notes for my group: Deconstruction/Reconstruction or Art Ed & Visual Literacy

In her article, "Making a Case for Design-Based Learning," which appeared in Arts Education Policy Review, Meredith Davis makes a case for a design-based art curriculum--a curriculum that analyzes the elements of design and applies them to the production of a visual product--as one strategy for "curbing the marginalization of the arts in schools."  She argues that some of the dominant language in education reform arguments (hands-on problem solving, project-based instruction, and portfolio assessment) is borrowed directly from design education and that design-based learning is a natural fit for a constructivist approach to present outcomes-oriented education goals.  Davis sights the work of Michael Joyce, a professor of English at Vassar, as making an argument that "a technological shift in human consciousness, brought about by hypermedia, that is as consequential as the shift from an oral to print culture" has occured and that the processes of writing have fundamentally changed as a result, making it a visual as well as verbal endeavor.

More recently, Renee Sandell of George Mason University wrote "Using Form+Theme+Context (FTC) for Rebalancing 21st-Century Art Education" for Studies in Art Education.  In this article she suggests that the unique needs of the 21st century require a reconsideration of the art education curriculum to equip students to "encode visual concepts through creating art and to decode meaning by responding to society's images, ideas, and media."  Her approach attempts to maintain the separateness of art from other forms of visual culture (she likens it to poetry) while instituting a systemic approach to decoding all visual data (art or otherwise).  Her system recognizes artwork as a product of unique cultural, historical, and technical pressures and attempts to provide a framework for picking apart these details, but she puts more emphasis on unique creative response and less on formal problem solving than the approach advocated by Meredith Davis.

A brief history of one version of the notion of "visual literacy" can be found here:

http://www.ivla.org/org_hist_1st_pers.htm

Brainstorming

Watch How You Hold That Crayon

This article talks about a rising trend in early education to have occupational therapists improve students' fine motor abilities (particularly in regard to writing skills).  The article provides a variety of testimonials from parents about their motivations for hiring a therapist (preschool admissions criteria; difficulties experienced during progress in elementary school) and suggests a variety of possible reasons that students may be increasingly displaying fine motor deficits (penmanship no longer directly taught in school; overemphasis on academic preparation in tasks that do not engage fine motor skills).  Interestingly, this article appeared in the 'Fashion & Style' section of the New York Times, not the 'Education' section, and the article seems to focus on a very financially privileged segment of the student population, but it's difficult to tell whether this is because these fine motor deficits are unique to these privileged students or whether they are only the population with the means to pay for such specialized remediation.

I've held on to this article (it's nearly a year old) because as I read it, it occurred to me that while students have to wait to acquire the knowledge base for writing letters and numbers before they can begin to practice their fine motor skills on this writing activities, they do not have to wait to have these knowledge sets to practice fine motor skills in an art context.  I think it would be interesting to create a research project that measured the effects of exposure to art materials/activities in early childhood on later writing abilities.  This could be done by implementing an early childhood curriculum that specifically increases exposure to art materials/activities and then comparing their later written work against a group of students who did not have access to the experimental curriculum.

Considering Questions and Methods

Questions:  Why do these kids always sigh and roll their eyes when I ask them to pull out a piece of DRAWING paper? Do they hate drawing or fear it?

The most direct way to determine whether your students’ reservations are the result of hatred or fear would be to conduct a survey.  Ask questions about how they feel before, during, and after the drawing process; whether they ever draw outside of school or unprompted by schoolwork; find out if the subject matter has an effect on student perception of the task.  Some of these questions could be asked before a study is performed to help determine a baseline and further hone variable and then a routine could be established in which students are given drawing tasks and asked to gauge their feelings at different parts of the process.  To measure whether the drawing task itself or related curricular factors are to blame, you would need to find a way to conduct drawing tasks under differing conditions and students would have to be far enough removed from routine expectations (for example, if they expect a larger project to fallow preliminary sketching as a normal part of workflow in your classroom) to determine whether expected outcomes are to be blamed.

Chapter 3 and 4

Chapter 3

Mindwork 1

Possible research question:

Would incorporation of visual planning strategies increase student engagement in all elements of our existing preschool curriculum (Welcome, Reading, Circle, Small Group, Centers)?

