Erin E. Peters
Fall
2004
EDUC 802 - Leadership Seminar
Dr. David Brazer
Fall 2004
This course helped me to develop scholarly ideas on a doctoral level. The activities in this class were instrumental in guiding my writing so that ideas were well-expressed, succinct, and supported by evidence. The Bounded Rationality paper allowed me to explore one concept at a deep level, the Leadership Hurdles paper helped my analysis skills and the Educational Leadership paper helped by making me synthesize a great deal of material in a coherent fashion. It was during this class that I began to understand that even though I had been teaching for 14 years, there were layers to education that I had never experienced. I started to see the interactions around me as organizational structures and this helped me later in my qualitative paper which discussed how the organization of classrooms are necessary in inquiry teaching. I found myself especially fond of the garbage can model and its complexity, whereas prior to this course I sought simplicity in ideas.
EDIT 797 - Strategies for Inquiry Science
Dr. Brenda Bannan-Ritland
Fall 2004
Jumping head first into a design-based research project is not for the faint of heart. One of the greatest benefits of this class was the amount of input Dr. Bannan-Ritland gave me regarding the development of her project. From the beginning I felt that I was contributing positively to the research team and in return, the research team guided my naive efforts in conducting interviews and analyzing data. From this experience, I received a concentrated education in design-based research because I lived it. I continue to work on the project as Dr. Bannan-Ritland's GRA and the experience never fails to challenge me. The ideas that resulted from interactions with the research group has seeped into other parts of my coursework. The website documenting the project is found at http://itdev.gmu.edu/inquiry.
EDCI 891 - Science Teaching and Learning
Dr. Donna Sterling
Fall 2004/Spring 2005
This class first revealed the state of science education in the United States and then systematically revealed smaller events that led to this state. I had worked with documents such as the National Science Education Standards and the Benchmarks for Science Literacy for years as a teacher, but looking at them through the perspective of a scholar gave these documents more meaning. The Collaborative Action Research Project allowed me to dabble in research in order to illuminate accommodations for special education students.
EDUC 805 - Doctoral Seminar in Education
Dean Goor - Fall 2004
Dean Gorrell - Spring 2005
The "Parade of Professors" helped my understanding of two major components of being a scholar: research decisions and implications for findings. Although I had little experience in the field of research, I was able to get a broad foundation for how others made decisions about topics and methodology during the fall semester. The spring semester provided a window into the possibilities the follow publishing research findings.
Spring 2005
EDUC 800 - Ways of Knowing
Dr. Joseph Maxwell
Spring 2005
As one of my interests is the dependence of constructivism on the activity of inquiry, I was particularly interested in the various ways of constructing knowledge. Reflecting on my combined background in physics and social foundations of education, the selection of texts in this course seemed tailor-made for me. Kuhn's description of paradigm shifts and Descartes' description of empiricism and rationalism drove the foundation of the class. I especially connected with Belenky et al.'s Women's Ways of Knowing and started to form an idea in one of my journals about how women can regress in the lower stages of learning, but through connections in ideas, were less likely to regress from higher stages of learning. My final paper in this class examined how contemporary artists view the world, since I was unfamiliar with this way of knowing.
EDRS 812 - Qualitative Methods in Educational Research
Dr. Jenny Gordon
Spring 2005
Being on Dr. Bannan-Ritland's research team, I had somewhat of an understanding of qualitative research, but this class made me explore many of the internal conflicts that occur in qualitative research. Ethics in research was a theme throughout the year and I have a good understanding of what is required in laying the groundwork for a qualitative research project that will yield quality data. I performed a case study that started as a look at how a teacher understood the nature of science, but quickly morphed into how the teacher's classroom structure influenced how her students learned through inquiry. The coding was the most intriguing of the many processes I learned in this class. It was similar to taking a pan of stones, and tossing them on the ground until they formed a picture. When the picture was finally formed, all of the data fell into place. Writing this paper was one of the more exhilarating experiences I have had. I adore the process of unraveling a tangle of data.
