Research Commentary and Notable Indicators
In the area of scholarship/research, I have developed some expertise in disciplines that impact teacher education, specifically middle level education research and self-study research. I am active in my research and am continually working on
projects to move forward toward promotion and tenure. The scholarship I create
is original and is centered on improving P-20 schools, particularly middle
level schools and teacher education practices at the university level. My research agenda has two strands—while distinct, there is
some overlap in the underlying frameworks. Strand One is middle level education
research. Strand Two is the Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices. Both
value and promote critical reflection on teaching practices and the importance
of students’ learning and engagement. Both also value collaboration, which is something that I believe is extremely important to us as teacher scholars.
Middle level education research is an area that interests me greatly, as it immediately impacts my teaching and my students. Each year, including 2014, I attend the state, regional, and national middle level conferences as well as attend special interest group meetings at the larger international conferences. These conferences and meetings have put me in touch with middle grades researchers from all over the US and have contributed greatly to my teaching, research, and service. I have been invited to work with individuals from UNC Charlotte, Western Carolina, and UNC Asheville on a national research project looking at the status of middle schools nationwide (since the middle grades movement began in NC). These relationships and opportunities will only serve to further strengthen my middle level research. The methodologies I typically utilize (i.e., case study, content analysis) allow me to focus on middle level education as content. In 2013, I began a research project with two colleagues who have expertise in middle level literacy. We presented our article at the American Reading Forum conference in December 2013 and we continue that work forward in 2014 with proposals accepted at the American Educational Research Association conference in Chicago, IL, and the Association of Middle Level Education Conference in Nashville, TN. This work is an attempt to determine if the Common Core State Standards for Language Arts aligns with the tenets of middle level philosophy. In addition, I have spent a significant amount of time in the past few years working on an various proposed and invited presentations in middle level education. One such invited presentation and paper is Notable Indicator Two below. It allowed me the opportunity to collaborate with other teacher education professionals across the state and to look more closely at the words and ideas of those who have come before us. Their experience, expertise, and ideals inform the path we take for the future. My contribution thus far in middle level education has been minimal, but contribution to that particular field is something to which I aspire. Having had the mentors I do at Appalachian and around the state, it is something is see great value in. One particular goal is using the foundational literature we have and looking at in in new ways to influence emerging and changing practice.
Self-study of teacher education practices (S-STEP) is a growing methodology internationally. It began in the mid-1990s with a small group of individuals in Arizona, appropriately called The Arizona Group, and has grown greatly with the help of teacher scholars in Australia, Canada, and Europe. It is a research method and philosophy that refuses to allow the dichotomy of pedagogy and scholarship. Rather, they embrace scholarship OF teaching and teaching AS a research practice. This particular type of research has become my major focus and I look forward to its growth over the next few decades. While it is still relatively small, it has an international, diverse, and very welcoming group of members. It is a research method that really allows me to use my research to inform my teaching and my teaching as a topic for my research and I plan to continue to use it, as it has greatly impacted my thinking about both pedagogy and scholarship. In 2013, I prepared, in collaboration with three others, two proposals for publication in the S-STEP conference proceedings and both were accepted and published in August 2014. I have since been invited to present at the 17th Biennial Conference on Teachers and Teaching, an international conference in New Zealand. All of that is a due to my participation in and commitment to the S-STEP community of teacher researchers.
Supplementary to the work highlighted in the previous paragraphs and the notable indicators below, I have disseminated my work at peer-reviewed venues, presenting at professional conferences at the international, national, state/regional, and local levels. To date, I have nine articles in peer-reviewed, scholarly journals (one invited, eight contributed), five peer-reviewed articles in conference proceedings, 32 juried presentations (6 international, 21 national, 4 regional, 3 state), and two invited presentations (1 national, 1 regional). Some of these publications and presentations create new knowledge while others merge existing knowledge with new. Likewise, some are collaborative while some are individual. All demonstrate a commitment to knowledge creation, synthesis, and dissemination and a strong research agenda.