What is my history with visual planning strategies?

Although my emphasis in undergrad was creative writing, my creative writing process always begins with the visualization of a scene from which I then choose and record details.  Perhaps closer to what I’m proposing to study, when I plan a paper (creative or otherwise), I usually sketch out a diagram of its organization—what scene or information set will go where—prior to writing the paper.  Further, my second major as an undergrad was in Art History and I enjoyed the aspect of linking information to a visual as a recall strategy.

What do I know about the differences in types and uses of visual planning strategies?

In addition to the writing and recall strategies listed above, I’ve observed several preschool teachers use a whiteboard to outline their planned activities at the start of a school day and I’ve led students through activities using a white board where they observed the marks that I was making and guessed at the end product (this may be loosely related since it involves visualization and anticipation).  Also, preprinted schedules are a staple of the early childhood education and there are a variety of children’s books that attempt to model behavior visually and I’ve seen these incorporated in preschool lessons.

Things I’ve noticed about visual planning strategies…

In most of the classrooms that I’ve observed, the preprinted materials tend to blend into the surroundings and be forgotten by both teachers and students.  On the other hand, students are often very interested in observing how teachers make these materials and follow closely when things are drawn/written in front of them.  I’ve seen students point to schedules that have been drawn in front of them (when prompted by a question about their day) but I’ve never seen students point to preprinted materials this way.  In terms of making their own visual plan, students this young often lack confidence in their mark making/representational skills.

To which aspects of the curriculum might I add some kind of visual planning strategy?

I’d like to add teacher created visual aids (not preprinted, but made on the spot) to Welcome, Reading, Circle and Small Group elements of the curriculum and student created visual aids to the Center element of the curriculum (though children could dictate these to teacher facilitators if they are not comfortable creating the visual on their own).

What sources do I know already that I might consult?

I know that the Tools of the Mind curriculum has developed and incorporated similar tools into their lessons. 

What people might I ask or contact as resources?

Preschool teachers that I’m currently working with or have worked with in the past.  Faculty at the University.

Where would I go to find out more?

Jstor, Eric, etc.

Mindwork 2

How many options do you have for further, more focused search?

-          A textbook with a chapter called “Integrating Verbal and Visual Planning Strategies.”

-          A variety of articles about the Tools of the Mind curriculum.

-          A variety of materials on visual learning ALTHOUGH very little with reference to behavioral impacts

-          A variety of research on use of visual tools as a planning strategy for learners with autism

What do you know now that you didn’t know before?

That visual tools are being used to engage autistic students.  This is interesting in that a lot of tools that are developed to remediate learning for students with specific difficulties can be generalized to the benefit of the entire classroom.

Are there alternative keywords?

I’ve tried a variety of permutations such as “visual teaching,” “visual learning,” “visual planning” and each of these with the word “visual” replaced with “graphic.”  I’ve used these alone and in conjunction with “early childhood,” “preschool,” “behavior management,” and “student engagement.”

Do you need to consult another electronic source?

I’ll try the University’s online academic article search engines next.  I find that it becomes easier to fine tune search language when you move to a purely academic set of articles because common parlance in these types of journals tends to be a little more specific.  Also, once you stumble upon an article that closely addresses your topic, it becomes easy to check that article’s reference list and so on.

Working Bibliography

Britsch, S. (2010).  Photo-Booklets for English Language Learning: Incorporating Visual Communication into Early Childhood Teacher Preparation.   Early Childhood Education Journal, vol. 38 (no. 3), p 171-7.

                 …Teacher training, too, devotes insufficient attention to either visual literacy or visual communication. This article provides a discussion of the role of the visual in English language development as a basis for a sample photography project that can be incorporated into a course for pre-service teachers in methods of teaching ELLs. Pre-service teachers thus experience the project first-hand in terms of image creation and the planning of appropriate content, language, and visual literacy objectives. The resulting visual products then function as teaching resources themselves; however, effective visual learning for ELLs requires that teachers possess such an informed understanding of the techniques that structure and assist language development. (From abstract)

Guerra, N. S. (2009). LIBRE Stick Figure Tool.  Intervention in School and Clinic, vol. 44 (no. 4), p 229-33.