Summer 2005
EDCI 795 - Science Education Research
Dr. Donna R. Sterling
There were three goals of this course: draft an article for publication in a national journal, develop monthly concept maps to summarize research in our chosen topic and write a paper that synthesized the research. I am beginning to develop ideas about how the fields of the nature of science and metacognition can come together, I had two large area on which to focus. I developed a system for reading research which resulted in notes I could later reference for developing a dissertation proposal. This course helped me wade through lots of research articles to develop tangible ideas that I could access to develop metacognitive tools involving the nature of science.
Fall 2005
EDRS 810 - Problems and Methods in Education Research
Dr. Margo Mastropieri
This course gave me a broad view of different characteristics of research. During this course I developed my online research skills and my understanding of the types of research questions that qualitative and quantitative methods of research could address. The major assignments in this class were methods sections of papers for a qualitative study and quantitative study. By the end of this class, I felt more comfortable with the formats of both types of papers and with writing research papers in general. As I am interested in learning as many research methods as possible, I am conducting a meta-analysis on metacognition and science under the guidance of Dr. Mastropieri.
EDRS 811 - Quantitative Research Methods in Education
Dr. Dimitri Dimitrov
Entering this class, I had very little experience with quantitative research, so I set a goal to be as proficient in quantitative research as I was with qualitative research. My dissertation research topic was becoming more focused by the time I took this class, and I took the opportunity of conducting a research project (complete with HSRB approval) for the major assignment called "Scientific Thinking in Eighth Grade Students: Attitude and Metacognition about the Nature of Science". I wanted to see if my ideas regarding the usefulness of using the nature of science as a metacognitive resource had any merit. My constructs showed to be significant predictors for explaining reasoning in making conclusions. I am currently drafting an article for publication from this project and am encouraged to pursue my topic of metacognition in science.
EDCI 892 - Science Education History and Research
Dr. Donna R. Sterling
The goals for this course were to build a historical perspective of science education reform, build an understanding of the nature of science, build a repertoire of effective science teaching and assessment research by reading, writing, observing, participating in, reflecting on, and discussing the teaching of science, evaluate science education reform movements and teacher training at the national, state, and local levels, and work collaboratively with peers to teach and discuss science and science teaching. As a class, we developed a timeline of science education and science research events so that we could better understand where science education has been and how it can move forward. Through this course, I acquired an appreciation for the social and historical factors involved in the development of scientific ideas. My understanding about the nature of science developed more through this course and I used the time to extend my literature review for my proposal. This course also encouraged me to focus my professional development skills by designing a cooperative learning seminar for in-service teachers.
Spring 2006
EDRS 822 - Advanced Qualitative Methods of Educational Research
Dr. Joe Maxwell
I had a baseline understanding of qualitative educational research when I entered this class. When I completed the requirements of this class, I felt that I had a wider and deeper understanding of the different analytical tools and communication devices that are used in qualitative research. I was able to think more about my ontology and epistemology through the Module 1 assignment. The Module 2 assignment helped me to think more clearly about the interaction among my research questions, goals, conceptual frameworks, validity and methods of my draft dissertation. Before I completed the assignment for Module 3, I tended to restrict my thinking about diagrammatic analysis to webs. Reading the Miles and Huberman book and diagramming data collected in 812 helped me to expand my thinking about diagrams. The Module 4 assignment helped me to identify and implement ways to communicate data and analysis other than the traditional scientific model.
EDEP 654 - Learning, Motivation and Self-Regulation
Dr. Anastasia Kitsantis
Although this course was not in my program of studies, I am so grateful that I chose to take it. It gave me a broad sense of the self-regulatory theories available and the measures used in the field. The readings and discussions in this course helped me to develop an additional facet to the metacognitive prompts I will be using for my disseration, developmental phases of self-regulation. Writing a draft proposal for my dissertation was another major benefit of taking this course. I received a great deal of feedback on the literature review and methodology of my project which encouraged me to run a pilot study with HSRB approval.
