Always On

Baron, N. S. (2008). Always on: Language in an online and mobile world [Kindle DX Reader version]. Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com

"In Always On, Naomi S. Baron reveals that online and mobile technologies--including instant messaging, cell phones, multitasking, Facebook, blogs, and wikis--are profoundly influencing how we read and write, speak and listen, but not in the ways we might suppose. Baron draws on a decade of research to provide an eye-opening look at language in an online and mobile world. She reveals for instance that email, IM, and text messaging have had surprisingly little impact on student writing. Electronic media has magnified the laid-back "whatever" attitude toward formal writing that young people everywhere have embraced, but it is not a cause of it. A more troubling trend, according to Baron, is the myriad ways in which we block incoming IMs, camouflage ourselves on Facebook, and use ring tones or caller ID to screen incoming calls on our mobile phones. Our ability to decide who to talk to, she argues, is likely to be among the most lasting influences that information technology has upon the ways we communicate with one another. Moreover, as more and more people are "always on" one technology or another--whether communicating, working, or just surfing the web or playing games--we have to ask what kind of people we are becoming, as individuals and as family members or friends, if the relationships we form must increasingly compete for our attention with digital media." --from Amazon.com

Reading this text did bring a sense of awareness to the way I interact and the way my students interact with people (or even choose not to interact with people) using technology. It often isn't enough to be engaged in one activity. With the proliferation of mobile technology, it is increasingly more "necessary" to be engaged in more than one activity at a time. But what does this multitasking to do to the quality of the activity we are engaged in, whether it be writing a paper or talking with a friend or parent on the phone?

Retrospective miscue analysis with proficient adult ESL readers

Wurr, A., Theurer, J. L., & Kim, K. (2008, December). Retrospective miscue analysis with proficient adult ESL readers. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy (52)4, pp. 324-333. doi:10.1598/JAAL.52.4.5

​In this case study, three non-native English speakers are taken through the process of retrospective miscue analysis. These readers are proficient readers of English. The purpose of the article is to show the benefits of retrospective miscue analysis—of why understanding one’s miscues is important. Retrospective miscue analysis changed the self-perceptions of all of the readers involved in the study. They all left the study more confident in their reading in English than they were when they went into the study.


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Dialogic narratives of literacy,teaching and schooling

Rogers, T., Marshall, E. & Tyson, C. A. (2006, April/May/June). Dialogic narratives of literacy,teaching and schooling: Preparing literacy teachers for diverse settings. Reading Research Quarterly, 41(2), pp. 202-224.

​The purpose of this article is to examine how dialogue plays a role in pre-service teacher’s development. The study takes place within a Master of Education program and looks at 10 students who participated in a program designed around literacy instruction and preparing educators for teaching literacy in a variety of contexts. Of the ten participants, the researchers chose to focus on two participants whose stories are told throughout the study. In looking at two students, the researchers were able to look at how pre-service teachers construct their identities as teachers and how they position themselves with the educational system.


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Exploring the connections between biliteracy and bilingualism

Reyes, I. (2006). Exploring the connections between biliteracy and bilingualism. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 6(3), pp. 267-292. doi:10.1177/1468798406069801

Through three case studies of four-year-old children of Mexican descent, the author explores emergent biliteracy and bilingualism in southern Arizona. Using observations of both home and classroom notes the children’s use of language and the factors that contributed to that language usage. The author references code-switching as a process used frequently by emergent bilingual and biliterate children. She also suggests that teachers use kid watching for lessons that connect to children’s’ development of literacy and biliteracy.


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Viewing eye movements

Paulson, E. J. (2005, July/August/September). Viewing eye movements during reading through the lens of chaos theory: How reading is like the weather. Reading Research Quarterly, 40(3), pp. 338-358. doi:10.1598/RRQ.40.3.3

​In this article, Paulson examines the reading process using an analogy of the chaos theory to explain what is difficult to explain within a theory that is systematic and linear. He describes the nature of eye movements while reading, suggesting that data collected about eye movements is the reading side of the analogy. By analyzing where a reader pauses during reading, researchers learn about the processes of comprehension. And by combining eye movement data with miscue analysis, the data about reading is validated. He also suggests that reading is a nonlinear process. Within this article as well are references to other authors write about schema theory and the importance of a reader’s prior knowledge.


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Engaging student researchers and teacher researchers in the process of data analysis

Merritt, S. P. (2004, May). Engaging student researchers and teacher researchers in the process of data analysis. Language Arts, (81)5, pp. 406-416.

Merritt says the hardest, most daunting part of research is the data analysis. It is important for novice researchers to examine what it is they bring with them to the study. She suggests that researchers reflect on their study, writing about the assumptions they have, which aids in recognizing bias. She also suggests that researchers keep a journal and confer with other researchers as a method of uncovering their biases and adding to the validity of the study they’re conducting. Novice researchers must understand their theoretical framework as a way to see the research and the reason for the research questions asked in their studies.

This article connects directly to what I’ve learned in EDUC 576 about qualitative research but is discussed in a manner that is very readable for a teacher-researcher. The author does not directly discuss aspects like positionality or validity, but the methods she has her students use to examine their assumptions and biases lend themselves to guiding students to understand their position in relationship to the research and participants, as well as ensuring that their analysis is valid.


