Elementary and Secondry Education:

Data Analysis for 18- and 33-Credit Portfolio Checkpoint Summer II 2005

Terri Swim

July, 2005

Letters were sent to 33 candidates who had completed 18 credits and 4 letters to candidates who had completed 33 credits in the School of Education Master’s Programs in Elementary or Secondary Education inviting their participation in this checkpoint. Given the recent changes to our program, we realized that these students had not participated in many, if any, of the new educational experiences designed to enhance their understanding of our Vision statement:

“to build with graduate students, and their schools and corporations, Scholar-Practitioner learning communities for engaging in a democratic and diverse society."

However, we created the goals of gathering baseline data on our graduates as well as evaluating the procedures for identifying and notifying students. Of the 37 candidates sent letters, 4 met with faculty (one person did not complete any of the assignments as requested and one person only completed one reflection). As identified during the previous semester, we had a problem with the data base queries including program graduates. While this may seem like an easy problem to fix, it turned out to be more cumbersome that expected and resulted in hand-checking the final query list against graduation records. We are still working to resolve this issue.

As the letter stated, we requested that the candidates reflect on their growth towards the Vision Statement (e.g, divided into 3 components: growth as a Scholar-Practitioner, engagement as a learning community, and contributions to a democratic and diverse society) and on their use of technology as related to the Conceptual Framework (CF).

Vision Statement

Data: Scholar-Practitioner

Candidates often explained their understanding of scholar-practitioner by providing examples of how they used or are using research as teachers. For example, a candidate commented that she has developed a “stronger tendency to look deeper into the issues and problems that I face as an educator. I have a better grasp on where to find help and/or answers to relevant classroom-related questions and concerns.” A colleague expressed similar feelings when she stated, “I have been able to locate many articles that further my knowledge in the subject being researched.” She went on to tell about her action research project where she met weekly with an autistic student to teach him piano lessons. This project “strengthened my openness to what students with special needs can do. Since this experience I have furthered my research on the senses of music and how I can relate to special needs students.”

The last candidate commented on how the program helped with being “persistent in trying to make myself aware of the many opportunities for the students’ changing needs. In order for me to do that, I must continue in scholarly review and writing, and reflect appropriately.”

Data: Learning Communities

The Master’s candidates spoke about college-course colleagues and other teachers in their discussions of learning communities. They believed that completing their degree has helped them with their interactions in their communities. For example, talking with other teachers has helped to “broaden my scope of the curriculum.” Another candidate commented that one of the most valuable aspect of the graduate program for “increasing my teaching effectiveness” has been talking with other teachers in the classes. “Because we are ‘in the trenches’ with kids everyday, the learning community has proven to be extremely critical to my growing professional development.”

Data: Democratic and Diverse Society

Two of the candidates considered how their behavior as teachers should model and maintain democracy in their classrooms. One discussed how this is easy to do in her social studies course, but when on to state that content is not enough. “I run my classroom as a democracy itself. I know every student understands equality (i.e., “that’s not fair!”), but what I want to impart to my students in all my classes is the notion of equity (everyone has different needs, and everyone has the same rights [student’s emphasis]). … In addition, my classroom is run as democratically as possible (it can’t be completely, as I have to remain in charge, for instance) – in terms of decision-making, rule-making, one-on-one relationship-building, classroom discussions – to model these ideals.” A colleague concurred when she focused on giving the children choices and have them involved with creating the rules and procedures for working in their school. One of her goals for doing this was for “them to have ownership to their decisions and what they want for their classroom. This type of discipline encourages their class to work as a team and do their best by encouraging others instead of tearing them down.” Thus, for both students, the notion of democracy was closely linked to their beliefs about diversity. Learning more about diverse students was a theme for these three students. One candidate, who is employed in a private, religious-based program summed up these ideas when she stated, “Understanding and awareness equate with greater appreciation for the situations and choices of others and a drive for educational excellence, each of which is necessary for the peaceful, productive, diverse, and democratic society in which we exist.”

Conclusions: The candidates’ views on the importance of using research to inform their teaching seemed more advanced than the students interviewed during the Spring semester. While not much time had elapsed, these students reported having participated in more of the “new program” requirements, such as the two different types of artifact reflections and the service learning for diversity. We believe that the increased focus on reflection and use of research for teacher decision-making is an outgrowth of those experiences. In addition, professors may be helping the students to make more connections between scholarship and practice in the individual courses. The vision statement is now required on every graduate syllabus. Seeing and reading this, at least once a semester, may be having an impact. Consistent with the students interviewed in the Spring, they continued to lack specific examples of how they use research in their daily lives as teachers. We may need to consider revising the directions so that these expectations are clear to the students.

The notion of community of learners appears to be one that students can easily grasp. However, we would like to continue developing their understanding of “teachers as educational leaders” by supporting their scholarly inquiry into their work and providing forums for disseminating it. Doing so would serve to expand this understanding while increasing their visibility within the greater educational community as scholar-practitioners.

The candidates focused their discussions around specific examples for democracy, and addressed diversity globally, if at all in their responses. Last semester, we concluded that changes in assignment directions are warranted to help students be more concrete in their responses. While last semester, this conclusion was particularly strong for democracy, it appears that it was more robust for diversity for this group of students. As mentioned earlier, these students had all completed at least one course reflection which required them to reflect on the six components of the CF. These experiences may serve to assist them in better articulating their beliefs at the checkpoints.

Regarding diversity, we knew while doing the program revisions that this was an area in need of great attention, but these data provide evidence to the depth. Including 30 hours of Service Learning for Diversity in the revised programs appears to be a very wise decision on our part. These data should provide a baseline from which to evaluate student performance in the revised program.

Technology Reflection (using Conceptual Framework)

In general, the two candidates provided very inconsistent evidence of their abilities to connect their use of technology in the elementary/secondary classroom with the CF. They frequently only included how their own personal use of technology reflected the six components. Examples of relevant responses are presented in the following sections.

Democracy and Community

One student commented that she has spent the last couple of summers learning how to compose music with computers and keyboards. While she has not yet introduced this skill to the children she would like for them to “… create a CD of their creations and print out their sheet music to show their parents and grandparents.”

Pedagogy

Using technology in the classroom was demonstrated when the candidate had the children create a power point presentation of Swiss Heritage festival, where the students get to experience pioneer life. Digital photographs were downloaded and manipulated and added to text to create visual accounts of their learning.

Experience

“In order to learn technology and benefit from the source, you need to put it into practice.” One candidate explained how she used digital photographs of the children playing musical instruments to create her monthly newsletter. “It has been wonderful to keep parents informed of events that are up coming and what their children are learning.”

Leadership

“We must personify the image we wish to impart onto our students and stick to it. If I’m bringing technology into my classroom and discussing how I learned these techniques, then I’m modeling my philosophy to them.”

Conclusions: Our conclusions about this data are identical to those made about the data collected during the Spring semester. The revisions made to the Advanced Programs in Elementary and Secondary Education, during the Program Review process in 2003-2004 should address the shortcomings of these responses. Introducing the CF and technology log in the first course, F500 Teaching, Leading, and Learning and checking progress at two checkpoints should assist students with making better connections between their use of technology and the CF. We now realize that having the candidates keep a log of their technology use in university courses demonstrates the skills they are gaining for use in educational settings. However, it appears that we may need to create another log for recording their actual use of technology with students. This will afford them a record of their use and reflections on how using technology with the students helped them to gain a deeper understanding of the CF components.