SectionA

8:30 PM I have started researching dissertations for the one assignment. Looking through the Proquest NCSU library sight, I see that it is more difficult than I thought to find qualitative research. Many of the dissertations are mixed methods. The goal of this journal is to benefit me as a researcher through reflective practice. I have started looking into researching the attitudes of teachers towards a video component to the teacher evaluation process. My interest stems from the conversations with school administrators and personal experiences with teachers during the evaluation process. The current process of relying solely on the principal's judgment as the main evaluation tool is dated. I once had a teacher completely disagree with my evaluation of her performance. Had there been video proof, the teacher could provide his or her own feedback. 9:00 PM As I think about my own identity as a researcher I realize that my stage is that of an infant. I frequently read educational journals and articles in preparation for classes I teach and simply out of curiosity. However as a formal researcher my experience is limited. Hopefully this class and the exercises will benefit my skill set. 4:10 PM These are my class notes: Qualitative study – be very particular with your words and define them carefully citing these definitions from textbooks. What is Interpretivism? Is this subjectivy or intersubjectivity> [|**http://vraeart.com/**] - The researcher’s tool – we have blind-spots and different sensitivities. We cannot fully know the researcher’s subjectivity. Qualitative research is not investigative reporting – this is not sufficient. It tends to be written in the first person (I) (a personal voice); typically one section, but the personal voice usually comes through the subjects. Husserls’s Stance: Intersubjective experience - [|**http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/husserl/**] Creswell – five philosophical assumptions: Crotty Research Process:  7:30 PM Post-positivism: - Positivist believe there is only one truth. – Post-Positivism believes they can come close to the truth and build on preexisting theory. This theory established the basis for your research. Social Constructivism – social realities – seek understanding of world in which they live and work. Interpretive Strand Define each as a:  a) Post-Positivism – Theoretical perspective – based on it is an orientation based on outcomes of the world  b) Critical race theory – Theoretical perspective and methodology as well  c) Online discourse analysis – methods  d) Participation action research – method  e) Case Study – methodology  f) Postmodernism – theoretical perspective  g) Grounded theory – Theoretical perspective and methodology as well  h) Phenomenology – theoretical perspective  i) Interview - method <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';"> j) Ethnography - <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';"> k) Patterns of meaning – <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">These all underline chapters 1 and 3 of your study. Be clear on what your study is and where it falls into one or more of these definitions. <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Reflective Research Journal – use three or more times a week – record important ideas, definitions, <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Dissertation Critique: 7:00 PM <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Grounded Theory Presentation with: (September 26) <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Validity – Guba & Lincoln – measure what you say you will measure – establish validity. <span style="color: #ff0066; font-family: 'Accolade-Bold','serif';">2:00 PM  Grounded Theory: The strength of grounded theory not only resides in its comparative methodology but moreover, in its interactive essence (Charmaz, 2006, 2007,2008a,2008e,2009b). The grounded theory emphasis on theory construction influences how we interact with our participants and the questions we bring to the empirical world (see Charmaz, 2009a, 2009b). Using the Method: <span style="color: #ff0066; font-family: 'Accolade-Bold','serif';">12:00 PM The logic of grounded theory involves fragmenting empirical data through coding and working with resultant codes to construct abstract categories that fit these data and offer a conceptual analysis of them (Charmaz, 2005; Glaser, 1978,1998). Three Versions of Grounded Theory: Constructivist, Objectivist and PostPositivist Epistemological Differences in Versions of Grounded Theory Mixed Methodologies - Researchers used mixed methodologies in practice for varied purposes including to: <span style="color: #ff0066; font-family: 'Accolade-Bold','serif';">9:00 PM As learn about Grounded Theory I wonder is this is an avenue I want to pursue. I am still unclear about if my dissertation should be a quantitative or qualitative study but GT works to develop a theory which I am not trying to accomplish. I hope to understand teachers attitudes towards the use of video as part of the teacher evaluation tool. <span style="color: #ff0066; font-family: 'Accolade-Bold','serif';">8:30 PM I first looked at studying teacher evaluation and quality teaching practices and came up with this: “Do teachers proficiently implement practices they view as necessary for effective teaching?” but realize that though this may be a good start but I believe it needs to be a How or What question. Proficiency would be difficult to measure. So I thought: How about this: "How do teacher's values and assumptions about effective teaching impact their teaching practice?" <span style="color: #ff0066; font-family: 'Accolade-Bold','serif';">9:30 PM After further consideration I have revised it to be “"How Are Teachers' Values and Assumptions about Effective Teaching Reflected in Their Teaching Practice? But now I wonder how I will we examine their "teaching practice" through an observation or interview, or both? <span style="color: #ff0066; font-family: 'Accolade-Bold','serif';">7:30 PM  After further thinking, my thought is that maybe I should do the OBSERVATION first, then the interview with the teacher about his/her concept of effective teaching. If I do the reverse, it may make them self-conscious about how they teach. This should keep the idea of not making teachers self-conscious in mind when I draft the IRB. <span style="color: #ff0066; font-family: 'Accolade-Bold','serif';">4:30 PM  One thing that I have come to realize that qualitative research is still evolving, just as are my understandings of the topic, especially in the case-study field. Our group project is slowly taking form though we all feel that we are walking blind through the process because non of the group members have significant experience with qualitative research and putting together a dissertation. 