Summer 2006
EDCI 796 - Science Education Curricula
Dr. Donna R. Sterling
One of the focuses of this course was a technology project to be implemented with our choice of K-12 students. I chose to work with Vernier probes in an 8th grade inquiry lesson. One of the most beneficial parts of this assignment was the proposal writing. Through this assignment, I honed my proposal writing skills by learning to make all requested portions of the proposal very explicit and easy to find. The remainder of the course was devoted to getting exposure to all grade levels of science curriculum. Although I have worked on curriculum committees on a local and a state level, this class gave the experience of looking deeply at all grade levels of curriculum: elementary, middle and high (chemistry, biology and physics). The capstone paper in the course integrated interviews with curriculum personnel, readings about curriculum that had influence nationally and the work we did with the grade level curriculum.
EDUC 994 - Doctoral Internship
National Science Foundation
Centers for Learning and Teaching
Dr. Donna R. Sterling
As I prepared to search for an internship, I reflected on the skills I would need to pursue an academic position. I felt that I needed more experience in grant writing, so I pointed my efforts towards the National Science Foundation. The Centers for Learning and Teaching were of interest to me because of their goals: renewing and diversifying the cadre of national leaders in STEM education, increase the number of K-12 STEM educators, and provide substantive research to add to the body of STEM research. Again, I received training in proposal writing from Dr. Sterling. While at NSF, I learned how to use the proposal database, FastLane, and did research to compile the outcomes from the 18 different Centers for Learning and Teaching. While completing this taskI was also able to gather a literature review on metacognition and the nature of science for my dissertation. I also had the rare opportunity to interview the program managers as to what they look for in a proposal. I gained valuable information in writing grants through this internship.
Fall 2006
EDRS 820 - Program Evaluation
Dr. Gary Galluzzo
This course taught me the difference between research and program evaluation. I learned how a research report was used differently than a program evaluation and the different types of knowledge they represented. During this class I was an Einstein Fellow at NASA, so I did a program evaluation on an informal education program that taught public librarians NASA lunar exploration content so they could do Saturday or after school programs in their library. After NASA read my report, they asked me to do another program evaluation on the Girl Scout/NASA partnership that was well received. I am planning on using the information I learned in this class to perform a program evaluation on my dissertation pilot. I am hoping the methods learned in this class will help me to refine my ideas for my final dissertation.
EDCI 893 - Science Education Staff Development
Dr. Donna R. Sterling
Although I have done presentations at regional and national conferences, I didn't have any formal training in staff development, so the content of this course was very useful to me. Part of the course was focused on developing an idea of what research said about professional development. This portion of the course required writing an annotated bibliography of research on professional development for teachers and crafting a paragraph for a proposal with a professional development component. Again, I received more training in writing for proposals. I also was able to use the content discovered in the research component in designing and delivering a professional development unit on Assessment. The feedback received from the students and Dr. Sterling helped me to codify what is effective in the design and delivery of a professional development seminar.
Spring 2007
EDCI 894 - Science Education Policy
Dr. Donna R. Sterling
This course gave me an excellent foundation in science education policy because we had practice in writing a white paper supporting the certification of a science specialist in Virginia, practice writing and defending policy papers on controversial science topics, and aligning graduate course activities on safety to NCATE standards. All of the work in this course was hands on and required sufficient research into current policies that will be useful in the future to me as a teacher educator.
EDUC 897 - Independent Study in Advanced Quantitative Methods
Dr. Anastasia Kitsantas
I used my pilot dissertation study data (11 measures in all) as the raw data for this course. I was able to see the process of working from raw collected data to produce a research paper for a professional journal. I learned how to use descriptive methods and advanced inferential methods to determine the effect of 4-Phase Embedded Metacognitive Prompts based on the Nature of Science on metacognition, self-efficacy, content knowledge and nature of science knowledge. Through this independent study I was able to draft a results section for Chapter 4 of my dissertation as well as a journal article for publication.
