Spring 2014 Research Seminar

Your course of action......

Practitioner research is action-oriented inquiry that takes place in the researcher’s own classroom, work or social setting. Practitioner research is seen as a way to explore questions that arise in one’s own practice and/or school; it is seen as a new approach to professional development, transformational learning and educational change. Because researchers are also participants in their own project, this form of research differs from more traditional quantitative and qualitative research approaches. Practitioners will read, analyze and synthesize research by other practitioner researchers as well as design and implement a project of their own. 

 

This capstone experience is not a testimony of intelligence but a processual documentary of yourself as an educator committed to the act of learning about yourself and your students. This capstone process involves authentic learning involving change, transformation, creative thinking, academic writing, learning alongside your students, challenging your teaching and learning paradigms, and risk taking.

Accept this new experience with the natural fascination of inquiry rather than with fear and anxiety. You are conducting your classroom research for your professional and personal self - not your instructor or your UNM faculty members. This research journey is yours and reflects your authentic, sometimes vulnerable self, as a practitioner trying to do something. It will be messy and please do not try to make it any prettier than it happens because it will be contrived and not an accurate telling of your students' story. As the author and storyteller of your teaching and learning, and that of your students in your classroom, this takes courage, conviction, dedication, integrity and ethics. The perspective of yourself as teacher practitioners invites new ways of thinking that will transform yourself as a researcher and educator. Welcome to your next challenge in your heroine's journey.

 

Writing Prompt:

·        Where are you in your implementation of your research project?

     ·        Questions milling around………

·        Emotionally I am……

     ·        How are you organizing yourself, data collection research, reflections……..

Feb. 3 Session #2 SJC Computer Lab

Lynne Lane-APA style & formatting

 1-2 minute UNM video journal about what your practitioner research is about and why you chose UNM for your master’s program to post on http://grad.unm.edu/current-students/video-journals.html

Sept. 9, 2013
SJC Reference Librarian Dori Molletti with our UNM master's cohort.

 

August 26 (session 2)

Reflective Writing with Teaching Vignettes: Capturing the complexity of the Moment

A vignette is a brief, literary sketch. A teaching vignette is a brief story, well-told, about something that happens in your classroom; it includes the writer's perception and reaction to the episode. 

Authentic teaching vignettes are usually characterized by the writer's ability to notice and describe (thick description). The beauty, technique and artistry of vignettes are in the details. Powerful vignettes help us to re-think teaching and learning, including our roles as teachers and learners. Additional, compelling vignettes elicit strong, personal connections and questions which often point beyond the classroom and school. How did things come to be this way? How things might be different? Metaphors from your own life.

Trust your instincts when thinking and writing. If you find that you keep thinking about something that happened, there may be some resonance of a chord. Try to discover, through writing, what that connection is all about. Vignettes raise questions and leave us wondering, pondering. Anecdotes often have the same structure as jokes: they are neatly pulled together by the punch line-the crystal clear ending that resolves all doubt and leaves us satisfied. A vignette captures the writer's uncertainty and wonder; it leaves things open-ended, not neatly packaged. When you set out to write you will be surprised with the surprises you uncover. Trust yourself and the process.

Writing Prompt: Make connections with any of the articles you read (Henderson, Streib or Sanford) and entries in your teacher journal. From now on you will be seeing and making connections with what you read, what you think, and what you write.

WELCOME, Teacher Practitioners

Welcome to your capstone year (Fall 2013-Spring 2014)

I have the privilege to walk beside you during this reflective and introspective journey as you look more closely at yourself as a teacher and learner in your classroom with your students. This is a liberating time for you to think independently, reflexively, and creatively.

Please mark your calendar for Friday, November 8 from 9:30am-3:30pm. You will be sharing your Oral Inquiry Proposal Presentation at the main campus to your committee members. Please arrange your leave with your school principal.

Your coach, fan, advocate & guide
Frances

Fall 2013 (Session 1)

August 19, 2013

Writing Prompts: Things I learned last week & First Reader poem by Billy Collins

• Review & sign POS & Letter of Intent

• Letter to yourself

• Research Question as a moving target

• Intellectual History Introduction

• Review Syllabus Highlights

 

Read Articles for next week (8/26)

1. Brown (Lighting Fire essay)

2. Henderson (Teacher Research in Early Education)

3. Steib (Visiting & revisiting the trees)

4. Sanford (It all adds up)

Other:

Levin. July/August 2006). Action research: What is it? Why is it important? Exchange. 

Spring 2013
THANK YOU, Kyle, for your generosity in sharing your teacher practitioner research story withn our master cohort on Monday, February 4. One of the most signicant conversations you shared was: practitioner research is on the process and what they, as teachers, are learning along the way. Enjoy the photos from the evening visit.  Frances & Teacher Practitioners

WELCOME Teacher Practitioners F2020

Writing Prompt:

Rhiannon Giddens singin I'm On My Way

The following quotes are excerpted from Fall 2011 Emerging Photographer (The Documentary Issue). Do you find any correlations to the work you are doing as teacher practitioners as you look more closely within your classrooms and how you will portray and share this with others?

"The good photograph is not the object; the consequences of the photograph are the objects. So that no one would say, how did you do it, where did you find it, but they would say that such things could be."   Grotte, M. (Fall 2011). Emerging Photographer (The Documentary Issue), p. 37.

What does it take to be a great documentary photographer? "For starters, the projects you pursue should be, first and foremost, personal. "There should be a deep caring for both the subject and the making of beautiful photographs," notes acclaimed documentary photographer Darcy Padilla. "A photograph should have a certain honesty and personal conviction that resonates. To care is to take risks."

"Absorb the work of others and deeply examine how they did what they did."

"Documentary photography chooses you, not the other way around. It's a calling hard to ignore. And ultimately, it's heart that matters. Be daring. Be genuine. ANything less, and it will show."

Witty, P. (Fall 2011). A photo Editor's Insights. Emerging Photographer (The Documentary Issue), p. 45-46.

Bronx Boys by Stephen Shames chronicles the lives of young boys coming of age in a community ravaged by drugs, violence and gangs.