Research Products and ReflectionsPre-workshop Survey: Fall 2007
During the Fall 2007, I had the opportunity to co-develop a needs assessment survey with Dr. Haley. The plan was to collect and analyze the survey responses from general education teachers who have had an increasing population of English language learners in their classrooms. The data obtained from the surveys would then be used to design a workshop that would help these teachers understand the realities of the diverse needs of the ELL student population and then provide them with the tools to address those needs. The survey was sent to two counties in the Mid-Atlantic area. As the responses came in, I struggled with how I would analyze the data as I had yet to take the qualitative research course. I had to rely on what I had learned in EDUC 810 (Problems and Methods in Educational Research).
The first step was to aggregate the individual teacher responses in one document that I called "Combined Needs Assessment for XXX County." Having their responses in one place then allowed me to scan the data for emerging themes. I began by reading the data numerous times, taking notes on any reoccurring words and/or phrases. The second step was to group those reoccurring words/phrases based on similarities and differences. From my notes, I decided that there were five categories of teacher responses. These categories were then weighted in terms of occurrences. The final document shows the emerging themes by categorizing the weighted responses for both grades K-6 and 7-12.This was an excellent opportunity for me to gain experience coding qualitative data. Using the skills that I acquired in EDUC 810, I attempted to systematically code the data for emerging themes. I realized that my lack of formal training in qualitative research may have resulted in a misinterpretation of the data. This could then have led me to draw conclusions that are not best represented by the data. It is through this realization that I have a new found respect for the systematic approach to conducting qualitative research. Although a tedious process, there is no substitute for taking a hands-on approach. I believe that it is only through the intimate relationship with the data that a qualitative researcher will draw accurate interpretations and conclusions.
Spanish Blog Project Surveys: Fall 2007
The genesis for the Spanish Blog Project occurred during the Spring 2007. After reading Ducate & Lomicka's 2005 article "Exploring the blogosphere: The use of web logs in a foreign language classroom", I began to think about the possibilities for using blogs to promote communicative writing practices with beginning language learners at the post-secondary level. Having taught beginning level Spanish courses at GMU, I have often thought that the program's increased focus on the development of students' oral language skills has come at the expense of developing their communicative written language skills. Also, the program's curriculum has essentially led instructors into the cultural trap of teaching the four Fs--folklore, fashion, food, and festivals. In essence, students enrolled in beginning level language classes are expected to develop oral communication skills, memorize cultural facts on a variety of Spanish speaking countries, and write descriptive essays for an audience of one--the instructor. It was my hope that the use of blogs would not only promote the development of communicative writing skills, but also facilitate higher order thinking skills by asking students to make comparisons and share opinions among the cultures studied.In late Spring 2007, I shared my ideas with the Director of the Beginning Spanish Program. It was then that the Spanish Blog Research Project began to take life. Shortly after that conversation, I learned that the Assistant Director of the Beginning Spanish Program received a TAC grant to pilot test a course blog in the Fall 2007. The timing seemed right for conducting a full-fledged research study, including HSRB approval, which we received in late November 2007. As part of the HSRB application, I developed three data collection instruments: the pre-blog survey; the post-blog survey; and the post-blog interview protocol. I used both surveys to collect data at the beginning and end of the Spring 2008 semester. Unfortunately, changes in the original project plan left several aspects of instructor/student support unattended. With an ill-defined timeline and no formative assessments in place to evaluate the implementation of the blogs, we (the research team) had little knowledge of the growing frustration among the instructors and students alike. Essentially, the data from the pre-blog and post-blog surveys would reveal little to support the use of blogs with beginning level language learners.
Learning what not to do in a research project has been a difficult lesson. I will not deny my disappointment in myself for not voicing my concerns over the time-management and direction of the study. Yet I believe that this experience has given me a new level of self-confidence from which I have learned to trust my training as a researcher. As I think about what went wrong with this study, the valuable lessons that I learned regarding planning, leadership, and the ethical responsibility of educational researchers, could not have been achieved by taking another course in the doctoral program. Therefore, I will always view this experience as one of personal growth.
