veteran teacher whose schedule consists of half honors classes, half general ed classes. I got a treasure trove from the two of them – the MT has been observing in the back of the classroom nearly every day and keeping notes for improvements, so they gave me photocopies of those. This is closest to the original scenario I had in mind, but I'm feeling very uncomfortable with focusing on that because of the article from this week by Burn. I'm concerned that I'm falling into the same trap of not properly acknowledging the MT's expertise. I look at the notes she's kept, and they seem like the most nit-picky things; but then I ask myself, what is her motivation in making comments like these? Am I not giving her enough credit for knowing what ought to be noticed? I mentioned to my husband that it seems as though she sees herself as the teacher-teacher, rather than as a mentor and coach. I suppose here I am most interested in the MT's identity.
So that's where I am at. I feel like I'm floundering, but I guess I have to do that for a while before I start to see what is really important to me. In the meantime, I'm giving it my best go at “thick description” :-)
First, Courtney, wow, you have SO much you could do. It sounds like there are a lot of good directions you could take, but I do still like the idea of looking at the supervisor/s.t. relationship because people interpret this role in so many different ways. That said, the others sound really interesting too...so maybe it's a personal choice of what you're most interested in. I'm sure you'll have plenty either way.
ReplyDeleteAs for my project, I've decided to do the one I've mentioned in class, which is a little bit different from what I originally mentioned about doing the methodology proposal, which is the project one does in the 630 class. After finding out that I can use my students reflections from last semester (originally thought I couldn't because I did not do IRB but apparently can since they're were my students, and I didn't have them do anything I wouldn't have otherwise), I'm going to attempt to write an article theorizing my students' "service-learning" experience using the reflections they wrote. What I mean is that I want to code their responses conceptually to find out their thoughts on the experience and then go from there. At this point, I've split them into a couple of categories based on their comments, including overall thoughts about the experience as a whole, things they "learned," how they thought strategies learned in the class did/did not help, issues, and criticisms. I'm also considering going through their blogs throughout the semester, which they had to do with every reading, to see what I can gather about how their experience may or may not have affected their initial thoughts about literacy.
I would like to try to answer a question about how service-learning affects students' understanding of literacy - what it is, who determines it, how one becomes "literate," etc. but don't know that I have enough to do that well. My other thought is that I'm just curious about students' responses to the experience and how this fits with other research on service-learning experiences and what it hopes to accomplish. Another thing that complicates the research/reflection is that it was volunteer so some students participated once of the five times we went and others only once...
Anyway, that's where I am at this point...with more questions than answers (:
Beth, it sounds like you are going to have a lot of material, too. I'm looking forward to this experience because, as several of the articles and chapters we've read so far have noted, one learns how to conduct action research by doing it. I'm glad I'm learning now and not while I'm trying to conduct thesis research! :-) I'm sure I'll continue to learn every time I do this, but it feels good to have a chance to dip my feet in the water before diving in.
ReplyDelete