One area where I do not yet have any notable indicators or any significant experience is in grant writing. Grant writing is something that was not an emphasis of my doctoral program and not something any of my advisers or mentors emphasized. Thus, I have very little grant writing experience other than that I have done as part of my service to the fundraising committee of the F.A.R.M. Cafe non-profit. In that role, our small group has done crowdfunding, planned large funding events, and completed smaller local grants, collecting over $20,000 for the mission of the non-profit. We will continue in those efforts and I plan to attend grant writing workshops in the coming year. A goal of mine for 2014-2015 academic year is to successfully write and manage a grant. I know this is of import to the college and university and I want to do my part in contributing with those activities. I also realize that it is important for my own professional development, so I am also planning to follow up at upcoming conferences with the National Professors of Middle Level Education group who proposed at the last meeting the development of a grant writing mentoring group identifying leaders who can then mentor small groups of faculty. I feel that will be highly beneficial to my growth in this area.
Middle level education research is an area that interests me greatly, as it immediately impacts my teaching and my students. Each year, including 2014, I attend the state, regional, and national middle level conferences as well as attend special interest group meetings at the larger international conferences. These conferences and meetings have put me in touch with middle grades researchers from all over the US and have contributed greatly to my teaching, research, and service. I have been invited to work with individuals from UNC Charlotte, Western Carolina, and UNC Asheville on a national research project looking at the status of middle schools nationwide (since the middle grades movement began in NC). These relationships and opportunities will only serve to further strengthen my middle level research. The methodologies I typically utilize (i.e., case study, content analysis) allow me to focus on middle level education as content. In 2013, I began a research project with two colleagues who have expertise in middle level literacy. We presented our article at the American Reading Forum conference in December 2013 and we continue that work forward in 2014 with proposals accepted at the American Educational Research Association conference in Chicago, IL, and the Association of Middle Level Education Conference in Nashville, TN. This work is an attempt to determine if the Common Core State Standards for Language Arts aligns with the tenets of middle level philosophy. In addition, I have spent a significant amount of time in the past few years working on an various proposed and invited presentations in middle level education. One such invited presentation and paper is Notable Indicator Two below. It allowed me the opportunity to collaborate with other teacher education professionals across the state and to look more closely at the words and ideas of those who have come before us. Their experience, expertise, and ideals inform the path we take for the future. My contribution thus far in middle level education has been minimal, but contribution to that particular field is something to which I aspire. Having had the mentors I do at Appalachian and around the state, it is something is see great value in. One particular goal is using the foundational literature we have and looking at in in new ways to influence emerging and changing practice.
Self-study of teacher education practices (S-STEP) is a growing methodology internationally. It began in the mid-1990s with a small group of individuals in Arizona, appropriately called The Arizona Group, and has grown greatly with the help of teacher scholars in Australia, Canada, and Europe. It is a research method and philosophy that refuses to allow the dichotomy of pedagogy and scholarship. Rather, they embrace scholarship OF teaching and teaching AS a research practice. This particular type of research has become my major focus and I look forward to its growth over the next few decades. While it is still relatively small, it has an international, diverse, and very welcoming group of members. It is a research method that really allows me to use my research to inform my teaching and my teaching as a topic for my research and I plan to continue to use it, as it has greatly impacted my thinking about both pedagogy and scholarship. In 2013, I prepared, in collaboration with three others, two proposals for publication in the S-STEP conference proceedings and both were accepted and published in August 2014. I have since been invited to present at the 17th Biennial Conference on Teachers and Teaching, an international conference in New Zealand. All of that is a due to my participation in and commitment to the S-STEP community of teacher researchers.
Supplementary to the work highlighted in the previous paragraphs and the notable indicators below, I have disseminated my work at peer-reviewed venues, presenting at professional conferences at the international, national, state/regional, and local levels. To date, I have nine articles in peer-reviewed, scholarly journals (one invited, eight contributed), five peer-reviewed articles in conference proceedings, 32 juried presentations (6 international, 21 national, 4 regional, 3 state), and two invited presentations (1 national, 1 regional). Some of these publications and presentations create new knowledge while others merge existing knowledge with new. Likewise, some are collaborative while some are individual. All demonstrate a commitment to knowledge creation, synthesis, and dissemination and a strong research agenda.
One area where I do not yet have any notable indicators or any significant experience is in grant writing. Grant writing is something that was not an emphasis of my doctoral program and not something any of my advisers or mentors emphasized. Thus, I have very little grant writing experience other than that I have done as part of my service to the fundraising committee of the F.A.R.M. Cafe non-profit. In that role, our small group has done crowdfunding, planned large funding events, and completed smaller local grants, collecting over $20,000 for the mission of the non-profit. We will continue in those efforts and I plan to attend grant writing workshops in the coming year. A goal of mine for 2014-2015 academic year is to successfully write and manage a grant. I know this is of import to the college and university and I want to do my part in contributing with those activities. I also realize that it is important for my own professional development, so I am also planning to follow up at upcoming conferences with the National Professors of Middle Level Education group who proposed at the last meeting the development of a grant writing mentoring group identifying leaders who can then mentor small groups of faculty. I feel that will be highly beneficial to my growth in this area.
