For my other grad class, ERL 552, I need a topic to research. My mind is swimming with ideas, but I can't seem to come up with a concrete direction for my energies. Teaching 9th and 10th grade English offers a wide berth of possibilities, yet my brain is working against me. My last inquiry project explored SSR (silent sustained, self-selected reading) for improving reading, and I feel I have spent a lot of time reflecting on other RA (Reading Apprenticeship) topics. I need something new...
One part of literacy and writing that I feel I have never gotten right is vocabulary instruction. While my college prep kiddos do well with vocabulary lessons, quizzes, and incorporating words into their writing, my lower level students have never had a modicum of success. Researching and testing different vocabulary strategies could help me solve this, and it's a topic of discussion in our department right now.
Unfortunately, I find it a bit of a boring topic. Not because I view it as unimportant; simply because I do not find it an interesting research topic. I'm hoping I'll get more into it within the next week.
My classmates and I did a visual map of our day to day lives in school to brainstorm ideas. Vocabulary did not pop up on my visual map. Collaborative learning, organization, interventions (of various types), metacognition, team/relationship building, reading, writing, portfolios, technology and me voraciously running around the school seemed to be my central themes. The first benefit of this? It showed me why I'm so tired at the end of a week! : ) The second benefit was that it showed what was really important in my teaching life (see above list).
But now what do I do with that? What could I research about collaborative learning? Organization for teachers? Interventions for struggling readers? I would need to be able to narrow the focus quite a lot with any of these topics, and I only have 1 semester to implement research in my classroom and document the data. I feel as though vocabulary instruction would be easier to do than anything on my second list (and I do want to improve it in my classroom).
So...I need advice. Anyone have some ideas and/or perspectives on this?
When looking to see what you want to research, you need to first define your research question. What do you want to know about vocab instruction? About organization? About collaborative learning? Etc. If, for example, you are looking to compare how effective vocab instruction is in affecting overall achievement in the class, you would need to start with assessment scores and compare. You would also need to be sure that you have addressed any other variables that could impact such outcomes. From there, you need to decide how best to present the data (ie SPSS tables and analysis).
ReplyDeleteIf you want to explore the impact or effectiveness of teacher or classroom organization, you could come up with some interview questions and approach it from a qualitative standpoint. Depending on the question, you could even use a mixed methods approach of both qualitative and quantitative.
Either way, start first with what your most pressing question is and be sure that you have access and time to the data to either prove or disprove your hypothesis about your question.
Sorry, small tutorial on research but hope it helps.