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R5:The sustained silent reading makeover that transformed readers

Kelley, M. & Clausen-Grace, N. (2006, October). R5:The sustained silent reading makeover that transformed readers. The Reading Teacher, (60)2, pp. 148-156. doi:10.1598/RT.60.2.5

​This article was written in response to disengaged readers during Sustained Silent Reading (SSR). Initially the teacher was concerned because research shows that there is a connection between time spent reading and reading achievement, so disengaged learners aren’t building fluency. They cite Nancy Atwell as a major player in their creation of the R5 strategy for SSR. R5 builds in a social aspect to SSR, and requires students to fill out a log sheet detailing the reading strategies they’re self-monitoring during their reading.

​I like that the social aspect is built into SSR, however I have concerns about the idea of the reading log. Because the researchers designed the log in such a way that readers are almost forced into becoming metacognative, I wonder how much readers pay attention to the reading strategies they’re using when they’re not in that particular class or once they have moved up a grade level.


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Revisiting cognitive strategy instruction in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms

Handsfield, L. J., & Jimenez, R. T. (2008, July). Revisiting cognitive strategy instruction in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms: Cautions and possibilities. Language Arts, 85(6), pp. 450-458.

Handsfield discusses the use of cognitive strategies (see also: Strategies that Work, [Harvey & Goudivis, 2007] for information on cognitive strategies) with students who are culturally and linguistically diverse. She cautions against focusing solely on these strategies, citing observations from a classroom that uses primarily cognitive strategy instruction with culturally and linguistically diverse third graders.
Handsfield’s criticism of cognitive strategy instruction seems to be focused primarily on the implementation and the pedagogy of the classroom teacher. For example, one caution involves literacy as a solitary activity existing mostly in the mind. However, other research suggests that literacy development is a social process, and I believe that is what Handsfield is trying to caution users of cognitive strategies against.


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Secondary-level literacy coaching

Gross, P. (2010). Not another trend: Secondary-level literacy coaching. The Clearing House, 83, pp. 133-137. doi:10.1080/00098651003774844

​In this article Gross examines the attitudes of content-area teachers over the period of two years. These teachers are engaging in a voluntary literacy program designed to better their instruction through literacy strategies. She used one-on-one semi-structured interviews to ascertain the interests, backgrounds, teaching philosophy and reason for joining the initiative. Participants in the initiative found the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues from different places and the learning of strategies beneficial, even though some ad never seen them before.

​This article is beneficial in situating me as literacy coach of in-service teachers. While it doesn’t currently relate to my research, it does relate to the climate in my school district surrounding literacy instruction in the content areas. This article can be useful in a literature review in a study on secondary content area teachers and their resistance/acceptance of compulsory literacy strategy instruction.

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Miscue analysis for classroom teachers

Goodman, Y. (1995, November). Miscue analysis for classroom teachers: Some history and some procedures. Primary Voices K-6, 3(4), pp. 2-9.

Miscue analysis for classroom teachers provides an overview of the miscue analysis process—both methods and rationale. The article also provides simple examples of miscues and explains the different cuing systems readers use when they read. The examples are explicated to give the reader, a teacher unfamiliar with miscue analysis, a foundation for further reading and practicing miscue analysis.


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Kid watching

Goodman, Y. (1978, June). Kid watching. National Elementary Principal, 57(4), pp. 41-55.

Goodman asserts that children learn language through their natural environment, thus testing that language development is inappropriate. Language learning is like testing a hypothesis: a language learner makes hypotheses about language and adjusts responses based on the responses they receive in their environment. Standardized testing does nothing to aid in language development. If anything, it stifles a child’s development. Goodman stresses that watching kids is the best way to assess their development and that observing mistakes in language usage over time can show how a child is developing. Additionally, kid watchers must take dialect and culture into account when taking assessments.

When I approached this article, I thought the information would be out of date. Instead, it holds consistent with other texts and research on miscue analysis and kid watching both by Goodman and by other authors.


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Connecting students to culturally relevant texts

Freeman, Y. (2004, April/May). Connecting students to culturally relevant texts. Talking Points, 15(2), pp. 7-11.

By allowing readers the opportunity to connect to o their own prior knowledge, readers become more confident, read more, and thus gain proficiency. The author also suggests that using culturally relevant texts helps readers learn about who they are—confirming and rejecting identities. It is important to make the distinction between multi-cultural and culturally relevant. A text that is culturally relevant connects to the life of the reader, not necessarily to the reader’s race/ethnicity.

As a beginning literacy coach, and professional development presenter on the topics of content are literacy, this article is especially relevant when advising teachers and other educators about making recommendations about texts to entice or motivate those students who dislike reading or specific subject matter because they feel they can’t relate.


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Literacy coaching and reading achievement

Ellish-Piper, L. & L’Allier, S. K. (2010). Exploring the relationship between literacy coaching and student reading achievement in grades K-1. Literacy Research and Instruction, 49, pp. 162-174. doi:10.1080/19388070902913289

​Ellish-Piper & L’Allier studied three groups of reading coaches from schools who had received the Reading First grant. They examined the roles of the literacy coaches within the context of their school, the aspects of literacy they typically focus on, and the relationship between literacy coaching and reading achievement in grades K-1. Their findings about how literacy coaching effected reading achievement were inconclusive because of other mitigating factors.
​
This article was helpful in pointing me to other literature about the roles of literacy coaches and the different levels of literacy coaching that exist. The article also suggests that ongoing professional development in terms of literacy instruction is warranted for, at least, this school district. The researchers suggest that the literacy coaches should spend more time working directly with teachers, rather than doing paperwork or inputting data. They should also schedule plenty of time to observe teachers.


