Abstract for Dissertation Proposal Text

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Dissertation proposal abstract tentative dissertation title: acquiring, using, and sharing educational technology knowledge by student teachers and cooperating teachers two overlapping trends in the american educational environment have given rise to this study: the need for two million new teachers in the next decade and the upsurge in technology use in schools. Those who enter the field of teaching in the coming decade will have had different teacher preparation and background experiences than the practicing teachers they join. Their teacher preparation will embrace constructivist theories of teaching and learning, emphasizing reform oriented educational strategies. Many incoming teachers, by dint of the time period in which they have grown up, will also have greater educational technology skills and knowledge as compared to the norm for currently practicing teachers.

Academic Position Paper

Meanwhile, educational technology use is becoming an integral part of teaching and learning at an ever increasing number of american schools. While there is evidence that computer use is associated with increased academic achievement. Teacher preparation remains a key to successful educational technology implementation. A goal of teacher preparation in educational technology use is increasing teachers' knowledge of educational technology. Knowledge in this context has often been limited to content knowledge of computer hardware and software affordances.

Knowledge of educational technology use in teaching and learning may be more complex, including knowledge of pedagogical strategies for teaching with computers, assessment methods for student products created with the aid of technology, awareness of student capabilities and common obstacles, and other factors yet unknown. To examine what new and experienced teachers know about technology use for teaching and learning, how they use knowledge of technology use in their practice, and how knowledge is shared, i propose to study pairs of student teachers and cooperating teachers as they use educational technology in their teaching. Results of the study will be reported in the form of a cross case analysis, supported by written cases at the individual participant and student teacher/cooperating teacher pair levels. The sections below give an overview of the research setting, participants, sources of data, data collection procedures, proposed analysis, and study time line. Research will be conducted at monroe middle school, a middle school located in a working class suburb of a large industrial city in the midwest. As a school in a lower income area with technology funded through grants, monroe is typical of many schools in america. Participants are three pairs of teachers, each consisting of a student teacher and his or her cooperating teacher.

These participants were selected based on their field placement at monroe middle school, their willingness to participate in the study, and my initial perception that they were effective teachers. Data will be collected from interviews with the participants, ongoing conversations throughout the data collection period, classroom observations, and observations of participants' instructional planning sessions. A data collection protocol will be developed iteratively during the first phase of the dissertation study.

Primary data collection will take place over a ten week period lasting approximately from march 15 to june 15, 19. During that time period, i will observe classroom teaching and instructional planning sessions, collecting data through the use of extensive field notes. As a focus for conversations, some classroom sessions will be videotaped, with excerpts from the videotape serving to guide reflection. Two rounds of semi structured interviews will be conducted, audiotaped, and transcribed. At the finer grain of analysis, case studies will be written for each participant. In turn, these cases will inform the larger unit of analysis, the pairs of one student teacher and his or her cooperating teacher. The three larger cases will be compared to create a cross case analysis, which will form the main portion of the results.

To reduce and analyze the data itself, i propose to use chi's verbal analysis coding. Allows a researcher to formalize his impressions of a data set, yielding quantitative findings about the frequency of occurrences as well as a qualitative picture created by using selections from the data in the results. Data management will be facilitated through the use of qsr nudist, a special purpose qualitative data analysis tool. Through the creation of a descriptive multiple embedded case study, i hope to produce a rich description of teacher knowledge of educational technology within the setting of monroe middle school and these teachers' classrooms. This description will help me to answer questions of what teachers know about educational technology, how they learn within a classroom setting, and how their knowledge is linked to their practice.

As american education deals with the need for large numbers of new teachers, combined with a surge in the use of educational technology, i hope that this work will in some small way inform how new teachers are prepared, as well as how practicing teachers develop. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, montreal, ca. Does it compute? the relationship between educational technology and student achievement in mathematics. Senior research projects in environmental sciences have the following elements in common:

    an environmental issue is identified. Data necessary to solving the problem are either collected by the student, or obtained independently. Results of the analysis are reported and are interpreted in light of the initial environmental issue.
the final outcome of this process is a senior thesis that you will complete in the spring semester.

How to Write a Great College Scholarship Essay

The goal of the fall semester is that you identify a research topic, find a research mentor, formulate a hypothesis, understand the background of your project, develop or adapt appropriate methods, and summarize the state of your project as a thesis proposal. The goal is to progress as far as possible with the elements listed above during the fall semester. The more you can accomplish during the fall, the further you can drive the project in the end, and the more relaxed the spring semester is going to be for you and us. The purpose of writing a thesis proposal is to demonstrate that

    the thesis topic addresses a significant environmental problem an organized plan is in place for collecting or obtaining data to help solve the problem methods of data analysis have been identified and are appropriate to the data set.
if you can outline these points clearly in a proposal, then you will be able to focus on a research topic and finish it rapidly. A secondary purpose of the proposal is to train you in the art of proposal writing.

How to Go About Writing a Dissertation