tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88336189379134604202024-03-13T13:47:48.659-05:00Dissertation Blog of J. Mark ColemanThe Proliferation of Teacher Knowledge through Online NetworksUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833618937913460420.post-56330486311810959672014-08-20T23:25:00.002-05:002014-08-20T23:25:24.860-05:00Research Questions, Personal Values, and Online NetworksCarspecken outlines the preliminary steps of critical qualitative research, including outlining research questions and the subjects of study as well as examining my own value orientations. <br />
<a name='more'></a>My values color my view of the study subjects. My subjects are teachers. But these teachers, most modern teachers in the U.S. traditional public systems, have experienced an increased administrative oversight for the last thirty years. The history of American Education has been a pendulum between hypervigilant administrative oversight that allowed educators little freedom in their curriculum and methods on one side and the ideal of the professional teacher who is in touch with their students and the pedagogy to reach them on the other. Since the 1983 publication of <i>A Nation at Risk</i>, teachers have been subject to every encroaching administrative oversight, homogenizing curriculum, objectives, methods and procedures. My own personal value system sees this ever tightening homogeneity as a detriment to education, stifling the ideas of teachers and stepping on their rapport with students.<br />
<br />
As the regulations become more draconian, teachers are struggling to meet the requirements of the latest rounds of regulations and standards while maintaining their own standards of excellence in instruction and facilitating learning. Where teachers previously shared ideas and methods with the other teachers within their school and system, the modern age of digital communication and social networking has allowed this dissemination of teacher content and pedagogical to spread across the nation and the globe.<br />
<br />
So how does this digital network of educators function? What do teachers actually take away from their experiences on networks like Twitter, the defacto social network for online interaction between educators? Is it actual professional knowledge or moral support? How much of what goes on is talking shop with other like minded educators and how much of what is discussed is actually implemented in class?<br />
<br />
These teachers also seem to be organizing with political motives, active on all sides of the political debate over education reform. For some it is a soapbox, for others a debate platform, while other groups use the platform for grassroots organization of educators. What results come from these political uses of the platform? Is Twitter an amplifier for a few voices or do the educator interactions on Twitter result in actual policy change?<br />
<br />
These are the questions and concerns I have as I start the research. Now it is time to see how they evolve.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833618937913460420.post-89657554470274263122014-08-19T23:02:00.001-05:002014-08-20T05:47:13.538-05:00Steps of qualitative research.Continuing through Carspecken, the author delves into the ontological basis of critical research. These ontological questions and answers give the study its conceptual frameworks. Qualitative research doesn't use variables and operational definition like the traditional quantitative studies.The context of social issues does not translate to neat and objective variables. But without these traditional elements of research, how does one define the qualitative study?<br />
<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
Qualitative research does not to seek to address causality as actions are conditioned by the environment of the actor but not strictly determined. The research, especially one grounded in the parameters and models of social theory are meant to lay the ground work for further empirical investigation rather than test a hypothese empirically.<br />
<br />
The three principals of social research are social actions, the subjective experience of the participants and the conditions that shape these actions. The settings and locals for these studies are greater than the location of an action or behavior, but the systems, settings and societal constructs that influence or restrain the actors in a system.<br />
<br />
According to Carspecken, there are six steps in qualitative research. First a researcher needs to outline their research questions and subjects for study, as well as taking an inventory of their own value orientations. The researcher then creates a primary record by observing and reflecting. Carspecken refers to this as monologic, as it is not a dialogue between the participants and researchers. The researcher then analyzes the primary record for patterns of interaction and power relation, as well as the roles involved.<br />
<br />
The researcher then moves onto gathering data from the participants through interviews and focus groups to then explore the relations between actors, systems and institutions. These relations are used to explain the findings of the researchers.<br />
<br />
In my next entry I will begin to work with some of the preliminary research steps.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833618937913460420.post-5639505109362143242014-08-18T21:19:00.002-05:002014-08-18T21:19:31.499-05:00Thoughts from the Initial Chapter of CarspeckenIn my vision of this dissertation, I envisioned it as a piece of critical research. Critical research as it is commonly explained as research that deals with an oppressed class, the nature of the power structures that keep the oppression in place and the avenues of empowerment available to that class. In my vision and experience, the teacher in the American public school system is increasingly an oppressed class, robbed of its creativity and professionalism by the demands of a system with a reactionary power structure meant to preserve the culture and methods of an industrial age school system. In developing methods, I delved into Carspecken's <i>Critical Ethnography in Educational Research.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i></i><br />
<a name='more'></a><i><br /></i><br />
