Module 8...Coda

Throughout the last 8 weeks, there has been a plethora of knowledge put in my lap.  While I must admit I did feel overwhelmed most of the time, I do feel that I have learned A LOT since taking this class.

Every week there were readings from the Phillips (2008), Mertler (2012), and other attached PDFs that needed to be completed.  I appreciate the variety of text that was utilized in this class as it gave a number of different ways to present most of the same knowledge.  I constantly spoke of the text of Phillips and Mertler in these blog entries about how they presented items.  While Phillips was music specific, Mertler spoke to me on a more humanistic level for this class.  All of the text that was read during this class has taught me something; they just approached things differently.  The plethora of videos that were provided throughout this course helped to clarify many different aspects of the research process.  The weekly “spot-light” videos on prominent figures in music education were very interesting.  I definitely learned some very interesting things about these people.  My favorite was the Bennett Reimer video…I thoroughly enjoyed hearing his musical journey through life!

APA format has become my new best friend with the help of the OWL website.  I had limited use of it in college.  I remember using it in one class during a specific unit.  In high school, MLA was the source of choice, as well as in my rhetoric classes in college.  I am thankful that research in music education has come in the first semester of my degree program.  I am sure APA will be utilized extensively as I continue in the program.  I hope to become more fluent in its approach as time progresses and I utilize it even more.

I have realized that research is much more organized and detail-oriented than I had originally thought.  I always thought people just sat down and started typing, reading, and studying.  I now realize that there is more to qualitative and quantitative data.  There are specific types of these research studies that require a very specific process.  It actually took me a few weeks to realize that these mini-assignments we had been given were parts to a research project that would later be combined.  Not only am I more familiar with how research works, I am also more familiar with issues that I face on a day-to-day basis in my school.  Reading the research regarding strategies for urban band programs has helped me to think differently about my approach to certain aspects of my job.

In regards to the Phillips (2008) text for this week, I believe that teacher participation in research is absolutely essential.  I, personally, think it is atrocious that politics determine educational decisions.  I am a music teacher…do I tell a microbiologist how to do his job? No.  It is time that teachers be given the opportunity to change the way education is approached.  With that being said, it is time that teachers take responsibility for being part of the bigger solution with open arms.  I do not think that integrating research into our classrooms is going to be easy, but action research is definitely doable.  Teachers can work together by grade level or subject specialty in order to better the education of students.  I believe that if there were undergraduate classes that focused on research (as tedious and time-consuming as it is), young teachers would be much better prepared to go to the literature for suggestions.  Young teachers would also be prepared to have the skill necessary to conduct a research study.  At this point, I do believe that I would consider an action study for my capstone project, however, I am in my first semester and that could change as time progresses.

While I am glad that the plethora of written work is over for this class, I am happy that I had this experience.  It has opened my eyes to the process of educational research and I believe it has helped me to become a better teacher.  I look forward to integrating new approaches into my teaching as a result of the research in this class.

Module 7

As the end of the class draws near, the “end” of action research is drawing to a close also.  This week’s module focused upon mixed methods research, developing an action plan, communicating research results, and conventions of academic writing.

The Phillips (2008) reading for this week focused upon mixed methods research.  In previous modules, qualitative and quantitative were explained in great depth.  Phillips (2008) describes mixed method research as having both quantitative and qualitative procedures within the same study.  This is a relatively new approach to research and is now being more widely accepted.  Within this reading, there were two research studies that were included.  Phillips did an excellent job providing commentaries and discussions for the sections in each of the studies.  This helped to better understand (especially the quantitative portion) the study and what the researcher was providing to the reader.  Tables and direct quotations were given to help the reader better understand the entire study since the abstract was left out.  While I did come across mixed method studies in my own research, this Phillips (2008) text did help clarify a few things for me.

The Mertler (2012) reading for the week was dealing with some of the “end” processes for action research.  While we know that research is always being done, results are given at some point.  In great detail, the reading covered the exact steps that need to be taken to develop an action plan.  Mertler (2012) is quick to point out that there are different approaches to this, such as individual, team, and school-level/districtwide.  Mertler (2012) then went on to explain sharing and reflecting results.  The text provides a number of different examples of venues where reults can be shared, as well as an example letter for a manuscript to be conditionally accepted for publication.  Mertler also provides text to help with getting published.  As always, Mertler (2012) utilizes a number of charts, tables, and examples to help the beginning researcher understand the processes explained.  I appreciate the amount of detail that Mertler uses within his text, especially his use of tables, charts, and samples.  He truly incorporates visual learning into his text.