Fall 2008: ERDS 812: Qualitative Research Methods in Educational Research
Reflections of A Novice Qualitative Researcher
Qualitative research is messy. I learned that the phrase "garbage in = garbage out" would be my mantra during my first attempt at collecting and analyzing qualitative data. I made so many mistakes (see my reflection for EDRS 812 on my Course Reflections page). Because I did not use the "researcher ears" that I was so proud to have found during my time at the Defense Language Institute, my data for the qualitative study I did for EDRS 812 was seriously incomplete. I tried to gather information on too many topics. Against Dr. Maxwell's advice, I stuck to my original plans to ask my five participants, all newly practicing FL/WL teachers, questions about culture and technology. I was a bit headstrong because I had finished the Achievement Gap course the previous semester and was on a mission to explore the possibility that teaching culture (and using technology to do so) might be a vehicle for closing the achievement gap with heritage language learners in FL/WL classrooms.. My thoughts were that if FL/WL teachers used technology to teach meaningful cultural lessons that asked students to think critically as they explored issues of social justice, the power dynamic between heritage language learner and teacher would change. I realize now that this was a bit of a stretch, but nevertheless, a necessary step, as it allowed me to continue to develop my thinking.My experiences as a novice qualitative researcher were rather painful. Analyzing the data became overwhelming. As a person who tends to think in a linear fashion, trying to identify emic codes from pages of interview transcripts was incredibly difficult. What I thought would be an easy process turned into a serious challenge. Thanks to the many examples presented by Miles and Huberman (1994), I created a data matrix , which greatly facilitated my analysis. But, it was not until I decided to look at the data from the EDRS 812 study through a different lens in EDUC 853, that the stories of my participants began to surface.
My first experience as a novice qualitative researcher was tough. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I was miserable during the data analysis. Yet, I finish both my final papers for EDRS 812 and EDUC 853 wanting to do more qualitative research. I believe that to develop my skills as a qualitative researcher, I need to do more qualitative research.
Spring 2009: EDUC 897 Independent Study
Early Reflections of The Pilot Study: Spring 2009
One of my goals in doing a pilot study was to work out the "bugs" before beginning the dissertation. I expected to make mistakes with my online survey, my online interviews, and my data analysis, because collecting only digital data and then analyzing it using an integrative dialectic stance are completely new to me. My coursework has prepared me for these challenges, but the reality is, I know that I will develop as a researcher through experience. So I was excited to let the experience begin. What I didn't expect was to run into a few problems with recruiting FL/WL teachers from the sample of teachers who had participated in the ACTFL Video Podcast Contest.The plan (approved by HSRB) was to have Marty Abbot of ACTFL send the initial recruitment email to all the teachers who had submitted videos on behalf of their students in either the 2008 or 2009 contest. Teachers who were interested in the study would then email me in order to obtain the URL and password to the online survey. To participate in the online interview using Tapped In, the last question on the survey asks if the teachers if they would like to participate in an online interview and if so, to provide an email contact. I would then look at the pool of teachers who were interested in online interviews and select a convenience sample to include a wide variety of languages and years of experience. What I thought was a seemingly good plan began to fall apart with the initial recruitment.
Lesson learned: recruitment methods are incredibly important. Having too many steps and providing too much information can deter potential participants from taking part in the study. The key to successful recruitment is to provide enough information so that the participants know what to expect and to make their participation EASY. Somewhere in the HSRB process, I changed a number of things including the way that I would obtain informed consent. On the advise of my HSRB reviewer, I moved the informed consent to the online survey. At that time, I should have changed the recruitment process and eliminated the step where teachers had to contact me for the URL to the survey. I could have easily added the link to the email that Marty sent so that the participants could go directly to the survey. I will most definitely pay closer attention to this process in all my future research.