"Criticalists," as Carspecken calls critical researchers, are concerned with the social inequalities of human society and conduct research with the idea of pursuing positive social change. We focus on the nature of the structures both within and between societies and cultures and the agency of human actions and interactions within these structures.<br />
<br />
While the focus of much of the lay discussion of critical research is on the value assumptions and the drive for empowerment and equity, Carspecken argues that the essence of critical research is in epistemological concerns rather than the values that drive the researcher.<br />
<br />
Carspecken outlines several assumptions of critical research, based on the work of Kinchloe and McLaren. Research supports efforts for change. That is, by identifying the nature and mechanisms of power relationships, that avenues for empowerment become defined. Groups also have different privileges within these structures. Privileges are not always obvious or neatly delineated. They can be subtle and taken for granted. Research should uncover these subtleties of oppression in one of the vast number of forms it takes and challenge these subtleties. The neutral objectivity sought by most research favors the extant power structures by taking them as givens rather than questioning the role that the power structures has on the research subjects. In this way mainstream research supports oppressive power structures. This idea is behind one of my favorite quotes from critical educator Paulo Freire:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.</blockquote>
Research that ignores the entrenched power structures ignores the fact that some people are oppressed in these structures.<br />
<br />
In my dissertation, the teachers are the oppressed class. As more standardized instruction comes with the promise of greater federal money and the concept of tenure becomes more vilified by politicians and a certain caste of reactionaries masquerading as reformers, the teacher becomes a low grade factory worker, subject to similar oppression to line workers and coal miners at the turn of the twentieth century. By exploring the ways these teachers use social networking for the exchange of professional knowledge and political organization, my research can explore the way teachers can escape the oppressive state that the current political climate enforces.<br />
<br />
Carspecken, P. F. (1996). Critical ethnography in educational research: A theoretical and practical guide. New York: Routledge.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833618937913460420.post-84868390560601264222013-09-30T22:51:00.002-05:002013-09-30T23:14:54.152-05:00The Backchannel and Emergent SystemsContinuing thoughts on the marginalization of teachers, the importance of Social Networks in professional practice and professional activism, and the emergence of grass root organizations from the chaotic system of the Twitter educator community.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
In the current climate, teachers have a platform unavailable in the past. With the rise of Social Networks, teachers from around the nation have made connections previously impossible. Twitter has become the de facto platform for the educator community and has created an unofficial communications venue for teachers. This area for public, yet easily anonymized, teacher communication has created what is known as a backchannel. From this backchannel, educators have not only collaborated on techniques to implement dictated policy, but have found their voice in opposing the overreaching administrative oversight<br />
<div>
.</div>
<div>
With teachers becoming an professional class that has lost a large amount of its respect in the public, as well as finding itself forced to implement a curricular mandate that it finds arbitrary, ineffective and misguided, educators begin to resemble an oppressed and marginalized group. A study of teachers as a marginalized population, and how the backchannel of Twitter as a semi-anonymous communications network might empower teachers would fit well within the framework of critical studies.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Teachers have been called to bear the weight of implementing an increasing amount of regulation and law in the name of reforming education. As high stakes testing and standards designed for the lowest common denominator become increasingly tied to system and school funding, teachers are also losing their collective bargaining rights and tenure. This creates an environment in which the teacher who does not meekly accept the system is in danger of losing their teaching position with little recourse or appeal. Because of the lack of official channels to voice their grievances with the current legal and regulatory atmosphere of the classroom, many teachers have used Twitter and other Social Media Professional Learning Networks (PLN) as an unofficial backchannel for voicing their opinions on the way teachers and students are treated by an increasingly micromanaged, corporate controlled and ineffective system of laws, regulations and ill-conceived reform.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Twitter has allowed teachers to collaborate and brainstorm, as well as find resources and improve methods. But Twitter has also provided a platform for educators to voice their discontent with education reform, including debating the value of corporate education reform, high stakes testing and national standards. Teachers may post through a pseudonym if they deem it necessary to maintain a veneer of anonymity, allowing teachers to give voice to opinions counter to those of their administration.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Research has explored the value of the social network as a PLN, but little research has emerged on the value of these networks in the education reform debate. While teacher advocacy and education reform groups are emergent phenomenon in these educator social networks, can they have a real influence in the reform debate or are they just a modern version of whispers over the workroom table? With names far removed from the political mainstream, e.g. the BadAss Teachers Network, can groups of teachers on these social networks have a serious impact in the way America manages its schools or are they merely a valve to release pressure?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