The videos for the week were very helpful.  Mertler does a great job of not only clarifying, but also bringing excitement into research.  I can tell that he loves teaching people about action research.  The Garr Reynolds video gave great insight into slide presentations and did find it helpful.  I do think that some people are meant for public speaking and some are not…I am not because of a speech impediment, but I try my best to take my time to avoid issues and deliver the necessary information.  His tips can be used for anybody doing a presentation for a group of people.  The video on Donald Hodges was very interesting.  As a musician, I understand the importance of music in my life, but the general public has critics.  He provides some very interesting insight regarding the necessity for music in our lives.  He provides information regarding how music actually affects the human body, as well as animals and insects.  These are things that most people would never think about.

Module 6

Module 6 contained a plethora of information regarding quantitative research.  Both readings, the videos about statistics, and the video regarding Bennett Reimer were very informational and explained things in a very clear manner.

The Phillips (2008) reading focused upon experimental quantitative research.  The reading provided three examples of research studies (quasi-experimental and true experimental).  Each study was broken down into sections with a commentary at the end of each section to help the reader understand the information that has been stated.  Being quantitative data, there are a variety of numbers, formulas, and tables that are introduced and explained to the reader in regards to how they fit with the research.  I found the reading to be very helpful, especially since there were three different studies.  This provided me with three different viewpoints of experimental research.

The Mertler (2012) reading focused on data analysis.  Mertler goes into great detail in regards to data analysis for both qualitative and quantitative research.  As always, he breaks everything down into sections, bold-faced words, provides examples, and provides many tables for study.  Mertler (2012) provides explanation to different types of quantitative data types that can be utilized in such a study.  He also does a great job explaining what each of the symbols in the different formulas mean.  Although I am trained on Excel, I found his suggestions for the “StatCrunch” program to be a very helpful alternative if conducting research.  Again, he provides screen shots to help explain the process of using this program.

Mertler’s videos are always short but provide great knowledge within them and I found it to be very helpful.  The videos regarding statistics were particularly helpful.  Actually, I am familiar the videos of the formulas because the 6^th grade math teacher at my school utilizes that YouTube channel with his students.  One of my band students showed me one time.  I watched the video and thought to myself “Hey! I know that voice!”.  I am not of the “math-mind” so I appreciated the explanation of what I am trying to figure out.  The excel videos were also a very helpful reminder.  Although we used excel in Dr. Brophy’s class, the videos were a nice refresher course! I thoroughly enjoyed the video regarding Bennet Reimer.  As a music education major at U of I, that is a name that was used quite often during my time there.  I enjoyed hearing about his struggles and triumphs with his life as a musician.  These were definitely things I did not know about him.  It really opened my eyes because you never know when you are teaching a child what they could end up doing with their lives.

Module 5

Module 5 included a plethora of information to absorb.  The readings, videos, handouts, and projects contained a number of different things related to research.  The focus was primarily on quantitative research, but qualitative was present.

In the Mertler (2012) reading for the week, data collection in both qualitative and quantitative research was covered.  They were divided into sections and types of data collection for different research techniques were covered.  As always, in addition to the explanation of a topic and bold-faced key words, Mertler does a great job with including sample data collection tools, sample records, and charts for the topic at-hand.  These visual concepts and sample tools were very helpful to me while searching through numerous articles for the review of literature, as it helped to clarify many things I was reading.  The Mertler video also helped to clarify some of his viewpoints that I encountered throughout his readings.  I enjoy his informal, short and to the point clips.  It gives the area of research a bit more humanistic approach to understanding.

