Workshop: Mock Dossier Review

I really appreciate that the three dossier reviews is one of the requirements in my doctoral program which provides me opportunities to learn and grow towards becoming a qualified novice scholar. The Dossier can be a representation of a scholar's comprehensive capabilities in research, teaching, and service that shows professions and expertise in a field. After the Mock Dossier Review workshop, I got feedback and suggestions in various aspects from my peers. Here's the summary of how to improve my dossier:

Candidate Statement

• Theoretical framework - how do other researchers shape my understanding about my research areas and perspectives on research overall.
• Explain more about how my current and previous research experiences influence on my research goals - more linkage between experiences and three areas (especially research). At the same time, provide my own understanding and arguments about my research topic. 
• Specify my research approaches with my own lens.

Research

• Explain more about why those research competencies are important for my research.

Teaching

• Make a brief statement for my teaching goals.
• Relate literature on my teaching philosophy.
• How my research influences my teaching and how my teaching has changed?
• Describe the teaching artifacts/evidence.

Service

• Evidence for service experiences.
• All the service experiences are in IST. Lack of service experiences at larger levels.

Although I had Dossier#1 review and just got the feedback from my advisors, the feedback from my peers shows me specifically which parts of sentences are not clear enough and how I can improve and support my argument more. Based on the dossier requirements and the expectations from advisors, I think it's always good to have different people review my dossier with critical eyes for improvement.

  

[Super Useful Candidate Statement Structure]

INTRO

• Goal (job)
• Background (what brought me here to pursue PhD, building to SO WHAT for RQ) 
• RQ (Thesis) (So What!) 

RESEARCH

• RQ 
• Theoretical framework 
• Evidence 
• Trajectory (here’s what I HOPE to do) 

TEACHING

• Relate: RQ, Teaching evidence, performance 
• Not related: Teaching philosophy, teaching evidence (how it relates to RQ), performance 
• (here’s what I HOPE to do) 

SERVICE

• Professor: These are service elements you need to be successful in the field 
• Here are the people I want to Impact, here’s how I’m doing that, here’s the evidence, (here’s what I HOPE to do) 

Overview of how all three areas (research, teaching, service) work together

• Revisit RQ. Provide summary. 1-2 paragraphs
• Breadth and integration. Minor. Relates to IST

Workshop: Literature Searching & Strategies

This week, I attended the Literature Searching & Strategies Workshop in R695. For me, I think the workshop is useful and beneficial although I am pretty familiar with most of the literature searching strategies introduced in the workshop. I think I will be using more IU library resources for searching literature in the future other than Google Scholar. The new and interesting searching tool I learned is the Web of Knowledge database. The advanced search options in Web of Knowledge are not as useful and powerful than other database searching, but the citation map with timeline and overviews of each reference article is really cool and makes the literature searching process more efficient.

Here's the example of my search on professional development and technology integration:

Another key focus of this workshop is using digital tools to organize literature. It's been a year since I started using Mendeley for organizing my course and research articles. The most powerful function of Mendeley is not only being able to import PDF files with auto detected APA citations, but also being able to search for lots of articles in the similar topic/field added by other users by joining groups or communities. It is pretty much like Mendeley learning communities for its users. The sharing and collaborating features in Mendeley are something I'm going to utilize more in my future research.

SP14 - Dossier #2 Review Presentation [Reflection]

A few questions in the question list generated from last dossier presentation were asked by the reviewers again this time. The highlighted questions can be the most frequently asked and most important questions in dossier #2.

Questions

1. In your focused research area, who are the authors you're drawing from?
2. Why is your research/teaching/service related to our field?
     How did your teaching and service transfer to your research focus?)
3. How do you characterize yourself as a researcher?
4. So what? Why is it important? Why should others be interested to your topic?
5. How do the authors you cited influence in your research and teaching?
6. Are you trying to generalized your findings?
7. Can you talk more about your data collection and data analysis?
8. Can you give us examples from your teaching, service, and/or research experiences to support
what you said?
9. How do you define ____?
10. How is your minor sharing your research studies?
11. How did your literature review inform or support your research studies? What are your takeaways?


Reflection

This was my third time in the dossier #2 review presentation. I realized that what reviewers care about is not only how much I've done in research, teaching, and service, but more importantly, how I integrate what I've done into my main research focus and my professional goals. I think it would be a lot easier for IST doctoral students to meet this requirement if we started thinking about our big questions at the very early stage and then develop those three areas all related to the main focus. Even if we worked on some expanded topics, it would be necessary show how those work could support us to shape our understanding or competencies in the main area. Also, showing the reviewers that I have narrowed down and worked towards the focused research area is important. I believe it's a good opportunity to examine my process and involvement in the three areas when developing my first dossier.

In the presentation this time, reviewers asked the questions like "why do you think ___ is the solution of ___?" "how do you know ___ makes ____ effective?" "Are you trying to generalize your research results?"Therefore, I think it's important to be careful and mindful when I make statements in the research study section in the dossier #2 presentation. Also, always have clear rationale for the importance of a research study and critical thoughts about the process of doing a research. Some fundamental concepts in a research study need to be addressed in the presentation as well.

I found that a good use of images, tables, and graphs in PowerPoint slides provides audience the gist of key concepts in my focus area and a big picture of what I've been doing and perhaps what I'm going to do next, especially when there's a limit of slides. Some bullet points might help, too. However, sometimes reviewers commented that there was not enough information about the context of a research study, the research design, and the process of data collection and data analysis. So, I'm a bit confused how much information I should provide on the presentation slides in order to give enough information for audience. It looks like all the sections required in presentation slides are important. If we needed to be concise or take out some information from my slides, which parts we could first consider?

