Dissertation proposal

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Post here a simple outline of your dissertation proposal

If you start a line with a * it will make it a bullet point, and multiple **s will make a multiply indented bullet point. Sign your posting and separate it from those of others by putting a line with five dashes after your posting. jal

Chapter 1: Introduction

  • My personal interest in the topic/My personal history with the topic
    • Alfabetización
    • K-12 classroom experience
  • Critical pedagogy
    • What is it?
    • Counter critical pedagogy arguments
    • Theory vs. practice
  • Adult literacy/education/ESL and critical pedagogy
    • Existing adult literacy/education/ESL programs
    • Is the critical pedagogy framework possible?
    • Functional vs. critical

Chapter 2: Literature Review

  • Current state of research
    • Adult literacy (still need research on adult ESL if that is going to be my focus): Theories and practice
      • NCES, NCAL, NCSALL, etc.
      • Degener
      • Purcell-Gates & Waterman
      • Rogers
      • Etc.
    • Critical pedagogy: Theory and practice
      • McLaren
      • Freire
      • Darder
      • Etc.

Chapter 3: Proposed research design (Possible field research: Adult ESL (CBET) courses offered by San Diego Community College to San Diego City School parents.)

  • Observations and field notes:
    • Adult ESL classes
      • Content and context
      • Participation
      • Instructional practices, methodology, pedagogy
    • English tutoring sessions offered by participating parents
      • How does it look like?
      • How do we know it is efficient for both the tutors and the tutees?
    • Instructor meetings and training sessions
      • Content and context
      • Functional vs. critical?
    • Family literacy practices of participating adults
      • How do they look like?
      • Do they exist at all?
      • Do adult ESL classes influence such practices?
  • Interviews:
    • Participating adults
      • What are they learning?
      • What are their perceptions as learners?
      • Is this an enriching/empowering experience?
      • Why are they participating in these classes?
      • Do they foresee changes in their lives thanks to these classes?
      • I can perhaps “follow�? a couple of families/participants
    • Instructors
      • What is their perception of the students?
      • What is their teaching philosophy?
      • What are their goals as teachers of adult students?
      • Why are they teaching these classes?
      • I can perhaps “follow�? a couple of instructors
  • K-12 school personnel
    • How do they perceive these programs?
    • What do they expect to “get out�? of these programs?
    • Have they experienced any transformational changes generated by these programs?
  • Pre-post data:
    • Pre-post CASAS English proficiency test that students take in the program
    • Have students’ goals and aspirations changed throughout the program?
    • Have students’ family literacy practices changed throughout the program?
    • Has their sense of agency changed throughout the program?

Luz

Revised 10/20/04 very drafty

Question: Under what conditions do ELLs progress from intermediate to advanced proficiencies (acquire academic language – possibly not the same thing; this may need to be teased apart)? Among implications for TE/PD: Is there an additive effect of PD over time? Under what conditions? For knowledge about ELL development: Relationships between oral, written language in acquisition of advanced proficiency?

Population: all 5th graders in District X (CRLP partnership); random subset of students whose teachers participated in CRLP PD since 1999 (CPDI)

Measures: CELDT, writing samples, reading scores (standardized & performance-based), oral language measures (ADEPT).

Some consistent things: Long-term PD Common curriculum Stable administration & District goals Common assessments

Some variables: Teacher professional development- level & nature of participation Length of years teaching, other teacher ed factors Bilingual program participation/structure School site leadership Student language ideologies, other attitudinal & individual factors Teacher beliefs – language & student potential Specific instructional practices

cheryl

Chapter 1: Introduction (mostly from white paper abstract and an NSF proposal from another class)

  • Introduce the Teacher Continuum concept.
  • Describe reflective practice and collaborative inquiry as components of professional growth.
  • Technology Supports in the above ideas.
  • The questions that need to be addressed for pre-service teacher development

Chapter 2: Literature Review (mostly from the white paper with some shuffling of the topics, expansion of ideas, and inclusion of some new areas to bring in supporting research.

  • Teacher Continuum and reflection
  • Teacher continuum and collaboration
  • Effects of lesson study groups on teacher practice
  • Technology supports in professional growth
    • Online collaborative communities
    • Digital video
  • Current hurdles to using technology
  • Promising projects that use some of the ideas I will propose

Chapter 3: Research Design (Teaching Study Groups) I think that this would be classified as a quasi-experiment with nonequivalent groups.

Over the course of an academic year, Intern Teachers will engage in collaborative reflective practice about their own teaching through the use of distributed digital video containing annotations. The inquiry groups will be a combination of face-to face group meetings (during regularly scheduled seminar classes held throughout the school year) and in an online discussion community.

The study groups can have various configurations of teachers based on their individual pedagogical needs and the interest of the inquiry group itself. They could be organized by content specific groups, grade level specific groups, or specific inquiry focus groups.