The Phillips (2008) reading was split into two sections for the week, but both focused on quantitative data.  The first section focused on the principles of quantitative research.  I never realized (until this class) how intricate and detailed quantitative research is.  I knew that it had involved numbers and the scientific method, but this week went into a great number of other things associated with it.  To be honest, not being a “math” person, I am a bit overwhelmed with these details.  While I am a bit over-whelmed, I will say that Phillips did a great job explaining it.  The second section of his reading focused on the descriptive study of quantitative research.  I felt a little more at ease while reading this section.  I appreciate how he included an example study and broke it down into sections.  He then explained each section of the study and even included tables.  This was very helpful in deciphering components that I may not understand when reading just the research.

The handout regarding how to construct a survey was very helpful for this week’s discussion component of the research etude guide.  I was able to draw knowledge that I had gathered from Dr. Brophy’s class and quickly understand what this week’s handout was referring to.  The examples of phrasing of survey questions were very helpful.  I actual now understand why the survey I must fill out after every teacher in-service is structured the way that it is.  Ah, education.

The review of literature took a lot of time to complete.  I am thankful that a sample was attached to the instructions.  I must admit that as useful as the OWL website is for APA, I do find this process over-whelming at times.  It is probably because I have never had to write this much in my life.  Nonetheless, I am learning a lot from reading the research on urban music education and have actual seen some things I plan on trying this coming school year.

I found the video to President Obama very interesting.  Campbell brought up good points regarding the potential in all people for success in the arts.  While I agree that if Obama were to inflict change within education it would be good, I think we can all agree that a more localized level of influence needs to be confronted also.  As seen with common core, not all states have chosen to adopt it, even though it is for the benefit of the kids and our country’s future.  I would like to see more institutions of higher learning getting involved at the state level of government to help guide politicians to make better choices regarding the arts and education overall.

Module 4

Module 4 had a very “hands-on” approach to learning.  There were a variety of readings and videos to cover how to interpret research articles, differences between types of research, and videos on how to write a literature review.

I found the Phillips readings to be very interesting this week.  Phillps (2008) says that researchers can collect quantitative data, but the qualitative study is recognized by its reliance on words for data (p. 83).  I found this to be interesting (and reassuring) that some aspect of “numbers” can be incorporated into a qualitative study; it just is not the basis for it.  The reading goes into great detail regarding the process and reasoning behind doing a qualitative study.  In order to better understand how qualitative research is broken down, Phillips (2008) took an actual research article (an ethnographic study to be exact) to study.  I found this study on Chinese and American music education majors to be very interesting.  It really grabbed my attention as to different thought processes into the subject matter.  He later makes a commentary on another research article.  This was again a qualitative study, but it focused on the life of school music teachers.  After each section of the study, Phillips (2008) provides a commentary to help the reader understand why the researcher included the information that was presented.  This information will prove to be very useful as I progress through this class and must propose my own research study.

While I usually find the Mertler (2012) readings to be easier to understand, I must admit that there was a lot of information to absorb this week and I felt a bit overwhelmed by all of the topics presented.  There was a lot of information and detail regarding different types of qualitative and quantitative research designs.  He explained things very well, but there was definitely a lot to comprehend.  As someone very new to research, I found myself having to re-read a number of things.  As always, I do appreciate Mertler’s use of bold-faced words to help me identify key words.  I think that the most helpful aspect of the Mertler (2012) reading for this week was the detail regarding ethics in research.  Mertler (2012) provides examples (and explanation with notes) of letters to send to specific people (i.e. participant, parent, student, etc.) when conducting a research study.  Mertler (2012) also goes into detail of getting organized for research so that it can flow better, and even included a sample research-planning schedule for use.  Again, he goes into detail and even provides an example of a research plan.   He ties this research plan into an extension of a previously proposed topic from an earlier chapter.

The videos (and handout) for this week were very helpful in clarifying the literature review.  I really enjoyed the jolly man (the woman was a bit dry to listen to) who presented in a conversational manner.  I am very glad that these videos were there.  I was very confused as to what a literature review included and did NOT include.  It was made very clear with all three videos as to what is expected when completing a literature review and I plan to use them again for the project due in module 5.

The video on Robert Woody was very interesting.  His class seems very innovative and practical in a world where music educators often come across students who play rock instruments.  Often times, however, music educators do not always possess those same skills.  Woody seems to give these music education students a skill to use in the classroom that a lot of music educators may have to end up learning in a pinch if they are put in to teach a guitar class or music composition class.