Summer 2007
EDUC 998
Fall 2007 and Spring 2008
EDUC 999
EDUC 802 - Leadership Seminar
Dr. David Brazer
Fall 2004
This course helped me to develop scholarly ideas on a doctoral level. The activities in this class were instrumental in guiding my writing so that ideas were well-expressed, succinct, and supported by evidence. The Bounded Rationality paper allowed me to explore one concept at a deep level, the Leadership Hurdles paper helped my analysis skills and the Educational Leadership paper helped by making me synthesize a great deal of material in a coherent fashion. It was during this class that I began to understand that even though I had been teaching for 14 years, there were layers to education that I had never experienced. I started to see the interactions around me as organizational structures and this helped me later in my qualitative paper which discussed how the organization of classrooms are necessary in inquiry teaching. I found myself especially fond of the garbage can model and its complexity, whereas prior to this course I sought simplicity in ideas.
EDIT 797 - Strategies for Inquiry Science
Dr. Brenda Bannan-Ritland
Fall 2004
Jumping head first into a design-based research project is not for the faint of heart. One of the greatest benefits of this class was the amount of input Dr. Bannan-Ritland gave me regarding the development of her project. From the beginning I felt that I was contributing positively to the research team and in return, the research team guided my naive efforts in conducting interviews and analyzing data. From this experience, I received a concentrated education in design-based research because I lived it. I continue to work on the project as Dr. Bannan-Ritland's GRA and the experience never fails to challenge me. The ideas that resulted from interactions with the research group has seeped into other parts of my coursework. The website documenting the project is found at http://itdev.gmu.edu/inquiry.
EDCI 891 - Science Teaching and Learning
Dr. Donna Sterling
Fall 2004/Spring 2005
This class first revealed the state of science education in the United States and then systematically revealed smaller events that led to this state. I had worked with documents such as the National Science Education Standards and the Benchmarks for Science Literacy for years as a teacher, but looking at them through the perspective of a scholar gave these documents more meaning. The Collaborative Action Research Project allowed me to dabble in research in order to illuminate accommodations for special education students.
EDUC 805 - Doctoral Seminar in Education
Dean Goor - Fall 2004
Dean Gorrell - Spring 2005
The "Parade of Professors" helped my understanding of two major components of being a scholar: research decisions and implications for findings. Although I had little experience in the field of research, I was able to get a broad foundation for how others made decisions about topics and methodology during the fall semester. The spring semester provided a window into the possibilities the follow publishing research findings.
Spring 2005
EDUC 800 - Ways of Knowing
Dr. Joseph Maxwell
Spring 2005
As one of my interests is the dependence of constructivism on the activity of inquiry, I was particularly interested in the various ways of constructing knowledge. Reflecting on my combined background in physics and social foundations of education, the selection of texts in this course seemed tailor-made for me. Kuhn's description of paradigm shifts and Descartes' description of empiricism and rationalism drove the foundation of the class. I especially connected with Belenky et al.'s Women's Ways of Knowing and started to form an idea in one of my journals about how women can regress in the lower stages of learning, but through connections in ideas, were less likely to regress from higher stages of learning. My final paper in this class examined how contemporary artists view the world, since I was unfamiliar with this way of knowing.
EDRS 812 - Qualitative Methods in Educational Research
Dr. Jenny Gordon
Spring 2005
Being on Dr. Bannan-Ritland's research team, I had somewhat of an understanding of qualitative research, but this class made me explore many of the internal conflicts that occur in qualitative research. Ethics in research was a theme throughout the year and I have a good understanding of what is required in laying the groundwork for a qualitative research project that will yield quality data. I performed a case study that started as a look at how a teacher understood the nature of science, but quickly morphed into how the teacher's classroom structure influenced how her students learned through inquiry. The coding was the most intriguing of the many processes I learned in this class. It was similar to taking a pan of stones, and tossing them on the ground until they formed a picture. When the picture was finally formed, all of the data fell into place. Writing this paper was one of the more exhilarating experiences I have had. I adore the process of unraveling a tangle of data.