Data will be collected through various instruments throughout the academic year:

  • Fall
    • Reflective Video Lesson
    • Video Paper
  • Winter
    • Reflective Video Lesson
    • PACT Teaching Event
  • Spring
    • Reflective Video Lesson
    • Video Paper

The Measures

  • Reflective Video Lesson (discourse analysis)
    • A single lesson is video taped and then reviewed by the teacher. The teacher then annotated their lesson plan and comments on what they noticed or observed about their own teaching and student learning in the video as the outside observer.
  • Video Paper (Discourse Analysis and Collaborative Inquiry)
    • A collection of video vignettes are put together in a digital video. Then using either VideoPaper Builder or DIVER, teachers comment on the teaching practice and the student learning observed in the video. The video and annotations are uploaded to a collaborative discussion webspace where members of the study group will comment on one another’s video paper.
  • PACT Teaching Event (Quantitative Analysis)
    • The PACT Teaching Event is an authentic teacher assessment tool developed by a statewide consortium of universities (ALL UCs, several CSUs, and a few private universities, including Stanford). Approximately 500-1000 pre-service teachers per year are expected to participate in this assessment during the pilot years. It has an evaluation rubric that has undergone validity and reliability studies. With this measure the performance of study group teachers can be compared to:
      • the state average on the measure
      • averages from specific programs around the state
      • performance of past pre-service teachers at UCSD

Chris


Possible outline... DRAFT

Topic: Developing Effective Teachers for Urban Schools

1. Introduction

  • Why does this matter?
    • The role of the teacher in determining student achievement
    • The need for qualified and effective teachers in urban schools
    • Potential application of this study-- Supporting the recruitment, training, and retention effective teachers in urban schools
  • Defining the terms
    • What are "urban" schools?
    • What are the characteristics of "effective" teachers?
      • Effective v. qualified
  • Why do I care?
    • Discussion of my interest in the issue

2. Literature review

Review studies from two different approaches both of which study teacher efficacy in urban settings...

  • A wisdom of practice approach
    • Drawing on Shulman's "wisdom of practice" approach
    • Learning from case studies of effective urban teachers
  • A design-experiment approach
    • Documented shortcomings of traditional teacher education and professional development programs
    • Initial findings of innovative design experiments


3. Research Design

  • Major research tool: Effective urban high school teacher study group
  • Means of identifying potential participants
    • Use California Department of Education data to ID "urban" high schools in San Diego County -- Select all or representative sample of these schools from which to draw potential focus group participants
    • Draw on Ladsen-Billings model
    • Intersection of effective urban teachers as identified by two groups:
      • High school students at target schools
      • Administrators at target schools
  • Research with study group
    • Multiple group meetings within which participants help to set the agenda-- A "bottom up approach" (sim. to Nieto's format in "What Keeps Teachers Going" text). These meetings will be video- and/or audiotaped for analysis
    • Individual interviews with each participant before the series of study group meetings begins as well as after it concludes.
    • Individual teacher written reflections in response to and/or in preparation for study group meetings.
    • Classroom observation of participating teachers
  • Possible topics to investigate with participants
    • Defining an "effective, urban teacher"
    • Reflecting on own successes and struggles in the classroom
    • Discussion and comparison of experiences in the following areas:
      • Pre-service teacher education
      • In-service professional development
      • Relationships with colleagues and/or administrators -- Participation in a community of learning
      • Experiences with students in and/or out of the classroom
      • Own K-16 education
      • Family and community experiences as relate to teaching
  • Data analysis
    • All interviews and study group discussions will be transcribed for analysis
    • Trends and patterns among the experiences of teachers in the group will be examined. In particular, I am interested in looking for common experiences-- both those easily defined (read the same professional book) and those less easily defined (had a mentor at some point in their life that provided a vision of strong and effective instruction).
    • Comparisons between the findings of the teacher study group regarding urban teacher efficacy and preparation and the criteria stated by students and administrators who helped to identify the participants will be made
    • Comparisons between the findings of this group and research findings from previous studies discussed in the literature review


That's all for now... Heather

Pam's placeholder - outline under construction

What role do interpreters play in the education of deaf children? How do interpreters affect deaf children’s opportunities for learning? Why does it matter?

Introduction: How I became interested in this issue.

Statement of need

Most deaf kids have hearing parents, therefore often don’t have native language models at home. As a result, many deaf kids enter school with a limited vocabulary base in either signed or spoken language. The exception is those parents who are deaf, or by extension, are fluent signers who can model a complete language to their children from birth. Studies show that early exposure to language is one of the best predictors of academic success. What happens when all oral communication between students and teachers are filtered and accessed via a sign language interpreter?