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Studying Writing

Dyson, A. H. (2008, March). The pine cone wars: Studying writing in a community of children. Language Arts (85)4, pp. 305-315.

​This article discusses how children navigate written literacy practices within a time where approaches to instruction are becoming focused on a specific type of evaluation. The approach observed is how children have a sense of play when writing, transferring the idea of a playground game into their written worlds. Through the study, the author follows three children to gain access to the children’s world in the classroom. She theorizes that the play of children informs the curriculum. The textual representations, both in written text and in pictures, display their understandings of and connections to both the world outside them and print conventions not explicitly taught. Children are agents—they act using their own interpretations of the world and what can happen in it.


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Literacy coaching

Cassidy, J., Garrett, S. D., Maxfield, P., & Patchett, C. (2009). Literacy coaching: Yesterday, today and tomorrow. CEDER Yearbook, pp. 15-27.

Cassidy, Garrett, Maxfield and Pratchett outline the history of the literacy coach, from the 1930s to the present. Literacy coaches have been called myriad names throughout history. In the 1980s, Joyce and Showers pioneered peer coaching strategies designed to aid teachers in the implementation of new strategies. However few teachers actually implemented the strategies taught in workshops. The goal of peer coaching was to eliminate the hierarchal ideas behind the idea of “coach,” instead creating an equality between participants. The authors also discuss the IRA’s four roles of literacy coaches and how school districts tend to restrict those roles significantly.

This article is important as I try to define myself and role as a literacy coach as well as I try to find the theoretical lens through which I will operate.


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Theory of literacy of learning

Cambourne, B. (1995, November). Toward an educationally relevant theory of literacy learning: Twenty years of inquiry. The Reading Teacher, 49(3), pp. 182-190.

​Cambourne discusses theorizing literacy learning. He finds difficulty in calling children deficient because of the negative stigma attached, especially since it is not relevant in most area of the child’s life. Forming habits, guided by the teacher, is an important part of the learning process. These habits must be broken down into smaller parts and presented gradually.

Camborne also discusses conditions of learning and the ability to apply these conditions to literacy teaching. The main finding of the researchers is that engagement with language is the most important factor of literacy learning. Additionally learners need to engage in reflection to make their understanding of literacy and language explicit.

​The goal of this source is to provide guidance about literacy theory to readers. The author, at the time of publication, was a practicing teacher. This information demonstrates his reflexivity in practice. He not only is reflective, himself, but puts value and emphasis in moving literacy learners to become reflective about their literacy learning process as well.


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Outrageous Textbook Prices

I've already signed up for next semester's classes and I'm checking out the book lists on the NMSU B&N site. For just my EDUC 604 class (which has something to do with social justice and pedagogy) there are six required texts. I'd heard B&N had this NookStudy thing going on and for texts that have that option, there is a price listed. Here's the one that caught me:

Now, I'm all about convenience, but if I'm looking at the cheapest to drop $200 on textbooks (not even the fun YA lit that I like to read) and I can get a used paperback copy for $20, then I'm not about to drop that much more to have it on my mobile device.

I did a little more digging and found something different. I wandered over to Amazon.com to see if the used copies through other resellers were cheaper than what B&N was advertising. Here is what I found:

Um, huge discrepancy anyone? With Amazon providing all Kindle apps for free, I'm not sure why anyone would pay the $135 for a nookStudy version. I think I'll use the rest of that $119 to pick up the rest of my books.

Unfortunately, there are no books currently posted for my other class. I guess we'll have to wait and see how much damage is done then.

Using Comic Life

For my RDG 621 class we are required to complete a collaborative project. In terms of the other students in my class, that means that they work with another student and the kids they're tutoring to present whatever they created together.

For me, because I didn't have a student, it was a little different. I teamed up with a master's student to create a comic. The two boys that she worked with wrote a story about superheroes and we used Comic Life to put together the story.

I think the master's student with whom I was working was more excited about the project than the two fourth graders. And that's okay. I wanted to design an activity that got the kids out of their chairs -- something I noticed as lacking throughout the semester in my observations. I wish I could include pictures from the comic we created but I can't put photos of children online.

What I really liked about the project was that it hit multiple types of literacy. Not only did the children write the story, but they had to use their understanding of the story they created to come up with the pictures they were going to take to illustrate that story. Talk about the highest level of Bloom's Taxonomy. I'm excited about presenting this project in two weeks. I wish I could get my students this excited about a project.

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In the interest of time

I never thought the logistics of trying to get a simple survey approved would cause so much annoyance. But it feels like while the higher ups profess to want highly qualified teachers, they can't take out five minutes to let me know whether I can ask students questions. Hmm...set anyone up for failure? I'm just frustrated. I'm going to sleep and hope that things look brighter in the morning.

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What is Reading?

Today, two other colleagues and I were talking about what makes a struggling reader. My response was, "it depends on your definition of reading."

Here's the situation: a colleague's student (we're taking a literacy assessment class and tutoring elementary students) is struggling with oral fluency. Even though he is having issues reading aloud, he has good comprehension. Colleague #2 says that this student is a struggling reader because he struggles with one aspect of reading.

What do you think? Should he be labeled a struggling reader?