Identifying Epistemologies: Summer 2007
After completing a year in the doctoral program, I felt the pressing need to reflect upon my personal experiences and what I had learned in my coursework in order to determine the epistemologies from which I would develop my own lens as a scholar and researcher. I have stated in many of my course reflections that I know that my ways of knowing have changed. But what does this really mean? What does it mean to identify with a post-modernist, post-colonial point of view? Can sociocultural perspectives on the teaching and learning of world languages be supported by recent developments in neuroscience? Will recent neurological findings contribute to a change in what has long been valued in the field of SLA research? I sought to answer these questions in the final paper that I wrote for the course Brain-based Teaching and Learning. As I wrote the paper titled "Making brain research matter: A multidisciplinary approach to second language acquisition research--A review of the literature", I gained a clearer view of my newly developed sociocultural lens through which I acknowledge a multi-cultural definition of intelligence and through which I can place value on the cognitive, linguistic and cultural diversity of today's language learners.Refining Lenses: Fall 2007
During the Seminar in Bilingualism and SLA Theory and Research, I took advantage of a final paper option to write another literature review. This time, I focused my attention on the epistemological foundations for teacher education programs that I believe will promote culturally responsive pedagogy (Note: after the course, Dr. Haley and I modified the paper in order to submit to Foreign Language Annals for publication). There are many connections that can be made between sociocultural theory and culturally responsive pedagogy. I plan to explore these connections as I continue to refine my theoretical lenses. My next goal is to examine the corpus of literature that examines the history of minority student achievement gaps.Finding a Focus : Spring 2008
The Achievement Gap course was critical to my focus on a dissertation topic. As I was refining my lenses (see the above entry), I became increasingly interested in looking at the achievement of minority students in FL/WL classrooms. My own experiences as a Spanish teacher made me acutely aware that not all students are treated equally by their FL/WL teachers. If I had not valued the heritage language learners (HLLs) in my classroom, I postulated that others were also guilty of the same thing. With this in mind, I wanted to expand my study of the AG to include the power dynamic between teacher and student. In my review of the literature, issues of hegemony, identity, and student achievement surfaced leaving me with many questions about teacher education programs and how they might do a better job of changing FL/WL teacher perceptions of HLLs. As I finished my final paper for the course, I set my sights how language teachers teach culture as a possible vehicle for narrowing the AG with HLLs.Gaining an International Perspective : Fall 2008
Researching the AG in the Spring of 2008 led me to realize that my research must address the needs of minority language learners. I felt as though I had found a way to do so by focusing on how culture is being taught in FL/WL classrooms and current uses of technology to do so. But, I had not been able to fill in all the pieces to a conceptual framework from which I could build a dissertation study. The readings in EDUC 853--World Perspectives in Teacher Education provided me with with a new piece, or rather a new lens to view the intersection of technology, culture, and teacher education. My final project in this course allowed me to explore the research on concepts such as international mindedness and intercultural communicative competence.Reviewing Literature from Ways of Knowing to the Seminar in Educational Anthropology: Fall 2008
By the end of my coursework, I was pleased with the direction of my thinking. My dissertation topic had clearly taking form. With each stage of re-focusing and refinement, I had been able to do a literature review through a different lens. As I wrote each literature review, I was able to analyze and synthesize the readings from an individual course and then extend that analysis and synthesis to include readings from previous courses. I have come to enjoy this way of writing and looked forward to doing it once again as I planned my final paper for Dr. Osterling's EDUC 893--Seminar in Educational Anthropology course.My proposal paper for EDUC 893 is the most extensive literature review that I have written to date. I began by drawing connections between the course readings that included the work of Jan Nespor, Margaret Eisenhart, Frederick Erickson, John Ogbu, and Shirley Brice Heath. I then looked beyond the course project towards the conceptual framework for my dissertation proposal. I challenged myself, like never before, to extend my analysis and synthesis to include literature from Ways of Knowing, Brain-based Teaching and Learning, Seminar in Bilingualism and SLA Research, The Achievement Gap, World Perspectives in Teacher Education, Qualitative Methods in Educational Research, and the proposal paper for my pilot study. I believe that this final literature review from my coursework will serve as a springboard for the literature review that I shall write for my dissertation.
Dissertation Planning
Changing Directions: Spring 2008
I had originally thought that my work on the Spanish Blog Project would provide the platform from which I would launch my dissertation research. Yet, the majority of my written work during the doctoral program has focused on pre-service teacher education. Although I am very interested in conducting experimental research to test interventions with language learners, I wondered if I should follow my instincts and pursue my developing interests in pre-service teacher education. A number of experiences in Fall 2007/Spring 2008 have guided me in my decision to change direction for my dissertation research.