Notable Indicator One: International Publication
The journal Studying Teacher Education is the only journal currently published with an emphasis on the Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP). The publishing organization and editorship is a Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. This international group's focus is to rethink and inform teaching and teacher education through the study of our practice, in collaboration, in varied educational settings. The group is a community of educators who make substantial contributions to teacher education theory-in-practice, research design/practice, and the professional development of teacher-researchers. In addition to the journal, the S-STEP group has a strand at the AERA conference each year, with papers and presentations peer-reviewed at both levels. S-STEP also has a biennial conference at Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex, UK, where all proposals are juried, papers are peer-reviewed, edited, and published in the proceedings. The S-STEP community is a welcoming one with mentors throughout the US, the UK, Canada, and Europe. In my work with this group, I have received small group mentoring in S-STEP methodology as well as feedback on manuscripts, proposals, and papers that have greatly increased my research understanding and productivity.
The particular publication I have chosen as my Notable Indicator was published in Studying Teacher Education. This was one of the most significant publications for me because of the unique nature of S-STEP research and how explicitly they value the connection between teaching and research. As noted above, their mission and vision of teacher as researcher and teaching as scholarship are why this publication means so much to me. Additionally, I was able to conduct this research with colleagues across the US and Canada as we all experienced similar "growing pains" in our moves to academia. The abstract reads:
Four novice teacher educators working at different universities in the USA and Canada used online journaling and dialoguing combined with feedback from their students to explore their practice and new roles as teacher educators in new contexts. Their priorities included modeling critical reflection and enacting democratic practices. They chronicle their struggles and successes over the course of an academic year. The authors’ online community provided a viable and valued venue for self-study. Findings include insight into their taken-for-granted assumptions, how their instructional efforts were interpreted by others, and the impact that their collaborative efforts had on each researcher’s professional development. The authors include implications for universities and colleges regarding the format and structure of mentoring of junior faculty.
Components that made this such a meaningful journey for us were that we did in collaboration with each other and with our students. We solicited student feedback on our teaching and immediately were able to turn that feedback into changes in our daily work through critical reflection and dialogue. Having three partners with whom to share our assumptions, interpretations, and our personal and professional struggles was hugely meaningful. Mentors who are self-selected and with whom you can share open and honestly are what made this paper so rewarding. The feedback we received from peer-reviewers and editors was also fulfilling because it is an elite international journal that only has three publications a year and one that is well-respected and coveted in the S-STEP community.
The particular publication I have chosen as my Notable Indicator was published in Studying Teacher Education. This was one of the most significant publications for me because of the unique nature of S-STEP research and how explicitly they value the connection between teaching and research. As noted above, their mission and vision of teacher as researcher and teaching as scholarship are why this publication means so much to me. Additionally, I was able to conduct this research with colleagues across the US and Canada as we all experienced similar "growing pains" in our moves to academia. The abstract reads:
Four novice teacher educators working at different universities in the USA and Canada used online journaling and dialoguing combined with feedback from their students to explore their practice and new roles as teacher educators in new contexts. Their priorities included modeling critical reflection and enacting democratic practices. They chronicle their struggles and successes over the course of an academic year. The authors’ online community provided a viable and valued venue for self-study. Findings include insight into their taken-for-granted assumptions, how their instructional efforts were interpreted by others, and the impact that their collaborative efforts had on each researcher’s professional development. The authors include implications for universities and colleges regarding the format and structure of mentoring of junior faculty.
Components that made this such a meaningful journey for us were that we did in collaboration with each other and with our students. We solicited student feedback on our teaching and immediately were able to turn that feedback into changes in our daily work through critical reflection and dialogue. Having three partners with whom to share our assumptions, interpretations, and our personal and professional struggles was hugely meaningful. Mentors who are self-selected and with whom you can share open and honestly are what made this paper so rewarding. The feedback we received from peer-reviewers and editors was also fulfilling because it is an elite international journal that only has three publications a year and one that is well-respected and coveted in the S-STEP community.
