Colleen & Josh Expert Article
Questions:
1. Are the research questions clearly stated?
2. Who were the participants in the study? Do you think the people chosen were a good choice for this study? Why or why not?
3. Did the Findings clearly answer the research questions?
4. Was the Research organized in an easy to follow manner?
1) I do not believe the research questions are clearly stated. I could not find any in particular, but I may have missed them all together?!
ReplyDelete2) The participants were 5 teachers who taught in urban schools in the South of England at the primary level. I think only five is a very small number.
3) The findings basically said that the white board helped to further engage their students in lessons.
4) The research was confusing to me, but I did like how the teacher had the students act out what it is like to be a solid, liquid and gas. Great idea! :)
You're right Laurin, the questions are not clearly stated. They are, however, slightly suggested. Once in the first sentence, which is not in question form,"...how the Interactive White Board is harnessed to support the teaching of primary science." And again on page 349 second coloumn, second paragraph, first sentence. But that senetnce is taken from another source!
ReplyDeleteWith your other points I also agree. The number is small and the research seemes to only have one purpose; to promote the use of IWB and give good examples of how teachers use them.
While I do agree with their findings and understand that this was a case study, I do not feel like there was much of a "gap" to be filled in this area.
Plus, unlike England, we do not have the pleasure of having an IWB in every room!
Thanks Laurin,
-Josh
1) I agree with Laurin and Josh. There were more of research statements but you had to read carefully. On page 349, second column (half way down) it states the "focus" of their investigation. I guess they thought that was good enough!
ReplyDelete2) The participants were 5 teachers teaching in an urban primary school in the south of England.
This number is way too small! In the article, after it states there were five teachers in the next paragraph they say that only four of them were video taped, where did the other one go?
I think the teachers were probably just fine for the study but there should have been more of them so the results could have been more substantial.
3) The findings confirmed the research statement.
4) I do think the research was organized and easy to follow but I would have liked less of the analysis wrap-up after each lesson.
I agree, the analysis of each lesson was maybe too much. It was as if they were just promoting those tecahers, or more likely the use of IWB's. There was clearly a bias towards the use of that technology, which I happen to agree with. The objectivness needed to look at something from all sides is difficult to maintain, but here they didn't really seem to try.
ReplyDeleteI also wondered what happened to the other teacher, and as I mentioned in class, what is up with hand-picking the participants in these studies. The small sample sizes I have become used too, however, I am having trouble with the personal selection of participants. That has got to skew the data in favor of the researchers.
Thanks for your post,
-Josh
1. There are no questions that are stated in the article. They do suggest what they are looking to examine. That would be: “We examine how the teacher creates continuity in her students’ learning experiences through taking up some of the affordances of the IWB in order to represent scientific phenomena and engage children in activities to consolidate their understandings.”
ReplyDelete2. I only found that there were 4 teachers used. (Maybe I missed one somewhere). For the purpose of the study, I feel like it would be hard to look at more data than what they were asking. They looked at 16 lessons overall on a unit about evaporation. If you use more data then I feel like it might be hard to come up with one focused answer to their “question.” This way they can be more specific when it comes down to using these teachers.
3. Since there were no research questions, I felt that it answered the focus of the lesson. It seems a bit obvious though to come up with the answer. An IWB is a great thing to have and will definitely help with all types of lessons. Just walk into a classroom that uses one and one that does not and compare them. There is your research. No need to examine how they use it. Look at the difference between classes. Maybe that would make for a stronger argument.
4. I was a bit confused also. They have themes but then sub themes that go with lessons 23.45 and 24.90. Not sure what those numbers mean but it is drawn out way to much and should be more focused.
Question 1:
ReplyDeleteNo, I don’t think that the research questions are clearly stated. I think that the question can be interpreted through the reading for example, the question can be construed by the following: We examine how the teacher creates continuity in her students’ learning experiences through taking up some of the affordances of the IWB in order to represent scientific phenomena and engage children in activities to consolidate their understandings. OR the question can be created by reading: The focus of our investigation is how the IWB in combination with other resources at the teacher’s disposal are used to create continuity between ideas and events across time in a meaning making trajectory. Therefore, I think that along these emphases of ideas, the question can be found.
Question 2:
The participants of this study are five teachers working within urban primary schools in the South of England. Being a case study I think that the number of teachers is pretty adequate. This study is on the small scale because it is a case study. However I don’t think that the article provided enough detail about the background of the teachers the study observed.
Question 4:
I think that the research was well designed. The headings highlighted the sections that I was reading. The research also was broken down according to the two themes that the research discussed and analyzed. The research also included a chart that helped organize the findings. I also think that the researched also included the components of a research article however I think that it would have been helpful if the article stated their research questions in a clear heading.
1.The research questions are not cleary stated, but like others have said, the focus of the study is stated on page 349, as stated "how the IWB in combination with other resources at the teacher’s disposal are used to create continuity between ideas and events across time in a meaning making trajectory"
ReplyDelete2. I was a little confused on the participants like Mark stated. The article states, "Four teachers were video-recorded during two
sequences of two lessons, providing 16 lessons overall." This was also a very small sample size to study, I wish they could have had more teachers in this study.
