PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL UPDATE 10
Analytical Personal and Professional Update
Denise K. Robinson
George Mason University
Analytical Personal and Professional Update
Professional Engagement
In my early doctoral coursework, I began to understand the importance of becoming an active part of the professional community I was joining. I need to be a part of the sharing of information that takes place at conferences and annual meetings. At the same time, I have a responsibility to add to the knowledge base of others engaged in early childhood education and literacy. I need to build my personal skills so that I can bring something new through my research, publications, and presentations. This is not always an easy task.
Conferences
ALER. I attended the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers Annual Conference in November of 2012. There, I was able to experience a variety of presentation formats, to listen to researchers whose work has informed my own research interests, and to discuss early childhood and literacy topics with others outside the Mason doctoral community. I learned about academic communities at various universities around and beyond the United States. I connected with friendly and supportive professors and doctoral students and began to feel more of a part of the research community.
AERA. In April, I was able to attend the American Educational Research Association’s 2013 Annual Meeting. The size and scope of this gathering of research professionals was a bit daunting but at the same time exhilarating. I was excited to learn about different approaches to research on the same topics and to compare methodologies and results. Sitting at roundtables with researchers whose work I have read and used in my own studies was inspiring. Having discussions with researchers at poster sessions helped me to consider how best to represent my own research in the future. Again, I came away from this conference empowered and more confident in my place in the research community and with a renewed understanding that I will have to work to earn that place through my research and writing.
Research
During the summer of 2012 I was able to contribute to the coding process of research conducted by Dr. Kidd and Dr. Burns. Along with two other doctoral students, I watched a series of videos taped in several different Head Start classrooms. As the scenarios unfolded, we coded evidence of writing during work time in each classroom. I found this experience interesting, especially since I had not been part of the research effort up to that point. In some classrooms, writing was celebrated and encouraged; in others, children’s writing efforts seemed to come from their own motivations rather than the scaffolding of the teachers.
Later, I was able to conduct a short research project of my own for EDRS 812, Qualitative Research. Reflecting on my previous work on young learners’ self-regulation and motivation for writing and my summer research experiences I designed a qualitative inquiry into first graders’ goal setting in the classroom writing block. Drawing on classroom observations and interviews with the first grade teacher and school reading specialist, I found that the students’ goals were very closely related to the teacher’s expectations for a particular writing project. The young writers in my study were directly influenced by the directions they were given, although there were differences in writing skills and personal voice. I found that I enjoyed the qualitative research process, even writing up my findings.
Publication
At the time of my first portfolio evaluation, my manuscript To Play or Not to Play had been submitted and accepted for publication in Making Literacy Connections, the journal of the Greater Washington Reading Council. In November, 2012 that issue was published and included my article.
Future Presentation
I have submitted a proposal for a presentation at the ALER 2014 Annual Conference, which has been accepted. My presentation, entitled Building Community and Literacy: Expanding the Use of Name Games in the Early Childhood Classroom is designed to bridge home, school, and community by using children’s names to make them feel comfortable and accepted at school, while building cultural awareness and literacy skills. The reviewers’ comments were quite positive and I am looking forward to presenting in November.
Early Writing Brown Bag
I have had the good fortune to join with others interested in writing research in early childhood in attending the Early Writing Brown Bag sessions organized by Dr. Burns and Dr. Kidd. The rich discussions have afforded me the opportunity to discuss particular topics of interest to the group, including emergent writing, name writing, and spelling. The sessions have focused on foundational and recent research and writings and have been helpful to me in refining my own thinking about writing research in the early childhood classroom. The discussions have helped me to become a more critical consumer of research, looking not only at findings, but at methodology, sample populations, and research questions, as well.
Neighborhood School Readiness Team
Building on my interest in bridging home, school, and community, I joined the newly developed School Readiness Team at the elementary school where I teach kindergarten. Working with personnel from the Fairfax County Office for Children has helped me to clarify my expanding view of the influences on young learners’ self-regulation and writing. This involvement has helped me to question what “school readiness” should and does mean in various communities and how it is that all schools can welcome all students to an environment designed to help each succeed.
Professional Development
I have continued to act as a Fairfax County Public Schools Science Consultant, providing quarterly training in the science curriculum for kindergarten teachers across the county. I feel that this opportunity for working with adult learners is important not only as a means of presenting information regarding science, but also as a way to discuss early childhood best practices and the integration of literacy skills (including writing) within the science curriculum and throughout kindergarten program.
Addressing the Gaps
At my first portfolio evaluation, my committee asked that I: refine my thinking about my research interests and research design; develop a more research-related representation of my conceptual framework; and to continue to pursue research opportunities and to engage with the scholarly community. I hope that the previous section of this paper, outlining my personal and professional engagement with the professional community has addressed this last suggestion. Equally, I hope that the knowledge representation essay contained in this portfolio will address the second. I am continuing to seek ways to interact with other researchers and scholars in the fields of early childhood and literacy and will be presenting at 2014 ALER Annual Conference.