8:30 PM Our group is starting to come together. We have created a google document and I have located five books on teacher evaluation which will be helpful with the research. Additionally we have collected some articles and research studies from which we can pull information for the first chapter. Linda and I have begun the writing process and I have put together an observation template which we will all use. This research journey is still difficult for me. I feel that I understand the differences between qualitative and quantitative research and the class presentations have been very beneficial to understanding the different types of qualitative research. It is still difficult to begin and formulate a study. The research questions we have been working on are as follows: Things to target: Student-Teacher Relationships, Effective practices (should we subgroup this: questioning, differentiation, strategies), assessment, reflection, leadership, collegial participation 1. In your mind, what is it that makes for effective teaching? Probe: What are specific characteristics/strategies you would see in an effective teacher? 2. What is the relationship between effective teaching and assessment? 3. Have you ever been in a situation where you felt like your students didn’t “get it”? Probe 1: What was (or would be) your response? 4. Imagine that, for some reason, you had to turn your classroom over to a substitute teacher for the remainder of the year. What would you want to know about that teacher to make you feel more comfortable with the transition? 9:30 PM The IRB has been completed and our group will meet again this week to compare notes. We met briefly yesterday to agree on the questions, the format of the observations, and the observation tool. We also decided as a group to wait at least 24 hours after the observation to complete the interview. This will allow the subject ample time to reflect on the observation.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif'; font-size: 21.3333px;">Section A: Research Journey ****<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif';"> – **<span style="font-family: 'Bookman Old Style','serif';">This section should be devoted to your initial and ongoing engagement in identifying your research questions, your related beliefs and bias. In this section, you should also consider your conceptual/theoretical framework for your research [where are you anchored as part of the research community]—what is the particular lens to look at your research question(s). Thus, this section focuses upon the initial journey of your research. It also focuses upon you as “researcher”… your own thoughts about your identity as researcher, and your engagement in the research process.
 * Tuesday, 23 August 2011 **
 * Thursday, 25 August 2011 **
 * Monday, 29 August 2011 **
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Subjective is the author’s prose about the animals; intersubjective is a discussion about the written prose.
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Subjectivity – students’ interaction with math – Intersubjectivity – our observation of the students’ interaction.
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Ontological, asking the nature of reality and exploring it through quotes and themes found in the words of the participants.
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Epistemological, asking about the relationship between the researcher and the participants while exploring it through collaboration, field time with participants, and becoming an “insider.”
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Rhetorical, asking about the language of research by writing in a literary, informal style with first person narrative and personal voice.Methodological, asking about the purpose of the research and working with details, placing these in context, and revising questions based upon field experiences.
 * Tuesday, 30 August 2011 **
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Advocacy – Participatory – Creswell
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Recursive – repetition of acting and reflective
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Dialectic research –
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Critical Stance – seeks to reflexivity step outside if the dominant ideology to create a space of resistive knowledge production that destabilizes oppressive material and symbolic relations of dominance. Assumes there are dominant societal structures. Partial truths. Social justice – Feminism, Critical Race Theory – Queer Theory – Disabilities studies.
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Pragmatism – Creswell – looks at cause and effect.
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Your Research Journey
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Method, design, engagement
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Research article critique based on a qualitative study
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Jenny Lee’s dissertation
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">What is the expected standard for each of these elements?
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Is it clear and specific?
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Does the author embed the discussion in qualitative understating?
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">13-15 pages – a thread runs all the way through
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">How would you change this
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">How do we find these?
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">ETD – Electronic Thesis and Dissertation
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Proquest Dissertation through NCSU – in databases – D for dissertations – advanced search
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Must have conceptual framework and validity
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Due – September 26 – email Dr. Kasworm to see if it meets the criteria.
 * Monday, 05 September 2011 **
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Linda
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Sara
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Prepare and Lead class – 20-25 minutes – 10-15 minutes discussion or group activity
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Assigned readings
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Key Expectations:
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Provide informed coverage of the methodology, facilitation and engagement of class (beyond question and answer)
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Be creative – best practices for adult learning
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Go beyond the information in the text – supplement with educational journals, periodicals, books.
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Provide handouts of key terms, understandings, readings.
