Meeting #1
Date: September 11, 2017
Meeting with: Jack Smith
Why this person? Jack serves as my co-advisor
Take-aways for RDP: I asked Jack specifically for advice in how I might coordinate multiple research interests in relation to the RDP project. Generally speaking, I have three research interests: (1) how digital delivery of mathematics curriculum materials might support teachers in making adaptations according to their context, (2) how elementary school students think about mathematics while using digital visualizations and manipulatives, and (3) how the integration of computational thinking (CT) into elementary mathematics might enhance mathematical learning and support readiness for computer science. I was unsure whether the best course of action was to choose one reasonably specified interest and try to hone it further, or to examine all three or some subset.
Because I am in a very early stage of my program, Jack recommended that I think about the full "Venn Diagram" of my three research interests, and use the RDP to investigate potential intersections between what feel like three pretty separate ideas. As such, we discussed three potential journals that might represent places to find points of intersection:
Meeting #2
Date: September 20, 2017
Meeting with: Aman Yadav
Why this person? Aman serves as my co-advisor.
Take-aways for RDP: Building on the previous meeting with Jack Smith, I showed Aman my current Venn Diagram organizing my research interests. He asked me some probing questions that helped me to clarify my terms (e.g., "What exactly do you mean by visualizations?") Based on my descriptions of my interests and how I'm thinking about the overlap, Aman suggested two useful things. First, he's going to send me a paper (based on a dissertation) from one of his former grad students that focused on comparing reading experiences in print and on an iPad. Reading this might be helpful in terms of understanding how researchers might frame print versus digital comparisons of kids' experiences. Second, Aman pointed out that in addition to curriculum designers having intentions embedded in their curriculum materials, tool designers also have intentions embedded in their tools. Thus, the questions I have about how teachers take up curriculum in ways that maintain or change curriculum developers intentions could also be applied to how teachers use tools. This is a kind of overlap between two of my realms of interest that I hadn't thought about before.
Meeting #3
Date: September 25, 2017
Meeting with: Emily Bouck
Why this person? Emily does research involving digital manipulatives, which is one of my key interests.
Take-aways for RDP: I asked Emily for recommendations of key researchers examining the use of digital manipulatives. She pointed me to a pair of researchers whose work I had already found, which was encouraging. She also showed me some of her favorite digital manipulatives and explained how she used them in her own research. Emily and I also spoke at some length about what it means to abstract a mathematical concept -- one of the key things I think digital manipulatives might have the power to help students do. Although this part of the conversation was focused on the research project we are working on together, I found the discussion very useful in reframing my own research interests. In short, my conversation with Emily helped me to realize that I care less about helping kids form mental models of mathematics concepts and more about giving them the tools to help them build mental or physical representations on their own.
Meeting #4
Date: October 9, 2017
Meeting with: Aman Yadav and Jack Smith
Why these people? Aman and Jack serve as my co-advisors.
Take-aways for RDP: I asked Aman and Jack to help me try to navigate my three areas of research interest. I was feeling confused as to whether I should be actively pursuing all three, or trying to come to more of a focus. They encouraged me to continue reading broadly, but to make efforts to find and write about connections among the three areas -- even if those connections are not mentioned or even intended by the article authors. When I expressed concern that developing expertise in three areas of research seemed an infeasible task in the time I'll have in graduate school, they encouraged me to think about the project as defining a career program of work, and not necessarily as choosing a practicuum or dissertation topic. Based on this meeting, my plan for the rest of the project is to try to spread my annotations out a bit and be sure to think critically about how I see the topics as interconnected.
Meeting #5
Date: October 23, 2017
Meeting with: Aman Yadav and Jack Smith
Why these people: Jack and Aman serve as my co-advisors.
Take-aways for RDP: Per David's request at our individual meeting on October 18, I met with my advisors to discuss how to best spend the remaining weeks of the semester with regards to my RDP. We agreed that I should revisit my current list of annotations, giving specific attention to research design, methods, and measures. This seemed appropriate since I generally was able to talk about trends in results but not about how the researchers went about studying the things I am interested in.
Meeting #6
Date: November 13, 2017
Meeting with: Jack Smith
Why this person: Jack serves as my co-advisor.
Take-aways for RDP: Jack and I spoke about exploratory and descriptive studies, and the appropriate ways to think and talk about them with regards to measures. I brought this topic up because I was struggling, as I revisited my annotations, to describe or identify the measures used in many of the studies on my list. My take-away from the conversation was that it isn't always necessary to have an explicit measure in a descriptive study. Jack recommended a book for me to read to improve my understanding of descriptive work (Scientific Research in Education by Towne and Shavelson). I am also considering taking a qualitative research course next semester.