Dialectical Response to Barbara Bell Angus

 

 

‘Graph #	Excerpt	1-2 sentences how this statement might inform your own future research (with a total of 8 excerpts selected)
1	“… hope this article will provide encouragement to other first time action researchers as they wrestle with their initial projects.”	This was a relief because I have been struggling to compose a research questions and now I realize that action research is more about questioning the unexpected. I feel that this article has encouraged me to notice things that go “wrong” in the classroom and ask, why?
2	Powers (2000): “ ‘the richness in practitioner research evolves from the dissonance or discrepancy when what occurs is different than what was expected.’”	Even as a third year teacher I still face moments in my career where I feel unsure about what went wrong in a lesson. I will start spending more time recording these moments in my teacher’s journal since reflecting on these moments can improve my future practice.
3	“It is the development of my research question and the resolution of the frustration and cognitive dissonance that this process caused that I would like to describe.”
4	“In order to accomplish these goals, I realized that I would need to put a greater emphasis on discourse in the classroom.”	This made me think about my own potential research question since we often do have discussions in my classroom. I would also like to put emphasis on discourse since I find that conversations in large classes can get “messy.”
5	“My observations in the classroom were not detailed and accurate enough to provide me with sufficient data to pose a question at the appropriate level.”	This quote led me to reflect on my own teacher’s journal. I should try to closely observe my classroom now, as this will help me get in the habit of observing and collecting data once I start my research.
7	“To determine if the students were focused on the same learning objective as I was, I used our ‘stop action’ techniques whereby the students are stopped in their work and asked to fill out a questionnaire regarding their interpretation of the task and their learning.”
12	“..they did not include the oral language skills on which I thought they were working when I stopped the action.”
15	“Again no one mentioned any of the conversation skills on which I had been focusing for the previous six weeks. Not only had they not made my goals their own, they had not even recognized my goals.”	I often try to communicate the lesson’s goals or objectives directly to the students. A better idea would be to plan engaging lessons and then ask students why the lesson is valuable.
16	“..Although I was frustrated at first, it was, as Cazden had predicted, the beginning of more interesting and productive work. So I abandoned the idea…”
17	“I involved the students in designing and evaluating their own assignment. Discourse was no longer the means; it was now the end. Now my question became more basic. If I involve my students in designing the task and evaluating themselves, can I get them to focus on their discourse and to improve it?”
19	“Why did the students in this situation, without any instruction, discern my goals? I think it was because they were also their goals.”
21	“In viewing the videotapes, I had the opportunity for closer analysis and it seemed to me, not only on that occasion but on others as well, that the students were responding to the social hierarchy, focusing on the status and power relationships established in the hall and on the street, rather than on the meaning of the discourse.”
22	“Again I was confronted with an outcome that I had not expected. On the one hand, I found the dissonance frustrating and confusing because I was attempting to create a neat package that I could write up, as my colleagues seemed to be doing, where they stated their question and then proceeded seemingly in a straight line to investigate it.”	Research and data collection is messy but I should not get upset if my research question doesn’t get answered right away. Instead, I should focus on my observations while I analyze the bigger implications of the data.
24	“…the discrepancy between what I expected and what occurred forced me to look more closely for answers. Therefore, I scrutinized the videotapes in more detail and discovered critical aspects of student interaction. I believe my observation concerning the influence and power of students' social relationships outside of class will fundamentally change my understanding of and approach to classroom interaction.”
26	“…But it was only through careful scrutiny of videotaped recordings and subsequent reflection that I was able to make these observations and, consequently, to change my approach to teaching my high needs students.”	I’m not sure that I will videotape my students, but this made me think about how closely I really need to observe me students to receive useful data.
27	“With respect to defining my research question, I have learned that my question must arise more closely from actual classroom incidents.”	I can’t start this project by Googling “good classroom action research topics.” Instead, I should notice when things aren’t going as planned in my lesson and try to create a research question that addresses this unexpected incident.