The LIBRE Stick Figure Tool (LSFT) is a graphic organizer for the problem-solving application of the LIBRE Model counseling approach that is designed to facilitate and to provide a reference for an individual's self-regulated problem solving. The LSFT provides teacher-facilitators and students with visual prompts by providing some direction and cues for self-reflection and assessment leading to decision making and action planning. The teacher facilitates the process using open-ended questions, summarization, and restatements to clarify, elaborate, and specify the student's responses to each step of the process but offers no judgments, suggestions, or opinions about the student's problem-solving processing. Ultimately, the process aims to move the dyad from facilitator-directed problem solving to student self-regulated problem solving. An example of an LSFT problem-solving interaction is provided. (From abstract)

Olshansky, B. (2003).  Visual Tools for Visual Learners.  School Arts, vol. 102 (no. 5), p 51-3.

                Picturing Writing: Fostering Literacy through Art (Picturing Writing) and Image-Making within the Writing Process (Image-Making) are dynamic programs designed to support the literacy learning of children with diverse learning styles. These art-based approaches to literacy learning use quality picture books and ongoing art experiences to provide visual and kinesthetic tools to visual and kinesthetic learners. (From abstract)

Doherty, Martin J., Anderson, James R., Howieson, Lynne (2009). The Rapid Development of Explicit Gaze Judgment Ability at 3 Years.  Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, vol. 104 (no. 3), p 296-312.

            Two studies examined development of the ability to judge what another person is looking at. In Study 1, 54 2- to 4-year-olds judged where someone was looking in real-life, photograph, and drawing formats. A minority of 2-year-olds, but a majority of older children, passed all tasks, suggesting that the ability arises at around 3years of age. (From abstract)

Wellhousen, Karyn.  Giles, Rebecca M. (2005).  Building Literacy Opportunities into Children’s Block Play: What Every Teacher Should Know. Childhood Education, vol. 82 (no. 2), p 74-8

            The writers consider how block play can contribute to children's learning in the area of literacy. Noting that the block center can provide an effective arena for developing the skills and knowledge necessary for young children's literacy experience, the writers discuss how block play introduces and reinforces such crucial concepts as visual discrimination, use of abstract symbols, oral language production, and purposeful reading and writing… (From abstract)

Frey, Nancy. Fisher, Douglas. (2010) Reading and the Brain: What Early Childhood Educators Need to Know.  Early Childhood Education Journal, vol. 38 (no. 2), p 103-10.

            …We also discuss the importance that visuals play in learning and then note that children are hardwired to imitate others, which is why teacher modeling is so important. We conclude the article with future research needs and implications for educators. (From abstract)

Phillips, Roger D., Gorton, Rebecca L., Pinciotti, Patricia. Sachdev, Anuradha. (2010) Promising Findings on Preschoolers' Emergent Literacy and School Readiness In Arts-integrated Early Childhood Settings. Early Childhood Education Journal, vol 38 (no 2), p 111-22.

                An approach to early childhood education that integrates visual and performing arts throughout the preschool curriculum—Art as a Way of Learning—was implemented in a program (Promoting and Supporting Early Literacy through the Arts) designed to improve the emergent literacy and school readiness of at-risk young children in community-based preschool settings. A quasi-experimental pre-post treatment-only design was used to explore this program’s potential effects in a real-world setting. Preliminary results revealed improvements in young children’s emergent literacy on a number of targeted and standardized measures after participation in the program. This arts-integrated approach to the teaching of and learning in young children shows considerable promise and warrants a rigorous test of its effects.  (From abstract)

Christensen, Lois McFadyen. Kirkland, Lynn Dotty (2009).  Early Childhood Visual Arts Curriculum.  Childhood Education, vol. 86 (no. 2), p 87-92.