By examining how teachers perceive their interactions through their digital PLNs, we may determine if there is political currency in these networks. Emergent organizations from the complex system of Twitter can provide insight into how these groups organized and then gain and wield power, if truly there is any power in these groups. Use of social networks in organization of protest and dissemination of videos, images and other records of teacher action may be evaluated to determine how these networks are used to mobilize teachers to speak out for their classrooms. A critical study may facilitate more teachers in using their PLN as a tool to reassert the teachers’ voices in education reform and encourage leaders to take the organizations emerging from these networks as serious organizations of reform.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Potentially, this study will examine the culture of the online social network in their use as a professional learning network and reveal how these complex and interconnected networks of teachers are emerging as organized political voices for teachers in the current regulatory climate. How do loose knit groups of teachers, typically gathering in an online space to collaborate on methodology and pedagogy, become an organized political voice?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833618937913460420.post-1057496372875508152013-09-29T22:24:00.000-05:002013-09-30T23:15:52.655-05:00Thoughts on the Marginalization of TeachersThinking of teachers and their status today, I began to look at educators today as a marginalized class of professional. So I developed thoughts along those lines as a line of Qualitative research. Below is a modified version of work discussing the status of teachers today.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<div>
Throughout the twentieth century there has been an ebb and flow between two dichotomous theories of teacher supervision. One school of thought allowed for more teacher professionalism and autonomy. Teachers are trusted to teach their students in the way they perceive will be most effective, with administrative oversight to help refine techniques and address problems. The educator is a trusted professional, responding to student enquiry and curiosity to allow the students to learn in a way that suits the students’ needs and teachers’ goals, as well as facilitating higher level thinking skills.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The opposing philosophy requires more active and aggressive supervision. Schools are saddled with specific curriculum requirements and teachers are micromanaged both in terms of how they teach and what they teach. This administrative model of teacher supervision allows little room to feed students’ natural curiosity and respond to the ebb and flow of the classroom. Higher level thinking skills suffer in lieu of catechisms of standards that must be learned by rote by all students. If students are not prepared to answer these basic questions, both the teachers, schools and systems involved find themselves in danger of being labeled failures and losing resources tied to the testing. This philosophy of teacher management has prevailed since the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk and has become the norm in the past decade with the implementation of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Teachers have seen their ability to fight high stakes testing and standards regimens erode during this same time frame. Teachers Unions have felt the brunt of negative public opinion, with the National Education Association viewed by the general public as the protector of the status quo and poor teachers. State legislatures, Governors and local system administrators have undermined the job security of educators by gutting tenure laws and stripping them of collective bargaining rights. Instead as a professional class, teachers are portrayed in the press and among the general public as a group of careerists, more concerned with job stability and benefits packages than educating students.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
These changes to level of public respect afforded teachers and the erosion to the traditional employment security of tenure have made speaking out against aggressive administration of the classroom teacher difficult. Teachers find less support from the public due to their tarnished public images, and with a less stringent tenure system in play teachers find themselves having to comply with the latest egregious administrative oversteps into their classroom or lose their positions. Teacher have little option but to implement new polices and laws, and also take the fall when programs don’t work.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833618937913460420.post-78653902902863828262013-09-21T17:30:00.002-05:002013-09-21T17:30:37.444-05:00Philosophical Underpinnings As a starting place which may turn into a qualitative, advocacy piece, based in the critical studies, I thought it may be useful to define how I believe the world works.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
<div>
<div>
The universe is a set of concrete phenomenon. There are events that have a demonstrable pattern of cause and effect. For example, if animals are deprived of a source of oxygen, death of the animal is the result. While there are many of these causal relationships that humans perceive as axiomatic, the universe, even when defined as the subset of the universe explored and seemingly understood by mankind, is vast, with many exceptions to what are understood as “the rules.” In the example of the lack of oxygen bringing about death of an animal, the tardigrade is an animal that may survive in the pure vacuum of space for extended periods of time. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In the tremendous diversity of our biosphere, we find that life takes many forms that do not always react in ways mankind understands. In the vastness of the universe, many chemical and physical phenomena do not to react or perform as our current understanding predicts. While we attempt to discover the mechanisms that control our universe, it is conceivable that our understanding of the universe will never be complete. </div>