Most deaf kids are in mainstreamed settings, dependent upon interpreters for access to communication (teacher/student, student/student), yet the literature does not have a proportionate number of publications on how interpreters affect the learning outcomes of deaf and hard of hearing students (prob = definition of deaf vs hard of hearing/ can and prefer to function as “hearing�? with little or no structural support)

Lit. Review

Section One: Characteristics of successful learners

Confidence

Level of participation

Literacy

Academic achievement: scores, grades, teacher perception, self-perception, enrollment in college, completion of academic degree

Section Two: Characteristics of deaf students

The field is fraught with controversy about appropriate communication philosophies and technologies for deaf and hard of hearing students.

Deaf kids are not reading above the 3rd-4th grade level by the time they graduate HS.

Many deaf people do not succeed in college (earn a BA degree) – Moores

Section Three: Characteristics of interpreters employed in educational settings

Many interpreters holding jobs in educational settings do not hold certifications or have not demonstrated required standards of interpreting performance.

Many interpreter educators feel ITP graduates are under-prepared and many educational interpreters agree that they are under-prepared for the task of interpreting.

1. Interpreters may not be proficient / descriptions of interpretations a. Jones b. Winston (deaf kids slightly behind—what is the effect? Can’t look two places at the same time). Studies to support assertions? c. Ramsey/Senghas (descriptive study/ethnographic study –elementary level)—it takes a group to develop linguistic competency d. Stedt e. La Bue (discourse analysis: omissions/incoherence, but are results generalizable? Interpreter took no performance eval/had some ASL training/BA in deaf ed/teacher)—transcription limitations (theoretical choices, representation doesn’t include all visual aspects/cues, very detailed but still dependent on researchers and [2] consultant’s opinions. Back translation would be interpretive, but would make the SL and TL renditions accessible to those who don’t know sign. If interpreters are good enough for deaf kids, should they not be good enough for this purpose? Precautions: multiple translations with native English speakers and ASL signers who are bilingual, analysis of transcript (sl) to determine instructor goals, instructional strategies, cues/clues/discourse patterns such as emphasis and attention calling, content, specialized lexicon, etc. f. Patrie g. Depts of Ed (how many educational interpreters currently meet state/federal mandates) h. In how many states are there standards? What percentage of those working in ed settings meet those minimum standards? 2. Active participants vs neutral party a. Metzger b. Roy c. Wadenjsö

Questions to be answered: What percentage of interpreters work in educational settings? What percentage of ITP grads gain employment in K-12 settings?

Section Four: The effects of non-fluent language users on linguistic and cognitive development

Studies of the effects of child care givers as language models or non-fluent signers in deaf classrooms leads to the inference that if an interpreter’s ASL skills are limited = deaf/hard of hearing student’s learning of language and content is hindered. Section Five: Academic discourse

It is important to view discourse beyond vocabulary and content. Role of discourse in the social construction of language/power structures, degree to which interactions and questions can take place in the classroom (Example in ch. 3 of La Bue where the boy waited until the teacher wasn’t busy to ask for clarification), classroom discourse strategies determine future success in academic settings. Important to keep these issues in mind as research is conducted beyond communicative competency when interpreting between English and ASL. Performance assessments are in many ways limited to analysis of content, lexicon, and syntax, since there are no live participants in the interaction (pre videotaped, no back channeling cues or opportunities to request clarification). Even if interpreters can pass a performance test and meet MINIMUM standards, we still need to look carefully at areas of academic discourse known to have an impact on student learning. What are the results of our actions?

What are typical discourse patterns in deaf classrooms when the teacher and students are native users of sign language? Are they comparable to those identified by Cazden, Heath, etc.?

Proposed Research Design

What do interpreters do in the classroom? Range of interpreter competencies (novice vs expert), time and or sightline restrictions, decisions for omissions, cognitive demands, relationship between cohesion and content. Students as active participants/co-constructors of knowledge.

What do they know? (content/linguistic proficiency/teaching strategies/…) Common claims/assertions: Lowest qualified interpreters often placed in elementary settings Ed interpreters need more training and education, esp. re: pedagogy, language (ASL and English proficiency), child development, first and second language acquisition, ethics and decision-making skills, tutoring, and broad content knowledge with concomitant lexical understanding. CIT standards for a generalist…should ed interpreting be a specialization?

Another reality, they must deal with students who have some residual hearing and who are receiving education through a contact variety of sign language, profoundly deaf students with culturally deaf parents who value ASL and the development of a positive self-identity, students who rely on assistive technologies such as hearing aids, FM loop systems, and cochlear implants to augment their residual hearing and build on their lip-reading and spoken language skills. They must work with students of all ages, with varying ranges of language skill and cognitive development. They must work with students who are immigrants to the U.S.

Scope of this study: Deaf kids at the elementary level, primarily in the U.S. and Canada (differing educational systems and practices, although many of the issues are similar).

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