As I will outline in the next section of this paper, I have taken both EDRS 812 and EDRS 822 since my last portfolio. These qualitative research classes have helped me to think more about the questions I would like to ask through my research and about designing research studies to answer those questions. In EDRS 812 I was able to sample the qualitative process on a small scale and found the experience very enjoyable. It was time consuming, there was a lot of data to code and analyze but there was a connection between the people (students and teachers) involved and my interests that excited me. I hope to be able to continue to keep personal connections as a part of my research design and interests as I move forward.
The culminating projects for two of my classes, ECED 802 and 804, taken since my first portfolio were research proposals. The first, I Think I Can: Assessing Teacher Self-efficacy for Writing in Early Childhood Settings, utilized mixed methods; the second, Family, Friend, and Neighbor Care: Accessing a Hidden Resource for Culturally Diverse Children’s School Readiness was a qualitative study. I feel that the latter, written while I was taking EDRS 822 followed a stronger logical path, something I learned to think more about in that Advanced Qualitative class. It also took me outside the world of writing in the classroom to look at other influences (family, care providers, community) that can impact children’s learning. This more ecological view of children’s writing and literacy learning has become more of a part of my research interests since Portfolio 1.
The Influence of Coursework
Since Portfolio 1, I have completed five courses. The first, EDRD 797 (hereafter referred to as EDRD 797b because I have taken a previous special topics in reading course with the same number), is not on my Program of Studies. The remaining four, two research and two early childhood education courses are on my Program of Studies and are required by my degree.
EDRD 797b Scholarship in Literacy: Writing, Publishing, Presenting, Leading
This course, taught by Dr. Seth Parsons, has helped me to understand more about writing and presenting for scholarly audiences. Writing a manuscript for publication, designing a presentation for a professional audience, and learning how to conceptualize a theoretical framework for both venues has been invaluable. Taking this course has allowed me to reformulate some earlier ideas and submit a manuscript for publication; this manuscript, To Play or Not to Play: That is the Big Question in the Primary Grades, was published in the November, 2012 issue of Making Literacy Connections, the publication of the Greater Washington Reading Council. Additionally, I will be presenting Building Community and Literacy: Expanding the Use of Name Games in the Early Childhood Classroom at the 2013 ALER Annual Meeting. This presentation was first conceptualized in EDRD 797b. In both of these efforts I have tried to find something new that will excite or encourage teachers and other early childhood professionals, a key concept that I have taken from this course.
EDRS 812 Qualitative Methods in Educational Research
I found that I really enjoyed this first course in qualitative research, taught by Dr. Amy Orange. As described above, this introduction allowed me to gain an understanding of why it was that so much research into the writing of preschool and kindergarten children is focused on adult actions rather than conversations with the students; gathering data from students can be difficult. At the same time, I found that observing in the classroom, talking informally with the students, and interviewing their teacher to be extremely interesting.
My research study focused on the goals four first grade writers set for themselves during the writing block in their classroom. I was able to observe in a first grade class on a somewhat regular basis. In scheduling observations, I learned that as time went by and the schedule in the classroom changed I had to be very flexible. I think that this might happen in other qualitative research, especially when working in classrooms. I also found that I needed to be flexible in my expectations of what I would see each day and how much I could interact with my case study students. There were frustrating moments, as I am sure there are in all research. I appreciated the flexibility I had to schedule time alone with two of the students to have an actual conversation about writing. In all, I learned that despite the frustrations I enjoyed my qualitative experience. I especially enjoyed transcribing the interviews I conducted and coding the transcriptions for themes. I admit it took a long time but by transcribing myself I found that the coding process went smoothly and I could listen for pauses, inflections, and other indications of how the teacher or reading specialist was framing her answers. I found that with all the analysis I had done and the memos I had written along the way, and sharing my progress with my classmates (none of whose concentrations were Early Childhood Education or Literacy and Reading) writing up my research study went quickly and easily.
ECED 802 Cognition, Language, and Literacy for Diverse Young Learners
This course, led by Dr. Julie Kidd and Dr. M. Susan Burns, challenged me to look more closely at current research into the writing development of diverse learners. Serendipitously, all of the doctoral students enrolled in this class were interested in research on early writing, which added to my understanding of their current work, as well as the wider field of emergent writing. I was able to look more closely into research on student self-efficacy for writing and teacher self-efficacy for writing instruction. I was challenged to design and present a student-led seminar on self-efficacy for writing and to propose a research study on the same topic.
Both the seminar and research proposal offered opportunities for personal growth. I worked hard to provide a video to supplement the work samples I used in my seminar presentation. However, I was unable to download my video properly and tried showing it in an alternative manner that was not totally successful. This failure on my part will help to ensure that any future media inclusions in presentations will be well-rehearsed and saved in a variety of formats so that all participants can gain from them. When writing my research proposal, I intended to present a study into the self-efficacy of early childhood teachers for writing instruction. I was gratified that Drs. Kidd and Burns thought that my study had the “potential to contribute to the field” but agree that my presentation lacked the necessary logic to connect my literature review with my study design. As I wrote, the literature I presented seemed appropriate and connected. However, upon reflecting on the comments and rereading my proposal, I can see that the way I presented my literature was confusing in light of the design that followed. As a part of my intellectual growth, I would like to rework this proposal into a more logical, integrated design.