Notable Indicator Two: National Publication
The journal Teacher Education Quarterly is a nationally peer-reviewed, double-blind journal dedicated to advancing the knowledge and research by teacher education researchers/practitioners. The journal emphasizes the link between research and practice with a specific goal of improving pre-service and in-service teacher education. The journal's website (www.teqjournal.org) states that they are interested in well-designed empirical studies whose conclusions broadly inform teacher professional development. They do not publish practitioner pieces nor program evaluations. The journal publishes only 10-20% of all manuscripts and the particular manuscript highlighted here took over three years from start to finish.
The article I submit for Research Notable Indicator Two is a study I conducted with my former mentor, Alisa J. Bates, and a doctoral colleague, Dina Drits. We began the study in early 2008 and it was finally published in the Summer edition in 2011. Other than being a reputable and respected national publication, this was my first nationally published article and one that had felt it would never come to fruition. The study looked at supervisory stances and practices of student teaching supervisors, an area where there is a dearth of literature. We hoped to resurface that topic because traditional supervisory experiences failed to address the attitudes, beliefs, and understandings of student teachers, instead focusing almost solely on observable behaviors. At the time this study began, I was working at a university student teaching supervisor with others in my doctoral program. Three of the other supervisors, most with significantly more experience than us, along with 12 of their student teachers were the focus of our study. We followed the supervisors and student teachers over two semesters and interviewed them twice during the year, at the end of each semester. We also collected artifacts from their coursework, including course syllabi, weekly lesson plans, observation notes, and formative and summative evaluations. Finally, we conducted observations in the debriefing conversations between the supervisors and student teachers. Taken together, these data illuminated the stances the supervisors espoused and how those were enacted in practice. Findings included the development and influences on stance, self-awareness of stance, and explicit expression and consistency of stance. The findings have the potential to inform and impact a practice that had gone unexamined since the late 80s/early 90s and yet one that is used in teacher education programs across the US. The personal stories that emerged from this research demonstrated that some supervisors adhere to one particular stance while others have flexible stances based on the unique needs of the students they observe. Because student teachers typically have only one supervisor (a practice we utilize at Appalachian), "what is emphasized, and presumably learned, in a student teaching program is, in large part, a function of his or her relationship with a university supervisor” (Zahorik, 1988, p. 14). This line of research still needs more attention, especially if universities continue to supervise in this way without scrutiny. It is a difficult line to continue because of the lack of attention it receives, but I would like to pick it up again if given the opportunity to supervise student teachers. I believe it would be an excellent pathway into schools where classroom teachers could make significant contributions in collaboration with university staff/faculty and students. I also believe a study into our supervisory practices at Appalachian is due and could greatly improve the experience of our students as they prepare to enter the classroom.
The article I submit for Research Notable Indicator Two is a study I conducted with my former mentor, Alisa J. Bates, and a doctoral colleague, Dina Drits. We began the study in early 2008 and it was finally published in the Summer edition in 2011. Other than being a reputable and respected national publication, this was my first nationally published article and one that had felt it would never come to fruition. The study looked at supervisory stances and practices of student teaching supervisors, an area where there is a dearth of literature. We hoped to resurface that topic because traditional supervisory experiences failed to address the attitudes, beliefs, and understandings of student teachers, instead focusing almost solely on observable behaviors. At the time this study began, I was working at a university student teaching supervisor with others in my doctoral program. Three of the other supervisors, most with significantly more experience than us, along with 12 of their student teachers were the focus of our study. We followed the supervisors and student teachers over two semesters and interviewed them twice during the year, at the end of each semester. We also collected artifacts from their coursework, including course syllabi, weekly lesson plans, observation notes, and formative and summative evaluations. Finally, we conducted observations in the debriefing conversations between the supervisors and student teachers. Taken together, these data illuminated the stances the supervisors espoused and how those were enacted in practice. Findings included the development and influences on stance, self-awareness of stance, and explicit expression and consistency of stance. The findings have the potential to inform and impact a practice that had gone unexamined since the late 80s/early 90s and yet one that is used in teacher education programs across the US. The personal stories that emerged from this research demonstrated that some supervisors adhere to one particular stance while others have flexible stances based on the unique needs of the students they observe. Because student teachers typically have only one supervisor (a practice we utilize at Appalachian), "what is emphasized, and presumably learned, in a student teaching program is, in large part, a function of his or her relationship with a university supervisor” (Zahorik, 1988, p. 14). This line of research still needs more attention, especially if universities continue to supervise in this way without scrutiny. It is a difficult line to continue because of the lack of attention it receives, but I would like to pick it up again if given the opportunity to supervise student teachers. I believe it would be an excellent pathway into schools where classroom teachers could make significant contributions in collaboration with university staff/faculty and students. I also believe a study into our supervisory practices at Appalachian is due and could greatly improve the experience of our students as they prepare to enter the classroom.