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Trouble with interview questions

So thus far, my research team's research questions are as follows:

The trouble I'm having is that in writing the interview questions, they all seem to focus on questions 3 and 4 (yes, I know they're not numbered. Count them). I think the first question gets answered through document analysis in conjunction with data we collect for questions 3 and 4. I'm honestly not sure how we're going to answer the second. Maybe, again, in students' answers to the interview questions, but indirectly so. And then four and five. And I've thought of some questions while writing this post, so I'm going to get back to that.

Things to work on

We were reading articles about bullying in qualitative research class last night and through the discussion surrounding these articles I came up with two things I need to work on in terms of how I read. First, I need to learn to read literature reviews for the gaps in the literature. Second, I need to learn to notice researchers subjectivities--and how their biases appear in their research.


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Male cheerleaders and bullying

Got this in my Twitter feed this morning from Tolerance.org

http://tinyurl.com/2dwhlcw


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Defining Reading

Defining Reading

Transacting with a text, both the author and the reader come out differently in the end. Reading is about making meaning, not just decoding.

Fluency: we need to redefine what fluency means. It's not about how fast one reads but also the comprehension, inflection. Programs like Reading Street and DIBLES focus on how fast one reads.

We are conditioned to believe that if we repeat words when reading aloud then we aren't good readers. This isn't the case. It's a strategy that good readers use to make sure they're making meaning.


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Conceptualizing Qualitative Research

In class, we are all about using metaphor to explain difficult concepts. Here's what we came up with.

In the first iteration, we kind of let the metaphor take us over.




The second time... This is what it was supposed to look like.





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Questions in Qualitative Research

From our discussion of qualitative research

• Shortcomings of qualitative research questions is that they're often too focused.
• Don't have enough flexibility of research questions
• Should be broad enough that we can go into specifics but can change at the same time
• components of a research question
  
  • context
  • participants (community)
• hardest thing to come to is initial question

As we get to our findings, the research questions change. That makes qualitative research and dissertation antithetical because we have to write a proposal in which research questions are set. Even though the questions change due to the research.

Theoretical framework guides research questions. (Finally! An order!)

The literature review comes out of the ideas of the research questions. The way the questions are analyzed become the legs of the literature review.

*Note: Grounded theory is a theoretical framework and a methodology--it also means the "absence of theory."

What we ask ourselves with research questions:

• Is it a yes/no question? 
  
  • Questions with the word "can" can get you in trouble
  • Use words like how, how do
  • We are concerned with how people make meaning in qual. research
• Are there multiple things going on in the question?
• What assumptions are we making about ideas or groups of people?
• Are there ideas to correlation between two or more topics (that's kinda quantitative, innit?)
• Is it looking at the phenomenon I'm interested in?
• Where do I get my literature?
• Which question (of the subquestions) is your "so what" question. Marshall and Rossman (2010) call it "should-do-ability"

Tough Questions (Part II)

Worksheets and Homework
How do you respond when a parent asks why no extensive homework or worksheets?

• Students aren't actively engaged
• they pick up the pattern of the worksheets 
  
• There is frustration when the work can't be completed
• After school should be family time
• Doesn't take into account SES

Commercial Reading Programs and Guided Reading
Basal readers, etc.

• Students don't get a real literacy experience when readings are truncated or dumbed down

• Stories aren't authentic

• Vocabulary is controlled

Rewards & Accelerated Reader (See  http://www.sdkrashen.com for more info)

• It's all about the reward
• Doesn't build a love of reading
• Competitive
• Doesn't take into account those readers who struggle, or the kids who love to read, or those who choose harder/longer text

 

Garan, E. (2007). Smart Answers to Tough Questions. New York: Scholastic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Accelerated Reader

This is a post for me to come back to later. @donalynbooks says the link at the bottom would be a good start for my research.

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/book_whisperer/2010/09/reading_rewarded_part_ii.html

Conceptualizing Qualitative Research

In class, last night, we were asked to take what we learned about research study design and create a visual representation of what we determined to be the most important points. Brief explanation of that which isn't clear:

• The arrows point to the reflexive and reflective processes, which are ubiquitous in the research process. At any point, the researcher may change direction/methods/etc because of what they discover during these processes.
• In reflecting on our drawing during presenting to the class, we added petals to the flower labeled "Data Collection." Some example petals are questionnaires, interviews, videos, and surveys.

Through our conversations surrounding presentations of the visuals we created a number of questions were presented and answered about the research process and the language we use to describe it.

Reflection and reflexivity are processes where the researcher thinks about themselves and their relationship to the project as a whole. The purpose is to make sure the researcher is aware of his positionality and how that affects his research. The iterative process, however, is reflection that involves repeating processes (though not always in the same way). I see the iterative process kind of like this:

(From http://goo.gl/LhZG)

So we can conclude that research is very much not a linear process. I wanted to create a flowchart to make it more linear, but even that seemed way too complicated. So I guess I'll stick with the flowers.

Qualitative research is contextually bound. There is no guarantee that the results will be transferrable to other situations, but the theories that come out of the research should be patterns that are applicable to observations in other places. That is what makes qualitative research transformable.

As researchers, we have to get to the point where we understand (and practice) the idea that absolutely everything we do is intentional. Because we have to justify more than quantitative researchers do, we have to be able to explain to people why we made the choices that we made. Every choice or occurrence (e.g. people not returning permission forms) affects the outcome of the study. As researchers, we have to be very aware, and make a point to talk about, the limitations of the study due to these choices or other things that happen through the course of the study.

One of my tasks following this posting is to go back and look at the article I read last week on bullying and examine at it more critically in terms of what we decided was important.