<div>
Human interactions, reactions and behaviors are more difficult to predict than those of the “hard” sciences. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
With a wide range of cultures and individuals within those cultures, predictive statements carry many caveats and exceptions. The best way to understand the workings of the human mind and the mechanics of interpersonal and intersocietal relationships is to allow that psychology and sociology are dependent on individual and cultural interpretations of events and phenomena. Many facets of what is defined as reality are constructed by those interacting with reality, both on an individual and group level. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In a philosophical context, this could allow for the myriad answers to the questions of mankind. Many in the Western scientific tradition see our world as an outgrowth of an organizational force in the universe. Starting with a singularity that rapidly expanded, natural laws such as gravity and inertia, as well as many not yet understood, caused the cosmos to coalesce from the rapidly expanding chaotic universe into discrete objects, both on the subatomic level and in the realm of galaxy clusters. This organizational principal of universe was apparent on Earth, as evidenced by the presence of life that diversified for all available environments via the process of natural selection. While scientists continue to find and present evidence for this model of the universe, many look to the organizing principle itself as evidence of a divine creator of the universe. The fact that the universe has organized and generated life in a myriad of forms is evidence of a supreme architect, that created, organized and judged the cosmos. The details of the actions of this architect vary widely, depending on cultural and personal interpretation.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The actions of the people in the world, as individuals, small groups and large societies, are dependent on these different interpretations of the universe. What may seem logical, good or rational in one society may be viewed differently by different peoples both outside the society and countercultural elements within the society. Reality, or at least the understanding of reality, is built by people on an individual and communal scale. These perceptions of existence determine how people reject and accept new information and make value judgments of individuals, events and phenomenon.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Groups of people organize themselves based on these perceptions of the nature of existence. This organization not only determines power relationships among the individuals of a society but perpetuates the power structure. Power structures evolve and solidify, creating a seemingly permanent dichotomy between a class of privilege and one to be servile and controlled. Over time these power structures become ingrained in a society, requiring significant changes in the society before changing of the power structure. These changes may be the result of the influence of other cultures and societies, catastrophes, resource scarcity, disease or the evolution of values. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Generally, those in the higher echelons of power resist mobility through the power structure. As those with power, it would be more likely that any changes in the structure would see their power lessened. Efforts are made to keep the subservient classes static and placidly compliant. Those in power dictate the actions of those who are not, but their power creates a distance from the implementation of their edicts. The power underclass often are aware of the disconnect between their perception of reality and that of those who control them.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Critical studies position research as an integral factor for advocacy for traditionally marginalized and oppressed groups. While many of the more prominent critical studies have addressed the way racial issues have been manipulated by power hierarchies, the focus of critical theory has expanded to address other groups traditionally on the wrong side of the power divide, such a women, the gay, lesbian and gender-fluid communities and the disabled. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Throughout my lifetime I have embraced countercultural movements and embraced positions that could be defined as heretical in political and philosophical spheres. These positions and cultural preferences have run in direct opposition to many of the traditional belief systems of my home the Southeastern United States and contributed to a marginalization at many times within my life. This marginalization has caused me to identify with groups more traditionally at the bottom of the power hierarchies of our culture. In attempting to fight my own marginalization, I felt the need to stand against the systematic oppression of others.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Critical theories generally embrace a philosophy of a physical universe colored by interpretation, a philosophy similar to my own. Interpretations of power and the powerful classes’ manipulations to preserve their place in the power structure lend themselves to my endeavors to empower the marginalized. Through careful analysis of the ways groups outside the de facto mainstream are affected by the systems of control in the society and the evolution of groups from disenfranchisement to assimilation, researchers may empower these groups to improve the lives of their individuals. Better understanding of the personal and group issues impeding equality of opportunity may bring about mitigation of these conditions.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Critical theory can be used to frame a study “envisioning new possibilities." While utopian visions of the future have been perceived as naïve, cultural and societal improvement is an admirable and necessary goal for members of a highly interconnected society. By pursuing research based in critical theory and studies, researchers may give voice to the marginalized and facilitate their struggle for an equal place in their communities.</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0