Reflection

First, I'd like to say that this has been the best classroom experience thus far in the Special Education tract. I'd definitely continue to infuse the activities into the overall scope of each week's session. They really helped me wrap my brain around a lot of the concepts and objectives that would otherwise be difficult to explain and comprehend. A good example of this was the coding activity. That activity really helped me understand the aim and focus of what it means to be a qualitative researcher.
With that said, my opinion of research has definitely changed. I have found a great appreciation for the amount of work, dedication, planning, and effort that goes into developing a research question, finding related articles, attempting to add to that research, as well as answering the initial research problem. It's not easy, that's for sure.
As a special educator I am, by law, per IDEA, supposed to integrate research-driven and empirically proven methods to help educate my students. This class has helped and will continue to help me uncover these methods as well as discover their transferability and usable qualities for the education of this population. It has also helped my identify what research is "good" and what research is "bad".
While I really don't want to be a researcher or do any more research, I feel much better equipped to answer pertinent and nagging questions that surround the field of education. Research in this field is and will continue to be crucial as policy makers will continue to base decisions and changes upon the research. Therefore every decision I make as an educator will be based on previous research and any changes to the curriculum will also be reliant on new research. This class has definitely helped me understand and accept this relationship.

Ethnographic Study: The Beach

Kinda cool to be at the beach during spring break, here's what I saw:

The house I am in overlooks a bar called The Windjammer. Upon inspection, it seems a cross section of humanity enters and exits for meals and refreshment. Men and women of all ages and races frequent this establishment. The line out front swells down the front stairs as young people, old people and families scramble down the sidewalk for the opportunity at food and refreshment. That's not to say there isn't a majority of people that frequents the Windjammer. This majority is what I would classify as "frat boys". They mingle by volleyball courts, playing, games, drinking, and conversing.
While I am not sure that they are fraternity members or even college students, I must classify them as such due to the similarities they share with my previous experiences with the social group I identify as "frat boys". The definable features of "frat boys" as I see it is a propensity for using the word "dude", sandals, high fives, backwards baseball caps, shorts, lame tribal tattoos, and the complete lack of T-shirts despite the current temperature. Researcher bias? Perhaps.
As the J. Giles Band blasts from the Windjammer speakers, the "frat boys" compete in a beach volleyball game almost as intense as the final scene from the movie "Sideout". The high-fives are in full effect as "dude" after "dude" hits a "killer shot, brah". Eventually the game ends and once the chest bumps and high fives are through,it's off to the bar for another round before the next game ensues.

Reich Article

The author of this article is taking a look at the reasoning and deductive skills involved in multiple choice test taking. He then weighs the results against the guidelines the test makers included the questions for. Essentially, the author is testing the quality of the state adminstered test against the state standard education by using not only the results of the tests themselves but the individual thought processes of each student taking the test in regard to how they produced each answer. All in all, the article represents a fairly complicated but understandibly important test of validity that has the potential of influincing and shaping how we educate and test students going forward.

If I had the opportunity to ask questions to the researcher the first question I would ask is if he plans to do this test on a larger scale? More studetns? Across multiple states? etc.

I would then ask if he expects to see similar results?

I would then ask what considerations should be made to future history curriculums and tests?

I would then ask what forms of test taking represent "best practices" in regard to using the proper reasoning to produce the correct answer? Essay? Short answer? etc.

How effective of a measure are the "think aloud" sessions? What I mean is as an observer in the think aloud 1:1 setting, how reliant is that method of really letting the student think-aloud? Would an empty, microphoned room elicit different responses?