Observing the Reading Process (RMI, Chapter 1 notes)

"If the significance of miscues is not understood, they are likely to be treated as phenomena that must be eliminated"  (p. 8)
"An additional purpose of miscue analysis is to help teachers and researchers evaluate reading material" (p. 4)
Through the Burke Interview (p. 13) teachers can find out how children perceive themselves as readers.
Reading Models

• Bottom-up mdoel
• Top-down model
• Interactive model

• Subskills model
• Skills model
• Holistic

Here's what they look like:


Language Cuing Systems
Semantic cuing system

• The system of meanings in a language
• The question: Does this make sense?

Syntactic cuing System

• Interrelationships of words, sentences, and paragraphs within a coherent text.
• The question: Does this sound like language?

Pragmatic cuing system

• The system of social rules that lets us know what language is acceptable and expected in particular settings. (Social knowledge)
• The question: what might someone say in this situation?

Graphophonic cuing system

• The set of relationships between the sounds and the written forms of the language.
• The question: How do these letters and their sounds help me choose a word that makes sense here?

Goodman, Y., et. al. (2005). Reading Miscue Inventory. Katonah, NY: Richard C. Owens Publishers, Inc.

Tough Questions

Reading Aloud

Research says,

I am spending time teaching kids to read by reading aloud. They learn about comprehension, fluent reading, decoding and sounding out words. Our standards include oral comprehension.

For ELL students, it's giving them more practice with the language.

So children can learn the conventions of print.

Round-Robin Reading

Research says,

The only child that pays attention is the child that is reading.

Doesn't focus on comprehension, but performance.

Struggling readers and ELL students struggle in front of their peers.

It's a high anxiety activity.

Garan, E. (2007). Smart Answers to Tough Questions. New York: Scholastic.

Miscue Analysis (in class)

When evaluating miscues, it's important to

• Syntactic Acceptablilty (Does this sound like language?)
• Semantic acceptability (Does this make sense?
• Meaning change?
• Graphic similarity (high, low, some)

High quality miscues (labeled YYN), those that show the children are making sense of what they're reading, usually have very low graphic similarity.

Low quality miscues usually have high graphic similarity because children are usually focusing too heavily on the graphophonic cuing system.

If a child self corrects, the coding of the miscue changes. Self-correcting is a YYN miscue. It's another reason we shouldn't interrupt children while they're reading. If we do, we eliminate the opportunity for the use of this strategy.

Research Ideas

Right now I'm reading Designing Qualitative Research (Marshall & Rossman, 2006) in preparation for Wednesday's class meeting. As scared as I am about the dissertation process I have at the forefront of my brain, developing ideas about what I want to research. I figured I'd record them here under a common tag, and refer to them later.

As I was reading, I made a connection between the process of asking questions specific to and important for the advancement of a particular field, and the reading I did in Smart Answers to Tough Questions (Garan, 2007) about questions on reading. In this section, Garan talks about how silent sustained reading is important for students to build fluency (especially if they're reading something they like), and to move them to becoming better readers. There is a little discussion about Accelerated Reader and how there is insubstantial research both for and against this particular program. There is criticism that the focus is on extrinsic reward for readers, and the questions asked on the quizzes are all surface, Bloom's Level 1 Remember, type questions.

What I wonder is what programs like this do to the dispositions of young readers--especially when the self-selection of books is limited to those books that are on or above their level. Do they become life-long readers? How many of those students who had poor dispositions toward reading and Accelerated Reader as elementary school students end up in the Read180 program or programs like it at the middle and high school level? Does that program (which includes an AR like quiz program called Scholastic Reading Counts) change those dispositions? Or do the students internalize more because they want their elective back?

I realize that many of these questions are specific to the environment in which I currently teach, but I am sure they apply to other districts as well.

 

Garan, E. (2007). Smart Answers to Tough Questions. New York: Scholastic.

Marshall, M. and Rossman, G. (2007). Designing Qualitative Research.  Los Angeles: Sage.

Miscue Analysis

While RDG 621 is formally a class about literacy assessment and evaluation, the main assessment too that students learn and perform in this class is miscue analysis. Our class is held at New Mexico State's Children's Village, where we spend half the class learning about literacy by interacting with children.

Miscue analysis is a process developed by Ken Goodman (who wrote one of our textbooks). Simply put, it's the process used to determine both a reader's strengths and the strategies the reader needs to work on.

Unlike many assessment tools, miscue analysis is a mixed methods way of conducting research, possessing qualities that are both quantitative and qualitative. On the quantitative side, miscue analysis provides statistical information in the quantity and frequency of miscues. On the qualitative side, miscue analysis tells the evaluator about the quality of a reader's reading.

Right now, I have a working knowledge of the three cuing systems people use when they read. A fundamental understanding of these cuing systems is important when conducting miscue analysis. My goal for the semester is to build my knowledge of these cuing systems so when I am conducting an informal miscue analysis while listening to my students read, I can call up my knowledge of these cuing systems to help me further guide my students.

The three cuing systems are:

• Graphophonic: this system involves the way words are spelled, punctuation, and other print features, as well as the sounds of oral language and their relationship
• Semantic: this system deals with the meanings of words and phrases, how they relate to each other and both the author's and reader's knowledge of the world.
• Syntactic: this system involves the way people organize their words in phrases or sentences in any given language. The grammar of a language, if you will.