            The writers maintain that early childhood education that focuses on literacy, numeracy, and assessment suppresses crucial experience of creative verbal reflection in children and art education is essential to their optimal self development. The writers stress that introducing art education in early childhood curriculum helps children make connections with history, geography, art and literature, besides countering the passivity of a standards-based curriculum. (Abstract)

Trimis, E., Savva, A. (2009).  Artistic Learning in Relation to Young Children's Chorotopos: An In-Depth Approach to Early Childhood Visual Culture Education. Early Childhood Education Journal, vol. 36 (no. 6), p. 527-39.

               

Soundy, Cathleen S.; Guha, Smita; Qiu, Yun (2007).  Picture Power: Placing Artistry and Literacy on the Same Page.  YC Young Children, vol. 62 (no. 3), p. 82-8.

                A study examined the relationship between children's visual and verbal literacies. Participants were 22 kindergarten students, who drew pictures and wrote descriptions of homes. Findings revealed that picture drawing was an effective way to enhance children's creative self-expression and literacy. Other findings of the study are discussed, and recommendations for future research are provided. (Abstract)

Do you need more current articles or books?

No, all of these are from within the last 10 years.  If anything, I think going further back in the research to find something that more specifically matches my research question may be necessary.

Can you eliminate some sources you initially thought were valuable/relevant?

I suspect that half or less of these will be useful for my project but they caught my interest as being in some way (even if only tangentially) related and in some cases possibly useful for other projects that are of interest to me.  I’ll have to check these articles out in greater depth and rethink my research question to see what sticks and hopefully the ones that do will lead me toward articles of even greater relevance.

Have you included enough different types of materials?

Probably not.  There are a variety of journals represented here, but these are all journal articles.  As noted above, there is at least one book that I’m interested in checking out at this point, but I haven’t physically handled it yet so I’ve not included it here.

Where do you need to go next?  What do you wish you’d found?

I wish I’d found articles that specifically explored a connection between visual materials and planning or student engagement (or executive function—as this seems to be a closely related term).  So far, I haven’t found anything that explicitly addresses my research question.

Is this a time to revise or refine your research question?

I’m not sure.  I’ve tried a variety of related terms but still haven’t found what I’m looking for.  When I broaden to a category (searching for just “visual” in place of “visual planning” for example), I get hints of similar ideas but nothing close enough to substitute some new specific language and without specific language, I’m left adrift in the sea of interesting but not quite right articles.

Chapter 4

Mindwork 1

Emic Stance:

Ironically, as I consider my emic stance, I realize that I am largely an outsider in my classroom.  My racial, socioeconomic, and educational background is different from the majority of students I serve and the regular teaching and administrative staff of the preschool that I work in.  In spite of this, I don’t feel that the cultural gaps that exist are all that large.  My father grew up with very limited resources and we “crossed the tracks” (this is a literal geographical social division in the small town I grew up in—like in a Springsteen song) every time we went to visit his side of the family.  My mother also grew up with limited means, but she was from an even smaller, predominantly agricultural community where everyone was poor and such divisions weren’t as apparent.  Which leads me to another significant difference…  Columbia is a much larger and much more diverse community than the one in which I spent my preschool years.  However, we moved here in my adolescence and in most respects, the small town I grew up in is more foreign to me than the culture here.  Finally, the program that I implement in the classroom is designed as an outreach, where University students attempt to supplement assumed deficiencies in the learning and learning environments of the students that we reach.  There is a distinct difference between the time our program is in charge of the classroom and the time that the classroom teachers are in charge in almost every respect: behavior expectations, discipline procedures, curricular goals, etc.  And while I hate to admit it, I often see the two (our practices and their practices) as being in direct opposition.

Etic Stance:

To get a complete view of our educational environment and the function of my program within it, I think you would need to interview the parents of our students, discover their goals and hopes for their children and their vision for how their children might reach those goals.  I sometimes question the role of a targeted literacy curriculum in early childhood education, but I’d be curious to see how our students’ parents’ beliefs about our practices compare and contrast with what we actually do.  I also wonder how they’d gauge the differences between the regular classroom teachers practices and ours if a comparison of the two were put before them.

