Reading Review

Prompt

• http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html

• What connection can you make between this presentation and this week’s two readings?

• What implications for research might Chimamanda Adichie’s message(s) have?

The power of questions summary

• Makes the case for:• Teacher research and pursuing personally important

questions to discover, create, realize, and form new questions.

• Systematic inquiry (research). • TR reflects a shift in values and knowledge.• Inquiry as a framework for teachers and students.• Design ways to help people explore their world

through a variety of lenses, adjust their thinking, experiment and invent new problems and ideas.

The power of questionsHeart of the reading

• “This shift in perspective characterizes research as a process of inquiry that has the potential to yield powerful learning as well as challenges hierarchical conceptions that have traditionally determined who creates knowledge and what kinds of knowledge are privileged over others” (p.5).

Contrast: Panopticon

• “Most of the resistance I heard was water-cooler discourse-teachers complaining about their lack of autonomy, decision making, and authority – that did not evolve to action” (p.266).

Teachers in the schoolhouse panopticonHeart of the reading

• “. . . schooling can be mapped as a panopticon in which teachers are in their cells, observed and monitored” (p.256).

Questions inspired by the readingsWrite in response to one

• 1.) What are some research projects I might design for my students (present or future) to explore and develop theories, gather evidence, etc?

• 2.) To what extent can TR really empower teachers?

• 3.) What are some technologies employed to monitor teachers? Have you witnessed this in any educational context you’ve been involved in?

Conversation tracking/Coding

• What do your responses have in common?• How are they different?• What issues or questions rose to the surface?

Controversial quotesConnecting the minds

• “A systematic study also provides a process for us to become aware of any assumptions and biases we carry with us that may affect how we view and resolve our questions” (p.3).

• “Teachers have become highly skilled at adapting and moving on but not at substantive resistance. The spectrum of the social context of teaching constructs and enables such adaptability and passivity” (p. 268).

• “Most of the resistance I heard was water-cooler discourse-teachers complaining about their lack of autonomy, decision making, and authority – that did not evolve to action” (p.266).

How are things in classrooms and schools? According to whom?

• I think that the chapter illustrates that we are looking at research and teacher knowledge differently in schools, according to the authors and well-known researchers in the field.

Interlude: Putting students in the mix

• http://vimeo.com/22024160

• http://thesixteenproject.wordpress.com/

“What perspectives and methods might we employ to understand and represent our understandings about classrooms and schools?”

• systematic inquiry for us and our students. (The power of questions)

“What do teachers and others stakeholders do to sustain themselves while carving out long lasting, significant careers?”

• Pursue problems or questions we have from an inquiry stance. (The power of questions)

Analysis

• The article is written from what perspective? Who is the author? What does she care about? How is she working? How do you know?

Bringing yourself into the research

• Student work: • Do you have a sense of the author? Why?

What is it?• Why did they engage in the research?• What do those reasons have in common?• What questions might they be answering?

• Read, annotate, code, and discuss.

Teaching/Learning autobiography

• Powerful teaching/ learning experiences

• Strong interests/wonderings

• Remembering those who supported your teaching/learning (or hindered it)

Landscape of ed. research – Where might you feel most comfortable?

• Positivist research

• Anti-positivist research

• Critical theory

Positivist Research

• August Comte emphasized observation and reason as means of understanding human behavior.

• True knowledge is based on experience of senses and can be obtained by observation and experiment.

• Positivistic researchers use the scientific method as a means of knowledge generation.

Positivist Principles

• Determinism - events are caused by other circumstances, so an understanding of casual links are necessary for prediction and control.

• Empiricism – the collection of verifiable empirical evidences in support of theories or hypotheses.

• Parsimony - the explanation of the phenomena in the most economic way possible.

• Generality- is the process of generalizing the observation of the particular phenomenon to the world at large.

• Research approach• Quantitative

• Research methods• Surveys:• longitudinal,• cross-sectional, correlational;• experimental, and• quasi-experimental and• ex-post facto research

• Examples• - Attitude of distance learners towards online based education• - Relationship between students’ motivation and their academic achievement.• - Effect of intelligence on the academic performances of primary school learners

• Positivism which emphasizes objectivist approach to studying social phenomena gives importance to research methods focusing on quantitative analysis, surveys, experiments and the like.

• ‘design of research’; ‘controlling variables’; ‘managing data’• Use of statistics to lend scientific credibility

Anti-positivism

• emphasizes that social reality is viewed and interpreted by the individual according to the ideological positions she possesses. Knowledge is personally experienced rather than acquired from or imposed from outside. Reality is multi-layered and complex, and a single phenomenon is having multiple interpretations.

Anti-positivism • Research approach

Qualitative

• Research methods• Biographical;• Phenomenological;• Ethnographical;• case study

• Examples- A study of autobiography of a great statesman.

• - A study of dropout among the female students• - A case study of a open distance learning Institution in a country.

Anti-positivism

• anti-positivism which stresses on subjectivist approach to studying social phenomena attaches importance to a range of research techniques focusing on qualitative analysis, e.g. personal interviews, participant observations, account of individuals, personal constructs etc.

• Presenting the perspective of research subjects• Demonstrating authenticity of the research setting

Critical Theory

• Attempts to consider phenomena in terms of the historical forces that restrict human freedom and expose the ideological justification of those forces.

• Critical theorists suggest two kinds of research methodologies, namely, ideology critique and action research, for undertaking research work.

Critical Theory• Research approach

Critical and action-oriented

• Research methods• Ideology critique;• action research (what impact does a new approach/method have on students? On

me as a teacher? In an institution?)

• Examples• A study of development of education during the British rule in India- • Absenteism among standard five students of a primary school• A study of what happens for boys when new reading resources/methods are added

to the classroom.

Critical Theory

• Similarly, critical theory suggests ideology critique and action research as research methods to explore the existing phenomena.

Abstracts

• What type of research is this?• How do you know?