First, the readings during the Seminar on Bilingualism and SLA Theory and Research, led me to question how pre-service teacher education programs can better prepare world language teachers to address the diverse needs of today's language learners. Can we do as Luis Moll suggests and train teachers to value the funds of knowledge that students bring to the classroom? Can we better prepare teachers to develop classroom ecologies where students can develop an identity that includes the new language and cultures as recommended by Thomas Ricento and Margaret Hawkins. Second, my interests in the enrollment and achievement gaps among minority world language learners was peaked during a presentation at the 2007 ACTFL conference. After looking at the data reported each year by NCES, I wondered why these gaps have not closed even though the seats in world language classes are no longer reserved for students perceived to be academically gifted. The third experience was a co-presentation that I gave with Dr. Haley at the 2007 ACTFL conference. Our objective was to present the efficacy and usefulness of a newly updated, NCATE aligned version of the Student-Teaching Internship Manual (STIM). It was during the presentation that I began to wonder how we might better test the efficacy and effectiveness of the STIM. What is the purpose of this manual? Can it truly serve as a tool for building bridges between a pre-service teacher's coursework and the student-teaching internship in the era of ACTFL/NCATE standards? Can these bridges also close the gap in minority student enrollment and achievement in the field of world languages? And, what role might technology play in building these bridges? As I seek answers to these questions, I will be able to carve out a gap in the current research from which I will conduct my dissertation study.The Pilot Study: Spring 2009
I had initially intended to use EDUC 897--Independent Study as a reading course because I needed to fill the gap in my knowledge on technology and teacher preparation and technology and second language learning. Yet, as the fall 2008 semester wore on, I felt as though I had barely scratched the surface of qualitative research methods EDRS 812. I was also anxious to draw upon the quantitative methods that I had learned in EDRS 811 and EDRS 797a: Structural Equation Modeling. As the fall semester came to a close, I spoke with Dr. Sprague about extending my independent study to the Spring 2009. I needed time to make sense of the work I had just completed in EDRS 812, EDUC 853, and EDUC 893 on teaching culture for intercultural communicative competence. I new that my novice researcher skills had limited my findings and felt strongly that I needed to do a pilot study to work out the bugs prior to doing my dissertation. Thankfully, a number of my ideas came together in February of 2009, and I soon found myself writing an HSRB application under Dr. Sprague's guidance.I received approval from HSRB on April 6, 2009 for my pilot study titled : Technology Integration in Foreign/World Language Standards-based Instruction: The Effects of the ACTFL Video Podcast Contest. The following are the research products that I created for the pilot along with the proposal paper that I submitted to Dr. Sprague for my IS.
- HSRB Protocol Application
- Initial Email to Recruit Participants (Sent by Marty Abbot of ACTFL)
- General Information (Attached to Initial Email to Recruit Participants)
- General Consent Email (Sent by me to teachers who responded to Initial Email to Recruit Participants)
- The Language Educator Consent Request Email (Sent by Melissa after interview is complete
- Link to the survey (please see email for password): http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=TGUA3E1U5j_2f9hK6TwiDv5Q_3d_3d
- My research proposal
My plans are to use this pilot in two ways. First, it is an opportunity for me to develop my skills as a mixed methods researcher. Second, I will use the findings from the pilot to inform my dissertation research. In addition, I plan to write an article for publication with Dr. Sprague and submit it to the Journal of Technology and Teacher Preparation. Finally, I plan to submit an application to present this study at the annual conference by the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE).
A Design Map for a Doctoral Dissertation: Spring 2009
In preparing for my comprehensive portfolio review, I have listed and cross-listed course artifacts that I believe demonstrate my readiness to proceed to the proposal class. These final papers, projects and reflections represent three years of growth. Yet, I felt like there was still something missing that explicitly connects my journey to my dissertation. I decided that my final entry to my portfolio for my Analytical and Integrative Thinking and my Dissertation Planning would be a design map for my dissertation proposal. Using Maxwell's (2006) model, my design map includes the purpose of my study, my goals, the conceptual framework, the proposed methods, and possible threats to my study's validity. This design map is my first draft and will most likely undergo several iterations as I write my proposal. However, I found it very helpful to spend several days thinking seriously about the transition from coursework to proposal.