Notable Indicator Three: State/Regional Publication/Presentation
The North Carolina Middle School Association Journal is a peer-reviewed journal published by the North Carolina Association for Middle Level Education with a readership that reaches beyond the state level. The journal publishes manuscripts on all topics related to the education of young adolescents, but with a special emphasis on middle level education in North Carolina. The editorial staff comprised of North Carolina teacher educators and the journal is published online (www.ncmle.org/journal). In late 2013, I was approached by the editor, Kathy Roney, who invited me to contribute to a special issue of the journal, published in the Winter 2014 edition. The special edition was prompted by the keynote address of Dr. Paul George at the North Carolina Association for Middle Level Education conference held in March 2013. Dr. Roney and others, in an attempt to both honor Dr. George and get his message out to a wider audience, invited commentaries on key aspects of the keynote speech, entitled "The Struggle for the Middle School in North Carolina: Taking the Long View." Invited commentaries (please see the link to the introduction) included the perspective of teachers, professors of middle level teacher education, policy makers, and administrators. I was asked to comment from the perspective of a teacher educator. The article was reviewed, edited, and published and we presented our work in an panel discussion at the annual conference.
Dr. Paul George's keynote spoke to me as a teacher educator in many ways. For contextualization, he is considered one of the middle level "legacy leaders" and provided the history and background of middle level education in our state. Being asked to comment on his speech was a humbling experience and one I considered very seriously. With over 10 years experience as a teacher educator, I still did not feel prepared to express my opinion or interpretation. However, as I re-read his speech, it moved and inspired me with two of its many messages: 1) middle level educators, administrators, professors, and teacher have all been doing extremely good work over the years, often without support, and 2) if middle level educators hope to continue that good work, we need to act. To his first point, Dr. George mentioned that achievement is at an all-time high in public schools and we might take a moment to appreciate the work that has been done to specifically prepare teachers for young adolescent learners. But that is merely the short view. The long view of middle level education, and perhaps teacher education at large, requires us to "feed the wolves" fighting within our hearts that strive for an educational reality that is "loving, compassionate, generous, truthful, and trusting" (George, 2014, p. 4). In North Carolina, and at Appalachian, middle grades faculty truly hold This We Believe (NMSA, 2010) close to their hearts, but we cannot improve the reality with only our hearts. Dr. George, quoting Benjamin Mays, prompts us to persevere and actively create the future we want for young adolescents: "It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your idea, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture" (p. 8). I consider myself very fortunate to work beside and among such passionate, driven middle level educators and hope to continue to contribute to the long view and the brighter future. I have linked here, for your information to my article, the editor's introduction, and the Dr. Paul George's keynote address.
Dr. Paul George's keynote spoke to me as a teacher educator in many ways. For contextualization, he is considered one of the middle level "legacy leaders" and provided the history and background of middle level education in our state. Being asked to comment on his speech was a humbling experience and one I considered very seriously. With over 10 years experience as a teacher educator, I still did not feel prepared to express my opinion or interpretation. However, as I re-read his speech, it moved and inspired me with two of its many messages: 1) middle level educators, administrators, professors, and teacher have all been doing extremely good work over the years, often without support, and 2) if middle level educators hope to continue that good work, we need to act. To his first point, Dr. George mentioned that achievement is at an all-time high in public schools and we might take a moment to appreciate the work that has been done to specifically prepare teachers for young adolescent learners. But that is merely the short view. The long view of middle level education, and perhaps teacher education at large, requires us to "feed the wolves" fighting within our hearts that strive for an educational reality that is "loving, compassionate, generous, truthful, and trusting" (George, 2014, p. 4). In North Carolina, and at Appalachian, middle grades faculty truly hold This We Believe (NMSA, 2010) close to their hearts, but we cannot improve the reality with only our hearts. Dr. George, quoting Benjamin Mays, prompts us to persevere and actively create the future we want for young adolescents: "It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your idea, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture" (p. 8). I consider myself very fortunate to work beside and among such passionate, driven middle level educators and hope to continue to contribute to the long view and the brighter future. I have linked here, for your information to my article, the editor's introduction, and the Dr. Paul George's keynote address.