Mindwork 2

What surprises (and intrigues) me:

This probably sounds like a cop out, but in all honesty, there’s not much about what I wrote in Chapter 1 that surprises me.  These are all things that I’ve been mulling over for quite some time and have written about in one form or another in the past year and a half.  The surprise for me is that in considering an experimental change to the curriculum, the battle of what’s going right and what’s going wrong in my life as an educator becomes less a question of “the right way to do things” vs. “the wrong way to do things”—it’s not so much that we need more of one thing and less of another, it’s that we need to try something different.  And this is also the aspect that has the greatest intrigue for me.  I’m not at all sure that the minor curriculum changes that I’ve suggested are going to be any less fraught with minutiae-laden difficulties than the ones I currently spend my administrative and instructional time trying to tinker into some kind of a better mousetrap, but I’ve done enough tinkering with the current ones that I’m ready to tinker at a larger level.

What disturbs me:

I’d say the thing that disturbs me most is how judgmental I’ve become about the practices of the regular classroom teachers (and the school, more generally).  I can remember that when I first began working in early childhood education (as an undergraduate) that I struggled with similar feelings toward the families of my students.  I’ve now come to see the family situations of my students as sacred—everyone is entitled to their own private struggles and happiness and I wouldn’t assume to meddle or comment—but I still try to wrap my mind around the motivations and beliefs of the teachers and staff.  Ultimately, I believe that they are good people who follow their beliefs and try their best, but I still feel critical of a lot of what I see and find myself wishing that I could change things even though I have no idea where I would begin or what the best alternatives would be.

Emic/Etic Surprise:

I was surprised by just how much of an outsider I branded myself at the start of my emic writing.  I don’t feel that far removed from my students and I suppose that’s why I spent most of that paragraph explaining my family history.  Our differences might be more pronounced if we were closer in age because I do find it difficult to communicate with their parents at times.

I was intrigued by how attracted to the notion of trying to survey my students’ parents I am.  I feel that my program assumes that it knows what’s best for our students.  I’d be interested to know if our students’ parents agreed with its goals, its methods, or both.

I am disturbed by how intrusive my program seems when it is put down on paper without the high-minded literacy and success language attached to it.

Mindwork 3

Ethics Statement:

I will strive in every respect of my teaching and research to provide all who come into contact with it (and especially my students) with respect and consideration.   Through my research, I will strive to contribute to the good of every student that I serve and the community to which we belong.  I will do my best not to let personal interests and biases impact my research or its reportage and I will strive to share the results of my research with whoever may seek it regardless of outcome.

Chapter 2: Mindwork

Explore Trial Questions

-Teaching Practices

1) Does having the same tutor facilitate Welcome and Reading segments of the curriculum with a set group of children for all sessions lead to more vocabulary exposure and conversation opportunities for each child?

2) Does having a consistent cluster of children grouped together for Welcome and Reading segments of the curriculum for all sessions lead to more vocabulary exposure and conversation opportunities for each child?

3) Could drawing/journals be included as part of the planning process before students move into the Centers element of sessions?

-Student Learning or Outcomes

1) Would progressive photo documentation and/or student drawings of student activity/learning serve a similar function as the recall part of the curriculum?  Would this allow for a longer recall narrative for the students to interact with?  Would students be able to construct such a narrative if provided with the proper materials?

School Policies or Outcomes

1) Would teachers, schools, and our program benefit from including teachers in our training process?

2) Could a classroom evaluation and curricular modification phase be considered prior to the start of the school year to fine tune our sessions to more closely match the pre-existing classroom/teacher culture and curriculum?

-Curriculum

1) Would students be more engaged by non self-directed elements (circle time, small group, welcome, reading) if they were intermingled with self-directed elements, rather than having the non self-directed elements clumped together and followed a long self-directed element?

2) Could opportunities for choice and planning be incorporated into the non self-directed elements and would this improve student engagement?

3) Could a targeted visual vocabulary curriculum be developed and integrated alongside our verbal vocabulary curriculum?

4) Could visual literacy training be included in our training session/materials so that tutors can incorporate visual literacy strategies in their readings and throughout session?

Position Yourself in Relation to the Question

-Who am I in relation to this idea?

