Embedded Files
My scholarship began with EDK 700, an Intro to Educational Research course in which I looked at the system of CTE and its purpose in adding value to employers, both as they recruit new employees and as they retain current employees. I was curious to look at the issue not from the student's perspective in that "will the credential help them get a job," but from the employer's perspective in that "will the credential help the employer recruit and retain a workforce?" In this work I developed the skill to make a research proposal, including positioning, ethics, sampling, and gaps in literature. I conducted a literature review and I identified experts in the field. Finally, I wrote an introduction, purpose statement, research questions and variables, and I understood validity, research design, methods, and evaluation.
In my EDA 820 Public Pedagogy course, I began to look at the application of knowledge and skill in extracurricular activities including 4-H programs. I performed a case study on a youth dog training club and analyzed how 4-H could be used in K-12 education as school reform for its benefits in providing experiential learning opportunities. In this project I developed a skill set in ethnography, case study, developing research questions, and conceptual framework.
Revisiting CTE in a Qualitative Research Methods course, I considered whether or not skilled trades occupations would be successful in recruiting women and people of color into those occupations if the instructors do not reflect their identities. I used qualitative research tools including artifacts, interviews, coding, triangulation of data, and conceptual framework.
In my Quantitative Research class I applied a version of knowledge and skills application when I looked at language acquisition through a Spanish Immersion program. In this course I learned to develop a null hypothesis and research hypothesis and determine the level of risk. Using factorial ANOVA, we can see the difference between the groups as a main effect or interaction effect. With my experience in continuous improvement, I really connected to using a visualization of data to understand the phenomena.
EDK823_VanderSloot_SI Final Paper
A new job administering a Victims of Crime Act grant inspired me to understand trauma-informed evidence-based practices. Looking at themes, I uncovered the factors of trauma-informed therapy to be environment, instructor competencies/identity, and context, and how these influences shape one's process to becoming fully human. In this project I particularly began to identify the congruence between the mind and the hand as a basis for good mental health, a concept that recurs in my dissertation proposal.
In EDA 515 Community & Schools, I brought my scholarship together by looking at how public pedagogy, specifically, trauma-informed therapy in yoga, could be used as a pre-CTE activity. I am interested to know if activities in which students regulate their behaviors would potentially impact their competencies and influence their career choices. I considered the current problem of mental health issues in young people. It struck me that yoga is an application of knowledge and skills, and in fact yoga is a CIP program (state approved) in some California community colleges. I then imagined an education reform proposal which combined a trauma-informed yoga therapy with a CTE program in yoga. In these two projects addressing trauma-informed evidence-based practices I developed my skills in conceptual framework and literature review.
EDA515_VanderSloot_Education Reform Project Proposal_FINAL.docx
In EDK 850 Proposal Development, I worked with Dr. Fossum to bring my scholarship forward in a rough draft of my dissertation proposal. Beginning with the understanding that today's youth have issues unique to their generation and that mental wellness is an issue that needs to be addressed in school, I know that the Michigan Department of Education has introduced initiatives to address the "whole child" in order to drive awareness of the social and emotional needs of students.
Considering my own experiences, the experiences of my children, and my observations working with the Prison Build program in MDOC and expressive therapies in the Wedgwood anti-human trafficking programming, I am convinced that handwork would benefit students as a pre-CTE activity in that through handwork students can achieve congruence by using the mind and hand together. I looked for an existing educational system that includes handwork and found "sloyd," a curriculum of handwork used in many countries, but particularly in Nordic countries. Sloyd had a small window of time when it was used in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century, and wood shop and home economics existed in our schools up to the most recent 30 or 40 years, but all was abandoned upon introduction of the common core. We are embarking on a new revolution, however, with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and education needs to respond to the new ways knowledge will be cascaded to other people, or even to understand whether or not knowledge needs to be transferred. Jack Ma, the founder of Alibabba and speaking at the World Economic Forum, expounds on his idea that knowledge based jobs will be absorbed by AI, leaving work as we know it performed by robots rather than by humans. While the focus of education over the last 100 years has been preparing students for work, the focus of education in the future will be preparing students to exercise their humanity. Understanding what makes us human will drive a new set of jobs based on our creativity and relationships, and the workforce for those jobs will be in keeping with Plato's maxim to "know thyself." People will be engaged to know themselves through activities that engage the mind and hand, enforcing life skill competencies in persistence, determination, resilience, and doing quality work for its own sake. Consequently, rather than a focus on Bloom's cognitive domain, I believe we will see a shift to Bloom's affective and psychomotor domains.
My data will include ethnographic research including surveys and interviews, making this a qualitative research dissertation. Understanding that even the best educational reform ideas will get little traction without a funding stream for support, my research will also discover how a Sloyd curriculum could be approached as a pre-CTE strategy, with specific life skill outcomes. With the added benefits of handwork for mental health, I will also examine the associated benefits of meditation, "flow," zen, and anthroposophy for common themes that would appeal to audiences of multiple faith cultures while providing a positive benefit to student wellness and the whole child.
This topic may also be well-suited for post-doctoral research. A longitudinal study of middle school students participating in handwork curriculum compared to a control group of students who do not would provide quantitative data showing the benefits of handwork both now as youth struggle with their mental health and in the future when they are asked to demonstrate their humanity.
Page updated
Report abuse