Summer 2005
EDCI 795 - Science Education Research
Dr. Donna R. Sterling
There were three goals of this course: draft an article for publication in a national journal, develop monthly concept maps to summarize research in our chosen topic and write a paper that synthesized the research. I am beginning to develop ideas about how the fields of the nature of science and metacognition can come together, I had two large area on which to focus. I developed a system for reading research which resulted in notes I could later reference for developing a dissertation proposal. This course helped me wade through lots of research articles to develop tangible ideas that I could access to develop metacognitive tools involving the nature of science.
Fall 2005
EDRS 810 - Problems and Methods in Education Research
Dr. Margo Mastropieri
This course gave me a broad view of different characteristics of research. During this course I developed my online research skills and my understanding of the types of research questions that qualitative and quantitative methods of research could address. The major assignments in this class were methods sections of papers for a qualitative study and quantitative study. By the end of this class, I felt more comfortable with the formats of both types of papers and with writing research papers in general. As I am interested in learning as many research methods as possible, I am conducting a meta-analysis on metacognition and science under the guidance of Dr. Mastropieri.
EDRS 811 - Quantitative Research Methods in Education
Dr. Dimitri Dimitrov
Entering this class, I had very little experience with quantitative research, so I set a goal to be as proficient in quantitative research as I was with qualitative research. My dissertation research topic was becoming more focused by the time I took this class, and I took the opportunity of conducting a research project (complete with HSRB approval) for the major assignment called "Scientific Thinking in Eighth Grade Students: Attitude and Metacognition about the Nature of Science". I wanted to see if my ideas regarding the usefulness of using the nature of science as a metacognitive resource had any merit. My constructs showed to be significant predictors for explaining reasoning in making conclusions. I am currently drafting an article for publication from this project and am encouraged to pursue my topic of metacognition in science.
EDCI 892 - Science Education History and Research
Dr. Donna R. Sterling
The goals for this course were to build a historical perspective of science education reform, build an understanding of the nature of science, build a repertoire of effective science teaching and assessment research by reading, writing, observing, participating in, reflecting on, and discussing the teaching of science, evaluate science education reform movements and teacher training at the national, state, and local levels, and work collaboratively with peers to teach and discuss science and science teaching. As a class, we developed a timeline of science education and science research events so that we could better understand where science education has been and how it can move forward. Through this course, I acquired an appreciation for the social and historical factors involved in the development of scientific ideas. My understanding about the nature of science developed more through this course and I used the time to extend my literature review for my proposal. This course also encouraged me to focus my professional development skills by designing a cooperative learning seminar for in-service teachers.
Spring 2006
EDRS 822 - Advanced Qualitative Methods of Educational Research
Dr. Joe Maxwell
I had a baseline understanding of qualitative educational research when I entered this class. When I completed the requirements of this class, I felt that I had a wider and deeper understanding of the different analytical tools and communication devices that are used in qualitative research. I was able to think more about my ontology and epistemology through the Module 1 assignment. The Module 2 assignment helped me to think more clearly about the interaction among my research questions, goals, conceptual frameworks, validity and methods of my draft dissertation. Before I completed the assignment for Module 3, I tended to restrict my thinking about diagrammatic analysis to webs. Reading the Miles and Huberman book and diagramming data collected in 812 helped me to expand my thinking about diagrams. The Module 4 assignment helped me to identify and implement ways to communicate data and analysis other than the traditional scientific model.
EDEP 654 - Learning, Motivation and Self-Regulation
Dr. Anastasia Kitsantis
Although this course was not in my program of studies, I am so grateful that I chose to take it. It gave me a broad sense of the self-regulatory theories available and the measures used in the field. The readings and discussions in this course helped me to develop an additional facet to the metacognitive prompts I will be using for my disseration, developmental phases of self-regulation. Writing a draft proposal for my dissertation was another major benefit of taking this course. I received a great deal of feedback on the literature review and methodology of my project which encouraged me to run a pilot study with HSRB approval.
