Virginia F. Doherty
Educational Leadership/Multicultural Education
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Academic Progress Portfolio
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George Mason University
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Graduate School of Education
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Fall 2002
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Virginia Doherty
11/6/01
Critique #2
EDUC 805
Integrating technology and pedagogy in a foundations course.
Jacob, E., & Ruess, K. (2000)
In this article, Professor
Jacob describes an action research tool which is part of a web-based
course called Education and Culture. The Cultural Inquiry Process
(CIP) is a six-step process designed to present a framework for understanding
students in a culturally diverse school. But what Dr Jacob has developed
is a much broader tool for understanding people in a culturally diverse
world.
CIP presents a framework
of steps and sub-steps for examining ‘puzzlements’ which teachers encounter
in their daily work. Using action research but refining it to specific
steps and questions for each of those steps, Jacob takes a teacher with
a cultural puzzlement from the first step of identifying the specific
problem to the last step which is to monitor the results of the intervention.
The middle steps of examining what is known about the individual or the
situation and of considering the alternative cultural questions to explore,
come with further questions and sub-questions which guide the researcher
into deeper considerations of the meaning of culture and therefore
alternate cultural perspectives. Jacob presents a more detailed approach
to action research literature which often outlines broad steps such as:
prepare to begin, write the question, collect data, analyze data and plan
your next step. (Richardson, Walsh)
Even though the article is
written about CIP as part of an education course, the Cultural Inquiry
Process does not have to be limited to the classroom. The casual
researcher or someone who has a puzzlement but does not want to follow
all the steps can still use the process. After identifying the situation,
the curious person can go to Step 3 on the web site and look at the questions
which lead to looking at the problem from various cultural perspectives.
For example, when trying to discover why a student is not responding well
in class, Step 3 encourages the reader to look beyond race and ethnic
group perspectives to see whether there is a family, neighborhood or classroom
situation which is inhibiting the child from responding. It presents
a set of questions to get beyond race and ethnicity to see the child in
a broader cultural context. It also encourages the reader to look
at the student as a part of many cultural groups at the same time.
Jacob’s research is valuable
not only because it has given us CIP but it incorporates Web-Based Instruction
(WBI) which seems to be the direction of the future (Dabbagh). By
having the CIP on-line, it is easily accessible to both the professional
(educator) and the non-professional (any person with a puzzlement).
A beginning researcher or a layman can easily follow the steps to access
the researched articles. Not only are there hyper links but also
sections on further research for the topic which is being explored.
It’s an idea tool for the beginning researcher.
The only aspect which the
web-site does not have for the casual researcher is the blackboard or the
on-line discussion group which is offered as part of the course.
That aspect would allow people with the same puzzlement to share and exchange
views.
Jacob’s CIP provides a structured
framework to examine cultural questions which come up in classrooms or
in every day life. CIP expands the definition of culture so that
the researcher is looking at culture from a wide perspective. It
is presented in a format which is very easy to follow. What
started out to be a classroom research tool has the framework and
potential to be a valuable resource for anyone with a question on
cultural diversity.
References
Dabbagh, Nada (2001) Online learning and web-based course authoring
tools: Concepts, strategies and application.
Manuscript in preparation.
Jacob, E. & Ruess, K. (2000). Integrating technology and pedagogy
in a foundations course. Journal of Computing in Teacher
Education, 16(4), (12-17).
Richardson, Joan (2000, February/March) Teacher research leads to learning,
action. National Staff Development Council: Tools
for Schools. (1-7).
Walsh, f. Timothy (2000, March), Bilingual Teachers as action researchers
in TESOL. Paper presented at the meeting of the Teachers of English
to Speakers of Other Languages, Vancouver, BC.
1. Check APA format.
2. Super integration of ideas!
3. I can see this work has affected you.
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