Goodman, Y., et. al. (2005) Reading Miscue Inventory. Katonah, NY: Richard C. Owen Publishers, Inc.

Memo on researcher identity

I was perusing my Qualitative Educational Research textbook (p. 470) yesterday and came across a section about using memos to help keep track of my thinking on my journey toward my dissertation. I thought i'd go ahead and give one memo a go.

The purpose of this memo is to begin a conversation with myself about the personal relevance of the research I'm planning and why I care about it.

Lutrell poses four questions to help jumpstart this process.

• What are your passions? What makes you care about the topic or the people, places or things that you wish to study?

I am passionate about young adult literature. There's something that I haven't put my finger on yet about the characters, the settings, the writing that speaks to me. And I am passionate about the adolescents who read these novels, who don't want to read these novels, who struggle with literacy in their native language and/or in a new language. There is an excitement that can't be replicated anywhere else when a self-professed non-reader sends me a text message asking for the release date for the next book in the series he's spent the semester reading.

I'm a reader. I've always been a reader. There are days when I can't help but wonder if my passion for young adult literature came from the fact that as an adolescent, my self-selected reads were adult fiction and the classics.

I take immense pleasure in recommending YA titles to my students, discussing their reading and helping them build their literacy not only in an academic setting but outside of school as well.

• What presumptions and beliefs do you hold about the topic, people, places or things?

I assume that every adolescent can find something to read that they can identify with. I believe that most people need to be at least functionally literate to get by in society without being taken advantage of. I believe that some YA literature is as rich in language, characterization and story as the classics English teaches are required to teach. (Don't misunderstand, I also believe that the classics have merit.)

I assume that many struggling readers want to read better, but they're so used to where they are, and many are embarrassed about being behind, that they're paralyzed. I believe that YA literature is becoming increasingly popular (e.g. The hype behind the releases of the Harry potter books and of Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins) with not only adolescent readers, but adult readers as well.

The other two questions, I can't answer yet, but I'll put them here for future reference:

• What is currently preoccupying your mind as you begin your research?

• What are your predilections and preferences as a researcher?



Luttrell, W. (2010). Qualitative Educational Research. New York: Routledge.

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Trying out a new app

I saw on a blog I follow that the blog was posted with BlogPress for iPad. One of my Twitter friends posted yesterday or the day before about clients people use to write their blogs that aren't web based. These two things got me thinking.

I often use my phone to take pictures of student work or to take pictures of notes written on the board during class. It's a hassle to email myself the pictures then upload them into a post, or to download the pictures from my phone and onto my computer then upload them into a post. I could email the pictures directly from my phone, but I haven't figured out how to do more than one at a time (though now that I think about it, it might be pretty simple).

I'm going to try BlogPress for a while, see if live blogging, particularly during my university classes, works for me.


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Year One, Fall Classes

The two classes for Year One, Fall are

RDG 621 - Literacy/Biliteracy Assessment and Evaluation

and 

EDUC 576 - Qualitative Research

RDG 621 is cross listed with RDG 511, which I took as a master's student. Of the five texts required for the class, four are the same. The most interesting part of RDG 511 was the mini-lesson in the eye movement lab, which shed some light on how we process what we see when we read. I hope to pull something new from this class, and I hope that the doctoral section is not the add-one-project-and-call-it-600 as master's classes cross listed with undergrad classes were.

As for EDUC 576... The professor was my master's advisor and I liked her. My current advisor says that she's really tough, so I'm expecting this class to be a challenge. I feel unprepared when it comes to conducting and reading research; hopefully this class will help me build the confidence I'm going to need to get through this.

Confusing Harder with Better

Much like the idea in the pro-choice/pro-life debate where if one is pro-choice then one must be an advocate for abortion, in education either people are in favor of higher standards (that is, what the government views as higher standards), or are content with lower standards (Kohn, 2004, p. 41). In practice, this means raising scores on the standardized tests (created by corporations).

Many tests fall into two categories: norm-referenced and criterion-referenced. Here's the difference:

• norm-referenced test: a test where the student's score is compared to a pre-determined population. The student is compared to his peers.
• criterion-referenced test: a test where the student is assigned a category--advanced, proficient, nearing proficiency, a grade A-F--based on a predetermined scale.

Kohn suggests that many of the tests fall into the norm-referenced category. Here's one I didn't know about until I had to look up the difference between criterion referenced and norm-referenced: ipsative assessment

• ipsative assessment: a student's score is compared to itself over time

This is what teachers do in class when providing students with their short-cycle assessment scores and asking them to plot how they score over the course of a year. From what I understand of ipsative assessment, this is what teachers want when they complain about comparing two different groups when determining AYP. We want the same group of students to be compared to themselves throughout time. 

How we evaluate the data generated by tests aside, Kohn suggests that higher scores on standardized tests to indicate standards have been lowered (2004, p. 41). Because students have the ability to pass the test, they must have been taught just how to pass the test, and nothing more. This is a broad generalization. Not all teachers load their students up with facts, treating them like empty vessels into which information is poured. And not all teachers subscribe to the "traditional" method of teaching (lecture style?). 

Here's the kicker, though: "Low scores have become synonymous with good tests" (Kohn, 2004, p. 44). Are we evaluating students, or how well the assessment shows students' failure? Because making the test harder after students in several states failed to pass the same assessment makes a whole lot of sense, but teacher are taught that if most of their students fail the assessment they need to look at two things--both the assessment and the instruction. 


