week[6] - ...but not anymore?
week[6] - ...but not anymore?
This week was much better for me. I was able to balance out my schedule a bit and checked a couple major items off of my to-do list! Although I also hit a stumbling block with my R homework this week, it still felt like an overall win (and even the R homework went pretty well, I thought, once I figured out what I was doing wrong!).
Game of the week: League of Legends, Ultra Rapid Fire gamemode
Show of the week: The Haunting of Bly Manor
Biggest challenge this week: Finishing Homework 3 for Stats
Happiest moment this week: Checking in with the CfME people!
Productive, but slow planning for class. The 2nd unit of my stats course was very information-based, meaning it was pretty easy to plan lessons: introduce an idea through a fun (IMO, at least) task, explore it and talk about it, then formalize it a bit the first day; come back with some more practice, a different task, and some more formal terms and equations the second day (each topic was a two-day cycle!). The 3rd unit (which I'm planning out now, for a start on 10/15) is all about analyzing tasks, which focuses a lot less on the content and a lot more on how it's salient through the task. This is super valuable information, and I think I am crafting a good unit around it, but it is taking much more time than Unit 2 slides. :)
Classes: 50/50. Monday's class, on MSED policy, was terrific -- I actually got to lead my class discussion (CHECK!) and it went well, plus I did my class observation (CHECK!) for a big paper due 10/30. A big paper due 10/30 that I still haven't started :) :) :) But that's two good things off the list for that class. Core, on the other hand, was difficult because we barely had time to talk about the readings and I really struggled with the reading my group had. So, I'm hoping for a better class next week where I can do a better job with the group discussion portion (and hopefully we have a bit more time for that).
Homework: tough. This week's Stats homework was a bear: tough concepts combined with a lot of analysis to write up (often fairly repetitive and lengthy, at least according to the write-up standards...) While I don't think I did a perfect... or even very good... job with it, I'm hopeful that if I have to redo it it won't be a huge redo. Because, you know, I also have a Midterm coming up for that class!
I feel much more balanced than last week. Things are better. A little sense of impending doom from upcoming, high-stakes assignments, but they will be okay -- I just need to start working (hence my goals below).
Some goals for the week:
Prepare for the Stats midterm.
Start (5-10 pages) my paper for MSED.
Set up the new closet. I actually looked up the directions today and started looking for times to do it!
This class focuses largely on what policy around education looks like, what "reform" efforts look like and aim for, and our working model for how factors inside and outside the classroom inform curriculum & instruction.
This week, we looked at some of Dr. B's work in whether alternative certification programs (specifically NYCTF) live up to their goals. It was a really interesting conversation built around the first piece (excellent and based mostly on sociohistorical argument) and the second (quantitative analysis of program goals and benchmarks).
Brantlinger, A. (2020). The Meritocratic Mystique and Mathematical Mediocrity in Hard-to-Staff Schools: A Critique of the Best and Brightest Teacher Agenda. Urban Education, 55(7), 1076–1104.
Brantlinger, A., Grant, A. A., Miller, J., Viviani, W., Cooley, L., & Griffin, M. (2020). Maintaining Gaps in Teacher Diversity, Preparedness, Effectiveness, and Retention? A Program Theory Evaluation of Mathematics Teacher Training in the New York City Teaching Fellows. Educational Policy , 0895904820951117.
This class (first of a two-semester series) focuses on what educational research is, our position and identity as researchers, and how equity and social justice can be emphasized throughout educational research. It also serves to develop our analytical and communication skills!
(this class has a lot of reading)
This week pried heavily into insider/outsider status in education research, focusing on researcher positionality with respect to the community and participants studied. We happened to talk about fellow Penn alum Alice Goffman's book On The Run, which I read in undergrad and serves as a very divisive example of a researcher who's an outsider to the community she studies; on the one hand, Goffman probably brought some attention to the plight of the African American community she lived with in North Philly and how racism, policing, etc. negatively affected that community, but she wasn't personally affected by those factors, used her experience to get a Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton based off of her work, and seems to be the only one in the whole story who really benefited in any kind of a meaningful way.
Booth, W., Colomb, G., & Williams, J. M. (1995). Making good arguments: An overview, in the craft of research. London: The University Of Chicago Press.
Dwyer, S. C., & Buckle, J. L. (2009). The Space Between: On Being an Insider-Outsider in Qualitative Research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 8(1), 54–63.
Ladson-Billings, G. (2003). It’s your world, I’m just trying to explain it: Understanding our epistemological and methodological challenges. Qualitative Inquiry: QI, 9(1), 5–12.
Leonardo, Z. (2013). The story of schooling: critical race theory and the educational racial contract. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 34(4), 599–610.
Louis, K. S., & Barton, A. C. (2002). Tales from the science education crypt: A critical reflection of positionality, subjectivity, and reflexivity in research. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 3. http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/832
Milner, H. R. (2007). Race, Culture, and Researcher Positionality: Working Through Dangers Seen, Unseen, and Unforeseen. Educational Researcher , 36(7), 388–400.
This class is the second of a three-course sequence in basic statistical skills in R. It covers multiple linear regression, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), multiple comparison procedures, factorial ANOVA, Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA), nested designs, and some other skills.
Here is my update on homework 3: it is almost done, and I do not like any of my plots from it enough to share them here. I'll let you all know how the midterm goes once it's all over!