Over the past year and a half, I’ve had the opportunity to implement my program’s curriculum in two very different classrooms.  The students in my classroom last year were very accustomed to a consistent classroom schedule and clearly defined expectations/roles.  These students were polite and attentive throughout our long periods of teacher-directed activities, but they were also often distracted even though it only became apparent when they were prompted to answer a question, predict, or recall events.  In this classroom setting, the difficulty in applying the curriculum was the danger of complacency and passivity—hitting the required curricular goals but not extending them to meet the interests/needs of the particular group of children.  This year, my students are more unruly.  Their restlessness displays itself in noncompliance and acting out.  It’s my belief that the same curricular shortcomings underlie the problems that I encountered in both classrooms.

-How does my position affect the way I approach and/or understand it?

As the facilitator of this program in the two classrooms, I am responsible for presenting the non self-directed materials in an engaging way.  Therefore, if students are not engaged by these materials, the fault is either with the materials or with my facilitation of them.  It’s possible that my facilitation skills are to blame for the shortcomings that I’ve noted and that my ideas for improving the curriculum are really just to make up for faults in my teaching skills.  However, from feedback I’ve observed in the weekly meetings that I’ve had with my fellow facilitators over the past year and a half, I’m under the impression that these problems are general to the program.

-What ethical issues might I raise?

There are not any immediately obvious ethical issues.  It is always tricky to compare the outcomes for students from differing backgrounds but my idea is that these changes would improve our curriculum regardless of background.

-Who will be best served by this study?

Students, teachers and facilitators involved with my program.

-Who might be affected or hurt by it, and how?

Again, this is not readily apparent.

-What are my hidden biases and assumptions?

That the shortcomings in my instruction are with the curriculum; that students would find self-directed activities more engaging (especially with an established routine for planning and reflecting on self-directed activities); that a general population of children (from a variety of backgrounds and at differing developmental levels) will experience improvements in their learning from a single set of curricular modifications.

Refine Your Question

Would incorporating visual planning/precorrects increase student engagement in all elements of our existing preschool curriculum (Welcome, Reading, Circle, Small Group, Centers)?

-Potentially unclear terms

+incorporating

+visual planning/precorrects

+student engagement

-Insider/Outsider

My insider is unsure of what I mean by “visual planning/precorrects” and rightly so—I’m not entirely sure what these tools will look like yet.  My outsider is also unsure of that term and asked for further explanation about what student engagement looks like in relation to the different parts of our curriculum.

-Theory

I’m merging at least two theories in this question:

1)      Clear expectations and routines are the foundations of classroom management and early childhood learning.

2)      Visual materials will reinforce the verbal instruction already provided.

And potentially a third (if I can incorporate a tool that gives students the opportunity to create their own visual plan):

3)      Self-directed learners will be more deeply engaged in the learning experience than extrinsically-directed learners.

-What’s bothering you?

I’m having a hard time committing to an exact research course, partly because I don’t expect to be allowed to change the curriculum as extensively as I am inclined to.  Ideally, I would like students to visualize and plan in a hand-on manner before all aspects of our curriculum, but I suspect that the best I can hope for is to include teacher directed visual aids before the teacher-directed elements and have students create their own visual plan before the self-directed Centers part of the curriculum.

-Subquestions

-Does a self-directed motor activity (drawing/writing) increase student engagement?

-Does a visualization process (student imagining their upcoming role) increase student engagement?

-…Still working on these…

Chapter 1: Prepwork

I’ll largely be approaching these questions with reference to the preschool classroom that I implement a supplemental literacy curriculum in through a University sponsored national program.  If necessary, I will supplement these reflections with speculation on my future career as an art educator through the experience I’ve gained in observing art classrooms in our field work.

Prepwork: Write about what bothers you

What tensions do you see in your classroom?

-Between your students in school and their lives outside of school?

My preschoolers often find it difficult to accept the rigid formalities of the curriculum that we implement in their classroom.   Our session structure is of greater regularity than they are used to in their normal classroom setting (and home environment as well, I suspect).  Our curriculum requires that they fill specific roles at specific times (reading, small group, circle, choice, recall) while they are used to a more fluid and flexible environment where the schedule responds to fluctuations in moods and resources.

-Between yourself and your administration?