 * <span style="color: #0099ff; font-family: 'Georgia','serif';">Conflation (mushing them together) between method and interpretations.
 * <span style="color: #ff0066; font-family: 'BirthdayGreetz','serif'; font-size: 29.3333px;">Saturday, 10 September 2011 **
 * <span style="color: #0070c0; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';">These are my notes from researching ** Grounded Theory Methods (much of this is from the Social Justice Research article)
 * Conduct data collection and analysis simultaneously in an iterative process.
 * Analyze actions and processes rather than themes and structure.
 * Use comparative methods.
 * Draw on data (e.g. narratives and descriptions) in service of developing new conceptual categories.
 * Develop inductive categories through systematic data analysis.
 * Emphasize theory contruction rather than description or application of current theories.
 * Engage in theoretical sampling.
 * Search for variation in the studied categories or process.
 * Pursue developing a category rather than covering a specific empirical topic. (Charmaz, 2010).
 * Compare data with data to develop codes.
 * Compare data with codes.
 * Compare codes and raise significant codes to tentative categories.
 * Compare data and codes with the categories.
 * Treat major category(ies) as a concept(s
 * Compare concept with concept (may include comparing our concept with disciplinary concepts).
 * <span style="color: #ff0066; font-family: 'BirthdayGreetz','serif'; font-size: 29.3333px;">Sunday, 11 September 2011 **
 * 1) Method contains tools for analyzing and situating processes.
 * Define relevant processes
 * Demonstrate their context
 * Specify the conditions in which these processes occur
 * Conceptualize their phases
 * Explicate what contributes to their stability and/or change
 * Outline their consequences
 * 1) Method can aid researchers in explicating their participants’ implicit meanings and actions.
 * 2) Method can aid social justice research to increase the abstract level of conceptualization of their analyses. They can build complexity into their analyses that challenges conventional explanation of the studied phenomenon.
 * 3) The constructivist version of grounded theory attends to context, positions, discourses, and meanings and actions and thus can be used to advance understandings of how power, oppression, and inequities differentially affect individuals, groups, and categories of people.
 * 4) Method provides tools to reveal links between concrete experiences of suffering and social structure, culture, and social practices or policies (Charmaz, 2007; Choi & Holroyd, 2007; Einwhoner & Spencer, 2005; Rier, 2007; Sandstrom, 1990, 1998).
 * Constructivist: Views knowledge as located in time, space, and situation and takes into account the researcher’s contruction of emergent concepts.
 * Objectivist: Shares an emphasis on constructing emergent concepts but emphasizes positivist empiricism with researcher neutrality while aiming for abstract generalizations independent of time, place and specific people.
 * PostPositivist: Places less emphasis on emergence than the objectivist and constructivist approaches, as it provides preconceived coding and analytic frameworks to apply to data. Yet, postpositivist grounded theory views reality as fluid, evolving, and open to change.
 * Objectivist grounded theory assumes that a neutral observer discovers data in a unitary external world. Data gathering does not raise questions about researchers’ tacit assumptions, privileged statuses, or the particular locations from which they view studied life. The researcher stands outside the studied phenomenon. Objectivist grounded theory aims for parsimonious abstract generalizations about relationships between variables that explain empirical phenomena. These generalizations constitute a middle-range theory explaining the studied phenomenon.
 * Constructivist grounded theory encourages multiple realities and the viewer is part of what is viewed. Subjectivities matter. Values shape what stands as fact. To the extent possible, constructivist grounded theorists enter the studied phenomenon and attempt to see it from the inside. Researchers and participants co-construct the data through interaction. Representations of the data are inherently problematic and partial.
 * 1) Construct instruments
 * 2) Corroborate findings
 * 3) Reduce cultural and investigator biases
 * 4) Improve clinical trials
 * 5) Address research participants ‘experience
 * 6) Demonstrate credibility
 * 7) Increase generalizability
 * 8) Inform professional practice and/or public policy
 * <span style="color: #ff0066; font-family: 'BirthdayGreetz','serif'; font-size: 29.3333px;">Tuesday, 13 September 2011 **
 * <span style="color: #ff0066; font-family: 'BirthdayGreetz','serif'; font-size: 29.3333px;">Thursday, 15 September 2011 **
 * <span style="color: #ff0066; font-family: 'BirthdayGreetz','serif'; font-size: 29.3333px;">Monday, 19 September 2011 **
 * <span style="color: #ff0066; font-family: 'BirthdayGreetz','serif'; font-size: 29.3333px;">Thursday, 22 September 2011 **
 * <span style="color: #ff0066; font-family: 'BirthdayGreetz','serif'; font-size: 29.3333px;">Sunday, 09 October 2011 **
 * Tuesday, 18 October 2011 **
 * Tuesday, 25 October 2011 **