My reasons for pursuing a Ph.D. in education have not changed.  However, I have changed. I am in the process of realizing my goals and even beyond them  I am a better, more well-rounded educator.  I find that I can lead my students to mathematical discovery through many more approaches than I previously understood.  I have also been able to contribute to the professional  development of my peers. Recently, my first article was published. Now, I am the end of my coursework and at the beginning of tying together the work of the past several years and developing my dissertation concepts. I admit to being apprehensive, nervous and far from sure-footed. I knew this time would come; but, it was always somewhere down the road. My cohort colleagues all seemed to have good grasps on what they would focus their dissertation research back in year 1. I did not. Through the summer institutes in which I have been involved, I have come to see that teacher professional development is something for which I have an affinity.  

        I continue to be troubled by the level of mathematics understanding which our students grasp. A contributing factor is, in my view, over diagnosis of learning disabilities/differences and over medication of children. Recently, I had a student who is a capable child but was not doing his homework and was not paying attention in class. When I spoke with him about class preparation and participation, he responded, "Maybe I have ADHD." This child did not have any learning disabilities, he was lazy. But, his remark highlights the idea that we are trying to find excuses for some children's poor performance. Having a learning disability earns a child longer times to complete assessment, special environments, and/or special tools, such as a computer. It really is no wonder that some well abled kids want to be labeled as LD in order to get all these extras and an excuse for not working up to their abilities. 

        I also worry about constantly looking to the teacher to improve everything. Sometimes you just have a lazy or obstinate kid and nothing the teacher can do will help the child. 

        Not to contradict myself, but I am looking at strategies which teachers can use to improve student understanding of statistical principles. I am interested in teachers guiding interested and motivated students. I know that the uninterested and unmotivated students need attention and guidance, too. But, they are being addressed by so many of my colleagues, that I do not feel exclusionary in pursuing what interests me the most. It has been my experience that schools spend an inordinate amount of time and attention on the under-performing students that the highly achieving and/or highly motivated students do not get the attention they need to reach their full potential. This is where I want to step in. For example, a study of linear regression can be completely mechanical without discussions of correlation vs. causation, the meaning of the coefficient of determination, and the distribution of the residuals. A study of Normal distributions can also be merely mechanical without discussing why normality occurs, why normality is important, what in real life is Normally distributed, and, if anything else, other than the data itEqually, Calculus students can simply revert to "taking the derivative" without any understadning of why that may or may not be appropriate.  And, they do not understand the meaning of thier solutions.  These situations present many possibilities for research; but, I have to admit that I have not yet decided. self, in the distribution is Normally distributed (sample means, sample quartiles, sample medians) and why that would be so.