4. Was the Research organized in an easy to follow manner?
I definitely think that the research was organized in an easy to follow manner. The only thing I got a little confused about was the number of participants in the study and that the research was not stated cleary. I did like that the article was very to the point and the headings were a nice way to organize it. I also like the chart of the recordings of what the teachers and students said during their lessons. I also enjoyed the picture....nice article, good job guys :)
1. I agree with everyone else on this. The questions are not clearly stated in this article. I do agree with Josh in his first post about where the idea for the questions are suggested but not in question format.
ReplyDelete2. It does seem like someone ended up getting lost in this research project. It talked about 5 teachers and and had 4 recorded with 4 lessons each.
4. The article was really interesting. It really just proved that IWBs are a great teaching tool which I think we all agreed on already. THe article flowed smoothly and was easy to read. A good pick !!
Thanks for all of your posts! I think we all agree that the research questions are not clearly stated! That is very true, when Josh and I were looking through the article, we had to search out and form the questions after looking at their statements about the research. Everyone did a great job pointing out what the questions could be based on the statements.
ReplyDeleteMany of you were confused about the participants also. I think there were 5 initially interviewed and then only 4 of them were videotaped. But, in the study they only really focus on one classroom's video recording.
I also noticed that we are all starting to get on board with the idea that the research we are reading is going to have small sample sizes :) Although it is difficult to accept, I know all research would be better with larger sample sizes, this was a case study so it was small.
Thanks for all the great post everyone! We appreciate it :)
Although the research questions are not clearly stated it is clear what they are focussing on and you could come to some conclusion as to what the questions would be. The article did say it was a case study if that has any relevance as to why the questions are not clearly stated.
ReplyDeleteThe participates were mentioned and they were five teachers at least I thought.
The article was an easy read but hard to understad all of what you were asking. It might just be because I am sick but by the other postings I think others found it confusing. I can't say anything because my article was confusing as well. I did think that this reasearch article was useful in the fact that I will be able to use it in my litterature review. Good article.
It seems that we all were feeling the same thing about this paper. The research goal was pretty well layed out and how they conducted their research was also easy to follow and understand, but there were no questions. This being a case study I wonder if what they included was enough?
ReplyDeleteThe sample size seemed to bothere pretty much everyone and this is something that we have discussed in class many times. I also feel that the smaller the sample size the less reliable the results...I gues that depends on your goal. I also can't get over the hand-picking of participants!
I echo what Mark said about this article kind of pointing out the obvious, and I have felt this way about few of these papers we have discused. Of course using these tools often and eff3ctivley is a good thing. Who needed to study that?
Thanks for posts everyone,
-Josh
1. I agree that the questions are not clearly stated in the article. They do leave suggestions of what they are examining, but there is nothing directly connected to their research question.
ReplyDelete2. The participants were a handful of teachers from urban schools in Southern English. I would have like to see a larger study group. I do believe that they were able to further investigate each classroom because of the small number of participants.
3. As many of us know the use of Smart boards in the classroom further expands students engagement and learning. As a teacher without a Smart board it would be nice if there was more funding available to increase technology in our classrooms.
1) The research questions were not clearly stated in this article. As many have already said, the authors give the focus of the study on page 349, and it is: "how the IWB in combination with other resources at the teacher’s disposal are used to create continuity between ideas and events across time in a meaning making trajectory".
ReplyDelete2) The participants in this study were 5 teachers and only 4 of them were videotaped. It was a little confusing to understand. Because this is a case study i feel that the number of participants was acceptable.
4) This article was pretty easy to follow but was a little confusing at times. It was clearly organized with bolded headings for each category. Good article about technology integration.
Thanks for your posts. There is a consensus here for the most part. The research, while lacking clear questions, was well organized and written. However, it covered a topic that seemed to be kind of a "no-brainer".
ReplyDeleteThere were some differnces in opinion based mainly on format and data presentation. We will talk about that tommorrow...along with many other fun and exciting activities!
See you then,
-Josh
First off, let me apologize for this being late. My internet has been on the fritz for the past couple a days and the cable guy just came out this morning! Sorry! :(
ReplyDelete1. I do not believe that the research questions are clearly stated and pointed out, however I do believe they are evident. From the article I believe that the question these authors are focusing on is how the interactive white board is harnessed to support the teaching of primary science. The authors also look at how the teacher in the case study creates continuity in her students’ learning experiences through use of the interactive whiteboard in order to represent scientific phenomena as well as engaging students in activities to consolidate their understandings.
2. I believe that the participants in this study were five teachers working with urban primary schools in the South of England. However, I am seconding guessing myself as the article states “Data presented in this paper are drawn from a wider project of observations and interviews…” (pg. 349) Does this mean that the research was not actually conducted and that they are generalizing data from another study? If in fact I am correct, like the other studies, I believe that 5 is a very small number. I also feel that variation should be present between gender.
3. I believe that the data answered the research questions. Through observations and interviews, data was collected to answer whether or not the interactive whiteboard further engaged their students in the lessons.
4. I believe that the overall article was very well organized and easy to follow. They broke it down into the introduction, Method, Analysis etc., but also broke it down further into Episodes while evaluating and analyzing the data. This I believe better allows for the reader to understand exactly what went on in the study. Overall, I found this article to be very interesting!