Every element of our session is scripted and our national office provides direction for what they consider acceptable and unacceptable practice.  Meeting the needs of our individual learners is often a balancing act between the national requirements and the needs of our students as we experience them.  Also, I am concerned that our program goes too far in its attempt to expose students to extra vocabulary by trying to squeeze too much seated work into our relatively short sessions, possibly crossing over into developmentally inappropriate practice.

-Between your educational background and the curriculum?

One of the great attractions of art education for me as I plot my future course as an educator is the experiential nature of students learning in this discipline.  While I love literature and writing (my B.A. is in English), I feel that the balance in our public school curriculum has gone out of whack—too far toward the more easily demonstrable gains that can be found in book learning while denying our students more fundamental needs to see, imagine, and create.  In certain respects, I feel that the curriculum that I’m presently implementing corrects an opposite imbalance to the one I’ve just described, one that I’ve observed in a lot of preschool classroom: too little structure and a lack of an enriched learning environment.  I’m glad to have been enabled by my program to improve these deficits; however, I also feel that the program has gone too far away from my students developmental needs in other respects.

Prepwork for Scratchwork:  What Ideas do you have about:

-Student learning?

I feel like our students would receive the greatest benefit from an increased emphasis on opportunities and support for the planning and reflection stages of the learning process.

-Curriculum?

These are things that I currently try to scaffold by including extra pre-correct/expectation setting into our session plans, but the way that the plans are designed now, this necessitates even greater periods of sitting/passivity from the students.  I wish our curriculum viewed student learning in a more holistic manner, rather than putting emphasis on literacy/vocabulary.

-Teaching strategies?

I’m interested in providing the students with routines and materials that engage their imaginations as part of the planning and recall processes.  I’d like to incorporate more drawing and descriptive tools as well as more opportunities to plan and recall throughout our lessons.

-Evaluation or grading or reflection?

This is where I need the most help.  Evaluation procedures are difficult to standardize in early childhood.   Mostly they are based on subjective, anecdotal teacher/observer reports.  Broadly, I would expect incidences of conflict to go down and more self-directed time at a single activity, but I am unsure of how to measure these improvements.

-Subject matter?

Ideally, I’d like to see art/visual literacy targeted and integrated into our curriculum.  I feel that visual literacy is at least as important as verbal literacy (especially given our culture’s technological advancements over the past century) and might even be something of an intermediary for early learners as they seek to abstract information into written language.

-The culture at large or the culture of the school?

There’s a large gap between the curricular goals and practices of the classroom teachers and my program’s supplemental activities.  I’d like to see more coordination and outreach between us.  In the culture at large, I’d like to see a much greater emphasis on early childhood teacher training/education and a professional wage to match higher expectations.

Prepwork for Bridgwork

I’ve been through my program’s extensive training regimen a number of times now.  They cite the theory and statistics that guide their practice but I might want to delve more deeply into why they focus on particular practices to the exclusion of others.  In order to do that, I’d probably need to get in touch with some of the administration in the national office.  I’ve worked with a number of early childhood teachers and I could survey/pick their brains about their classroom practices and how they’ve arrived at them.  Further, I’m narrowly familiar with research in the field and I could continue to expand my knowledge base by searching journals and speaking with locally available researchers/professors.

Prepwork for Headwork

-Who are you to be doing this research?

I am in my fourth year with the program, having worked two years with it as an undergraduate and then returning after four years to a position with it as a graduate student.  The program went through significant curricular overhaul in the period of time that I was away from it and I’ve had the opportunity to observe its practice and effects in both modes.  Further, over that time, I’ve implemented the program in three different classrooms and observed a number of other early childhood classrooms in my time as a substitute teacher.

-Where did your own ideas/strategies come from?

In my time as a substitute teacher, I learned to draw from the spectrum of classroom and behavior management strategies and match my teaching to the needs of the learners I was presented with each day.  In considering the needs of these learners and reflecting on my experiences in an early childhood setting, I began to suspect connections between deficiencies in these programs (too little structure, too much structure, the wrong kind of structure, etc) and the academic habits of these older learners.

Prepwork for Legwork

-What would count as evidence?