Kohn, A. (2004). Confusing Harder with Better. In What does it mean to be well educated?: And more essays on standards, grading and other follies (pp. 38-45). Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

The Costs of Overemphasizing Acheivement

Kohn, A. (2004). The costs of overemphasizing achievement. In What does it mean to be well educated?: And more essays on standards, grading and other follies (pp. 28-37). Boston, MA: Beacon Press.


In this essay, Kohn discusses the drawbacks of focusing on assessment, suggesting that teachers/administrators/parents whose focus is the score or grade at the end teach our students to be focused on the end result not the process by which they arrived at the end result. Under the tutelage of the aforementioned, students equate success with good grades and failure with bad grades, stunting their ability to use the failure as a springboard into further learning.

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As teachers, we're setting students up to be afraid of failure. If a student's main focus is passing the test, is looking for a grade, is thinking about the final product and not the steps it takes to get there, then they miss out on what learning really is: thinking.

Ayn Grubb said, in the AP Summer Institute I attended in June, that "The learning happens in the struggle." The problem is that our students are afraid of struggle. With their frequent query, "Is this right?" or the panic attacks they have if they're told "There isn't a wrong answer, just an unsupported one," (which is usually followed by "Is this right, then?") the teachers who aren't encouraging this type of behavior can see how the age of assessment is effecting today's learners. These students don't see a "wrong" answer as useful information--one where they can figure out where they went wrong and figure out how to fix it (Kohn, 2004, p. 34). Instead, they believe themselves not to be smart enough, or have enough ability to be successful. 

Teachers encourage students to desire success, either by the metaphorical carrot of a grade or by choosing topics that interest students. But teachers have commented to me that when students are given choice, they will do enough to get themselves the grade they want, and nothing more. "School officials and reformers complain about how kids today take the easy way out . . . while simultaneously creating an emphasis on performance and results that leads predictably to that very outcome" (Kohn, 2004, p. 33). If all students have to do is bubble in the right answer, one that is chosen with very little thought, then they're being conditioned to continue this behavior.

Students need to be taught how to deal with failure so they don't fall apart when they fail. Building in time for reflection on the projects/assignments they're asked to complete could help this. Guide students to be metacognitive. Take the focus away from grades and put it on the process. Easier said than done.

Turning Learning into a Business

Kohn, A. (2004). Turning learning into a business. In What does it mean to be well educated?: And more essays on standards, grading and other follies (pp. 11-27). Boston, MA: Beacon Press.


With the proliferation of standardized testing and the preparation that accompanies such assessments, it is difficult to argue that student learning isn't heavily influenced by business. The companies that create and sell the state assessments are also the companies that create and market the [canned] programs aimed at helping students obtain a score of proficient on those same assessments. 


According to Kohn (2004, p. 17) there are three ways companies profit from education:

• Through the selling of the tests that all students are required to take.
• Advertising--be it Channel One, billboards surrounding athletic fields, or contracts with schools to sell specific products
• By running entire schools

I agree that there should be accountability in schools for everyone involved--teachers, students, parents, administrators, etc. But the state of testing as it is is too much. In the school district where I teach not only do we have the six days of state mandated testing, but reading, language arts, math and science are tested through  NWEA three additional times throughout the school year. What are we saying to students, then, about their learning? Education and inadvertently learning, is quantifiable. It's only worth the number at the end of the test, which indicates whether or not one is fit to graduate from high school. 


I don't watch Channel One, and haven't for a few years. The criticism I've heard of Channel One suggests that the majority of the program is tied up in advertising. According to Kohn, students that view Channel One are "more likely to agree with statements such as 'money is everything,' 'a nice car is more important than school,' 'designer labels make a difference,' and 'I want what I see advertised'" (2004, p. 13).  The second of those--a nice care is more important than school--is an incredibly unfortunate statement. It means some students only attend school because it is mandated by law (which I'm sure is true of more students than just those who responded to the poll). 


An effect: schools may be taken over by corporations, or the private sector. The problem arises when there is no longer a public option. (Listen to me, it sounds like I'm talking about our nation's recent healthcare issues.) Then, 

Schools dependent on private clienteles--schools that can gt rid of unwanted kids or troublemaker families...toss aside the losers--not only can avoid the democratic arts of compromise and tolerance but also implicitly foster lessons about the power of money and prestige. (Kohn, 2004, p. 16-17)

In the event that the entire educational system is owned by business people, what happens to those students who cannot afford tuition? Or those who do not match the make and model of a school's expectations? I do not believe that it will come to this, rather, I hope it does not. But to me, it sounds like an effort to resegregate schools. That one worked so well the first time.


I like Kohn's criticism of big business's reaction to education. If modern corporations actually had similar goals to those of educators, they'd call us on our use of worksheets because they don't build problem-solving skills in students, they'd push problem or project-based learning in a cooperative setting. They would stop talking about school choice--that is, a student or parent's ability to choose what school a student attends--and rather talk about giving students choices about the way they approach their education (Kohn, 2004, p. 23). I've worked with two of the many programs created by big business to help students whose ability to read has not yet reached the appropriate quantitative measure. In those programs, I've seen worksheets, no projects, no push for cooperative learning or critical thinking on the part of both the students and the teacher. Counterintuitive?


