Research Methods

The scholarship in these courses focuses on various research methods including qualitative, quantitative and action research. The topics of research using these methods is diverse including: educational attainment of foster care youth, the student readiness of colleges, school improvement plans to improve numeracy skills for four subgroup populations and an action research study regarding using a flipped classroom approach to Holocaust education.

Qualitative Research Methods

A group qualitative research study conducted for and presented to the Michigan College Access Network (MCAN). The study collected data through interviews, observations and artifacts to answer the research question, what do colleges do to make themselves 'student ready'? The study focused on collecting data from three perspectives: the administrator, faculty and students. Collection, coding and analysis of the data led to three themes emerging: community, support and disconnects. Page 19 of the report provides detail on one of the the most surprising findings regarding disconnects and that is the student-teacher relationship disconnect between full-time and part-time faculty. Page 20 also explains another surprising finding that students know supports from the college exist but how to access those supports was not clearly known. This research study was a very important experience for me since this was the first time conducting qualitative research using interviews, observations and data collection. All prior qualitative research was survey driven. It was also the first experience with coding data and using different coding methods which provided me ideas of how to develop the qualitative portion of my dissertation research.

Quantitative Research Presentation at Celebrating Donors Student Showcase - June 6, 2019

The following poster was a presentation of original research conducted examining gender, race and head of household data from the 2016 and 2017 American Community Survey (ACS) to determine if they had a significant relationship with educational attainment specifically for adopted and foster care students. Data was collecting using iPUMS and quantitative examination of the data was conducted using IBM SPSS software. The research from this poster was a landmark experience for me since it was the first time (1) conducting a quantitative research study, (2) using the IBM SPSS software to analyze data sets; (3) cleaning data from a very large data set, and (4) preparing a research poster specifically in a format conducive for quantitative research.

Program Evaluation

Using a data set provided by the instructor, a school improvement plan was created to examine past standardized testing performance of four subgroups. This data was used to set an improvement goal for numeracy and identify interventions strategies supported by research. The data was also used to identify the role and responsibilities of school improvement stakeholders and to develop a professional development plan to support the implementation of the school improvement plan. As a former school principal and assistant principal, I have extensive experience creating school improvement plans; however, the process of completing this project informed me of various ways to improve future school improvement plans I may develop. For example, one way to improve the plan is to have school-wide reform strategies that are researched based and tiered to match the data as detailed in this plan on pages 10 through 12.

School and Community Relations

A public relations plan developed for the Holocaust Memorial Center Zekelman Family Campus (HMC) as the culminating project for the School and Community Relations course. The project reviewed the current public relations plan for the HMC and proposed a revised plan with the following components: Community Relations, Media Relations, Public Opinion Data Collection, Funding Campaign Plan and an Evaluation Plan. The project surprisingly revealed substantial gaps in the HMC current public relations plan especially in program monitoring and assessment. I invite you to review page 26 which discusses the internal and external monitoring and evaluation instruments for teacher workshops. Page 28 specifically identifies how the pre-workshop checklist and post workshop self-assessment documents are required of workshop facilitators but is not collected and reviewed by the Director of Education which diminishes the purpose and value of these assessment instruments.

Action Research in Education

The final report for an action research project using a flipped classroom approach with teachers who registered for the Holocaust Memorial Center's "Teaching the Holocaust, Empowering Students" signature workshop. The flipped classroom approach was used with four workshops conducted in Farmington Hills, Grand Rapids, Hillsdale and Kalamazoo, Michigan and teacher perspectives of the approach were collected through a survey. The intended purpose of this study was to determine if a flipped classroom would provide more teacher collaboration time during the in-person potion of the workshop by front loading instruction in a virtual environment before in-person programs. The flipped classroom approach was surprisingly well received however what was not planned was the delay by Intermediate School Districts in getting the content instructional videos to teachers in an appropriate amount of time so they could watch the videos and complete the tasks asked of them before the in-person program. I invite you to look at the table on page 15 which summarizes the results of a survey sent to workshop participants asking how the pre-workshop videos helped to prepare them for the in-person workshops.