Program Standard 3
Throughout my work at SPU, I have taken two classes on reading and interpreting research. These courses helped me be a critical consumer of research and to think about how to conduct research in my own classroom.In Winter 2017 I took "Applying Research in School Settings," and learned some statistics for the first time in my life. Throughout this quarter, I read and critiqued research articles, commenting on the effectiveness of the study and the reliability of results. I liked that I could review articles on topics that applied to my classroom. I teach a lot of international students for whom English is a second language, so I read Gándara's "Rethinking Bilingual Instruction" (2015) to learn about the benefits of bilingual education. This article examined studies on the cognitive advantages of speaking another language, and I had to be able to critically interpret Gándara's claims. Even the assigned article, such as Mergendoller, Maxwell, and Bellisimo (2006) on problem-based learning allowed me to interpret how this study would apply to my own classroom. As I update my curriculum to a more project and problem-based approach, understanding this data is important to me.
Since I had never taken a statistics class before, all of this was new to me. Like many others, I was daunted by the tricky technical language, and I did appeal to my husband for help on some homework. By working my way through Ravid's Practical Statistics for Educators (2011), I also learned how to interpret data, such as for my data analysis paper. Then, in Winter of 2018 I applied this information to my own classroom.
In the course "Action Research" I learned how to design and run an action research project. One resource I found useful for this course was Sagor's "Guiding School Improvement with Action Research" (2000). Sagor outlines the steps for designing an action research project. By applying my understandings from the previous year, I was intentional about the types of variables I wanted to include and how I would measure my results. I designed an intervention to improve citation skills in my 9th grade classroom. I used resources from the Purdue OWL, Turnitin.com's WriteCheck, and other MLA quizzes to supplement other assignments on citations throughout the course of my project. You can read about my methodology and results here. Overall, through this class I learned how to identify and solve a problem in my classroom. It is important to note that classroom action research experiments are not truly experimental environments- all students get some type of intervention, rather than having a control group!
The information from these classes has helped me to think twice about data that I hear. As a social studies teacher, one way I can apply this in my classroom is through the current events work that my students do. It is important to get information from many sources, and to investigate why different sources have different information. Beyond the usual bias, there are times when data can be interpreted differently to suit a cause. This has happened recently with gun violence statistics, as there is argument over what constitutes a mass shooting, what types of incidents should be included, and if that data should be taken raw or seen as percentage of people. The data interpretation skills I have gained through these research classes allows me to better explain this to my students.
References
Gándara, P. (2015). Rethinking Bilingual Instruction. Educational Leadership, 72(6), 60-64. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.spu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip&db=a9h&AN=102241670&site=ehost-live
Mergendoller, J.R., Maxwell, N.L., & Bellisimo, Y. (2006). The Effectiveness of Problem-Based Instruction: A Comparative Study of Instructional Methods and Student Characteristics. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning, 1(2), 49-69. http://dx.doi.org/10.7771/1541-5015.1026.
Ravid, R. (2011). Practical statistics for educators (5th Edition). Landham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Russell, T., et al. (2016, Aug. 2). MLA formatting and style guide. The Purdue OWL. Retrieved from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
Sagor, R. (2000). What is action research. Guiding school improvement with action research. ASCD.