Summer 2006
EDCI 796 - Science Education Curricula
Dr. Donna R. Sterling
One of the focuses of this course was a technology project to be implemented with our choice of K-12 students. I chose to work with Vernier probes in an 8th grade inquiry lesson. One of the most beneficial parts of this assignment was the proposal writing. Through this assignment, I honed my proposal writing skills by learning to make all requested portions of the proposal very explicit and easy to find. The remainder of the course was devoted to getting exposure to all grade levels of science curriculum. Although I have worked on curriculum committees on a local and a state level, this class gave the experience of looking deeply at all grade levels of curriculum: elementary, middle and high (chemistry, biology and physics). The capstone paper in the course integrated interviews with curriculum personnel, readings about curriculum that had influence nationally and the work we did with the grade level curriculum.
EDUC 994 - Doctoral Internship
National Science Foundation
Centers for Learning and Teaching
Dr. Donna R. Sterling
As I prepared to search for an internship, I reflected on the skills I would need to pursue an academic position. I felt that I needed more experience in grant writing, so I pointed my efforts towards the National Science Foundation. The Centers for Learning and Teaching were of interest to me because of their goals: renewing and diversifying the cadre of national leaders in STEM education, increase the number of K-12 STEM educators, and provide substantive research to add to the body of STEM research. Again, I received training in proposal writing from Dr. Sterling. While at NSF, I learned how to use the proposal database, FastLane, and did research to compile the outcomes from the 18 different Centers for Learning and Teaching. While completing this taskI was also able to gather a literature review on metacognition and the nature of science for my dissertation. I also had the rare opportunity to interview the program managers as to what they look for in a proposal. I gained valuable information in writing grants through this internship.
Fall 2006
EDRS 820 - Program Evaluation
Dr. Gary Galluzzo
This course taught me the difference between research and program evaluation. I learned how a research report was used differently than a program evaluation and the different types of knowledge they represented. During this class I was an Einstein Fellow at NASA, so I did a program evaluation on an informal education program that taught public librarians NASA lunar exploration content so they could do Saturday or after school programs in their library. After NASA read my report, they asked me to do another program evaluation on the Girl Scout/NASA partnership that was well received. I am planning on using the information I learned in this class to perform a program evaluation on my dissertation pilot. I am hoping the methods learned in this class will help me to refine my ideas for my final dissertation.
EDCI 893 - Science Education Staff Development
Dr. Donna R. Sterling
Although I have done presentations at regional and national conferences, I didn't have any formal training in staff development, so the content of this course was very useful to me. Part of the course was focused on developing an idea of what research said about professional development. This portion of the course required writing an annotated bibliography of research on professional development for teachers and crafting a paragraph for a proposal with a professional development component. Again, I received more training in writing for proposals. I also was able to use the content discovered in the research component in designing and delivering a professional development unit on Assessment. The feedback received from the students and Dr. Sterling helped me to codify what is effective in the design and delivery of a professional development seminar.
Spring 2007
EDCI 894 - Science Education Policy
Dr. Donna R. Sterling
This course gave me an excellent foundation in science education policy because we had practice in writing a white paper supporting the certification of a science specialist in Virginia, practice writing and defending policy papers on controversial science topics, and aligning graduate course activities on safety to NCATE standards. All of the work in this course was hands on and required sufficient research into current policies that will be useful in the future to me as a teacher educator.
EDUC 897 - Independent Study in Advanced Quantitative Methods
Dr. Anastasia Kitsantas
I used my pilot dissertation study data (11 measures in all) as the raw data for this course. I was able to see the process of working from raw collected data to produce a research paper for a professional journal. I learned how to use descriptive methods and advanced inferential methods to determine the effect of 4-Phase Embedded Metacognitive Prompts based on the Nature of Science on metacognition, self-efficacy, content knowledge and nature of science knowledge. Through this independent study I was able to draft a results section for Chapter 4 of my dissertation as well as a journal article for publication.
Summer 2007
EDUC 998
Fall 2007 and Spring 2008
EDUC 999