The reality of businesses? They compete against each other for business. Within my own department, I've seen teachers use this rivalry to foster competition in the students--an effort to motivate students to perform better on the many tests we make them take. This is great for the business mindset. On a larger scale:

Other nations are likewise depicted as rivals, such that to make our schools "world class" means not that we should cooperate with other countries and learn, but that we should compete against them and win. (Kohn, 2004, p. 24)

I recently read a blog post about two teachers who worked together, studying a common event in history. These two teachers teach on different continents and used Skype to connect their classrooms. One of the language arts standards for New Mexico states that students need to experience multiple perspectives. We're not talking about winning a competition here. We're talking about 60 kids who got an opportunity to see how the other side viewed a common piece of history. 


My questions for education following the reading of this article are as follows:

• If we privatize education, we are doing most of our nation's children a disservice, widening the rift between those of means and those without. Does that mean that we continue with the idea that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? 
• What does privatization mean for the government funding of public schools? 
• Are we moving toward segregating schools again? And what does this mean for the quality of education for all students?
• As educators, are we doing nothing more than creating another generation of consumers?

Related Reading: 

Molnar, A. (2005). School commercialism: from democratic ideal to market commodity. New York, NY: Routledge.

Bradley S. Greenberg and Jeffrey E. Brand. "Channel One: But What About the Advertising?" Educational Leadership (December 1993/January 1994): 56-58.

What does it mean to be well educated?

Kohn, A. (2004). What does it mean to be well educated? In What does it mean to be well educated?: And more essays on standards, grading and other follies (pp. 1-10). Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

In this article, Kohn suggests that a requirement of educators is to build a standard of education based not solely (or even at all) on what a high school student, when he has finished his tenure at his secondary institution, should be able to do. Kohn's idea of a k-12 institution that has the qualities necessary to offer a good education is built on questioning and problem solving rather than rote memorization of facts and the practicing of skills. The goal of education is to make sure that the learners never stop learning.

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Anyone remotely involved in the education process--and I'm sure, anyone who has watched the news of late--is aware of NCLB and the copious number of standardized tests that are forced upon k-12 schools and students to ensure that the students (and really the teachers) are meeting the standards set by the state for education. But test scores, especially when the learning taking place in the classroom involves authentic assessment, isn't an entirely accurate snapshot of what lessons students have learned over the course of (almost) a year.

Kohn says, "perhaps the question, 'How do we know if education has been successful?' shouldn't be posed until we have asked what it's supposed to be successful at" (Kohn, 2004, p. 2). If education is supposed to be successful at producing a nation of test-takers who are proficient at filling in bubbles and writing formulaic paragraphs in response to short answer questions, then I think we're going in the right direction. However, if the goal of education, as Dewey suggests, is to create learners who keep on learning (Kohn, 2004, p. 10), then I have to say the system is doing a poor job.

What qualities does a well educated person have? Can poor educational institutions turn out well educated people? Is someone well educated if they know the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence? or if he can recite Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 (you know... "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day..."). For that matter, who gets to decide whether or not someone is well educated? Kohn says that because educators cannot agree, it is imperative that the dialoge continue, with the understanding that there isn't a one-size-fits-all definition of what well educated is (Kohn, 2004, p. 6).

Instead, the educational policy makers are using standardized testing as a cop-out. It's like saying, "We can't decide what criterion we're going to use to decide if seniors have learned what we want them to learn by May of their last year of high school, so we're going to let the test decide for us." In doing this, the standard of education is lowered under the pressure to get students to pass a test (Kohn, 2004, p. 7).

Currently, Common Core Standards are an issue. So apparently it is possible to "agree on a single definition of what every high school student should know or be able to do in order to be considered well educated" (Kohn, 2004, p. 3). Valerie Strauss, from the Washington Post, suggests that a push for Common Core standards, standards that were drafted out of the public eye with little input from practicing classroom teachers, may lead for a push for national curriculum and a national assessment. And then what will happen to a teachers' autonomy? I think we need to take Kohn's route and keep talking.

Alfie Kohn on Goals

Kohn, A. (2004). What does it mean to be well educated?: And more essays on standards, grading and other follies. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

In the preface and introduction to What does it mean to be well educated?Alfie Kohn posits that one of the issues with education, the one this text is going to discuss, is "failing to talk meaningfully about goals and practices" (p. xii). In the essays in this collection, Kohn will address how to construct the classrooms we need to reach goals that don't include students becoming master test-takers, how that affects how teachers instruct in their classrooms, and how to respond to student success once we've broken them of the need to find validation in authority figures.

For readers whose point of departure is a worldview very different from my own, my objective, naturally, is to invite them to look at things a little differently by the end of an essay than they did at the beginning. But for everyone else, my hope is to provoke reconsideration of practices, and even of goals, by beginning with the basic values we share. That's what allows a logical progression of reappraisal: GIven that we're agreed on this broad (or long-term) principle, how much sense does it make to pursue these narrow (or short-term) goals, and the, in consequence, how wise are these policies and behaviors? (p. xv)

Kohn's last question is the lens through which I wish to look at these essays, while applying what I know about best practices in adolescent literacy and my own teaching experience.

Inaugural Post On In Pursuit

One of the Language Arts teachers in my department, one who will soon be starting her dissertation, told me that I needed to keep an annotated bibliography of texts that I read both on my own and in class. This way, when my dissertation rolls around, I have a complete listing of texts that I have read and can sort through them easily. Seems like a good idea to me.

So this blog, In Pursuit of Dr. Eli, will be that annotated bibliography, including my thoughts, challenges, and bumblings through the doctoral program at NMSU.