Long-term behavioral and academic improvements and improvements in students’ self-concept would be the ultimate indicator of success for changes in the early childhood setting.  But short-term, a decrease in classroom conflict (between student & student; between teacher & student) and an increase in curricular compliance (students engaged and on-task with curricular goals) would indicate positive change.

-How do you as a teacher create data sources (journal, plan book, notes to parents, etc.)?

Journals, evaluation forms, and interviews documenting my team’s experience in the classroom, the experience of the classroom teachers, and parent’s impressions of academic and behavioral changes might serve as data sources.

-What among your students’ records, materials, and class work constitute appropriate data?

Planning and reflection journals could be kept and evaluated to document student engagement with new curricular goals, but outcomes would have to be based on observation, rather than these types of data.

Prepwork for Eyework

-Short-term problem from last day and solution

I had to reschedule a meeting that had been canceled due to the weather.  I sent a text message to the members of my team indicating that the meeting had been canceled and included information about the broadest stretch of time that I had available in my schedule for the coming week and asked my team members if they had any free time that coincided with the space of time indicated.  I then waited for responses from all team members, chose a time that worked for everyone and sent a follow up text scheduling our make-up meeting.

-Long-term problem from last year and solution

Over the past year, I have struggled to define my artistic aspirations as I move toward becoming an art educator.  I have taken courses required of an art educator (drawing, 3d design, fibers, etc) and I’ve also followed my inclinations toward particular formats (extra ceramics and web development).  In each medium, I’ve invested myself in the projects given by the instructor and tried to match my artistic thinking and temperament to the mediums in order to create effective works.  Those mediums that appeal to me more conceptually and viscerally along with the feedback that I’ve received from my instructors and peers have led me toward ceramic and multimedia works.

-Compare approaches

Both involved defining a set of data drawn from information readily available to me (my schedule; my past interests) and then offering or comparing that data against feedback and a narrowed set of information (team member availability; my investment/feelings of success in a medium).  I think all studies begin with a hypothesis/hunch, which is the result of experience or direct observation of a potential for change.  It is then up to the researcher to follow through by making the variables explicit and establishing a means by which to validate or invalidate their hypothesis.  This is similar to our efforts in any problem solving situation in that we attempt to solve our problems as well as we can with the information that we have; if we find that we’re unable to solve the problem, then we must seek new information by which to proceed and continue until a suitable change is perceived.

Prepwork for Homework

My biggest goal would be to create change in my program curriculum and create a less stressful and more rewarding experience for the teachers, students, and colleagues involved with the program.  I’d imagine that a thorough study capable of creating that kind of influence would also result in a publishable article.

Prepwork for Footwork

-Strengths

I have a very strong relationship with my local supervisors, my team, and my classroom teachers.  I also have very good relationships with many early childhood teachers and excellent personal, professional, and community support systems here in Columbia.  I have a strong background in writing (a degree in creative nonfiction writing).

-Constraints

I am already aware of limitations in flexibility from the national office of our program.  There is not much time left this school year to propose, implement and track changes.  Even if I were able to propose and create a study for changes in the coming school year, I suspect that it would be difficult to create reliable, replicable data measurements that could be retried and generalized.

Prepwork for Deskwork

As an undergraduate, I developed a set of study habits that have served me well as a student: note/flashcards where information needs to be chunked, quickly referred to, and/or memorized; visual organizers for writing and conceptual study tasks; and, a habit of collecting more information than will be needed.  I’m just now learning to incorporate some of the skills I developed as an office manager into those academic habits: spreadsheet based flowcharts, an integrated electronic calendar system, and—an arcane, but strangely effective habit for me—a legal pad to-do list.  I believe all of these skills/habits will serve me as a researcher as well.

Prepwork  for Homework

My biggest concern regarding my writing process is a tendency to overwrite: an excessive attention to detail often causes me to slow down too much and not get to my points in a timely manner.  I need to continue to strive to write both concisely and efficiently and I think this is especially important in research-based writing where utility is probably more important than style or entertainment.    My past writing experience ranges from a variety of academic tasks (essay, proposal, etc), to a lot of work-shopped personal memoir, to business tasks (memo, reference, instructional).