Workshop: Starting From Scratch

I just attended the R695 workshop "Starting from scratch" this afternoon. I think this workshop was extremely helpful for students who are at the beginning stage of a research study or a literature review. The most valuable thing I got was the feedback for my research questions from Dr. Leftwich although I feel more confused about what I'm doing and what I should be doing next. This was a good experience though. Cause during the discussion, when some questions were asked by the instructor or other students, I was trying to answer those questions and clarify "what" I really want to know and "why" it's important. Although I have had some thoughts and information from literature about the topic I would like to investigate, usually the problems were still not being specific and clear enough about the research questions.

The process of being questioned from different aspects was important because I would be able to find out what those muddiest points are, and then clarify my thoughts to modify my research questions again. I also have gained some more different thoughts about my own research study/research questions by listing to what questions people asked and what concerns and perspectives they brought up for research studies in various areas. Overall, I would like to attend more of this type of workshop to talk about different people's research ideas. Hope we can have more time for discussion.

Conceptual/Theoretical Framework

Ravitch & Riggan (2012)

In order to have a clearer understanding about conceptual/theoretical framework, which is a key part of a research design, I've been reading a book called Reason & Rigor: How Conceptual Frameworks Guide Research by Sharon Ravitch and Matthew Riggan. I think it's a great book for me to have a clearer understanding of what theoretical framework is, why it's important and how it supports a research study. In the first chapter, the authors discussed the definition of theoretical framework and addressed heavily on Maxwell's definition. Maxwell (2005) used the terms conceptual framework and theoretical framework interchangeably, whereas Ravitch and Riggan (2012) defined that "conceptual frameworks are comprised of three primary elements: personal interests, topical research, and theoretical frameworks" (p. 10). I really like the three components of the conceptual framework cause it can remind me to think about not only the motivation of doing a study, but also the importance of asking myself the so what question and exhibit the linkage and the relationships among topics I want to explore and different components of theories and knowledge in literature. Therefore, I would like to develop a conceptual framework for my big question based on Ravitch and Riggan's definition and explanation of conceptual framework.

First of all, my big question is changed based on the feedback from my colleagues last week. I modified my big question from "How does technology influence teachers' teaching practice?" to "How can we assist teachers in developing technology adoption abilities?" My personal interests were addressed at the beginning of my previous blog post,  My Big Research Question...So What?. Basically, my personal interests and research interests were integrated together. My motivation for looking at how we can help teachers in technology adoption was generated from my education background and my current teaching experiences. From my experiences of being a preservice teacher in a teacher education program and now being an instructor of a technology integration class for preparing future teachers, I believe that teachers' role is especially important and impactful in teaching and learning. Moreover, the there is an unavoidable trend of technology integration in all kinds of learning environments with a great deal of evidence showing that appropriate technology integration in teaching and learning foster student learning. These personal and research interests informs the importance of investigating teachers' technology integration in practice and helping teachers be more proficient in technology integration.

I have some research topics in mind that I would like to study on in order to answer and support my big questions. Specifically, I would like to put my focus on inservice teachers in my research cause they have more direct influence in teaching and learning than preservice teachers. My research topics include:
1) an investigation of current K-12 teachers technology use in practice, comparing novice teachers with expert teachers,
2) an investigation of the formats and content of professional development in technology integration based on inservice teachers' needs,
3) an investigation of how teachers can grow their professions from social media learning communities in order to suggest a framework of appropriate and effective approaches to professional development in technology integration for K-12 teachers.

This semester, I have started 2 literature reviews. The first one is about the process of being from novice teachers to expert teachers in technology integration and the second literature review is about different types and effectiveness of professional development in teacher technology integration. For the novice to expert literature review, I investigate the definition of novice and expert as well as the process of being a novice to an expert in general. And then, I am looking at specifically the development and critical elements involved from novice teachers to expert teachers in technology integration. The following are the literature that I would like to include as the supportive framework in this topic:

• Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
• Westerman, D. A. (1992). Expert and novice teacher decision making. Journal of Teacher Education, 42(4), 292–305.
• Leinhardt, G. (1989). Math lessons: A contrast of novice and expert competence. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 20(1), 52–75.

For the professional development literature, I include the following key articles as my theoretical framework:

• Desimone, L. (2009). Improving Impact Studies of Teachers’ Professional Development: Toward Better Conceptualizations and Measures. Educational Researcher, 38(3), pp. 181–199.
• Lawless, K. A., & Pellegrino, J. W. (2007). Professional development in integrating technology into teaching and learning: Knowns, unknowns, and ways to pursue better questions and answers. Review of Educational Research, 77, 575–614.
• Garet, M., Porter, A., Desimone, L., Birman, B., & Yoon, K. (2001).What makes professional development effective? Analysis of a national sample of teachers. American Educational Research Journal, 38, 915–945.

In order to have a more robust conceptual framework for my big question, I think I may include the important literature about teachers' role in technology integration, technology integration having positively influence learning (motivation, learning outcomes, engagement), also the role of social media in teachers' professional learning.



Reference:

Maxwell, J. A. (2005). Qualitative research design: An interactive approach (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Ravitch, S., & Riggan, M. (2012). Reason & rigor: How conceptual frameworks guide research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.