Jack’s Intro
(to work & Research)
CEP 900 & CEP 930
Summer 2010 Hybrid Cohort
Cary Roseth & Matt Koehler
June 22, 2010
My “Charge”
• Introduce yourself and describe your research interests
• Discuss the evolution of your research interests.
• Some specific questions:
• What is a “good” research question and how do
researchers find them?
• What does it mean to think like a researcher?
• What makes research convincing to you?
• What does it mean to develop a critical perspective?
• How would you describe the nature of academic reading
and writing?
My Research Focus
• I am interested in the nature of human learning
• With mathematics as particular human competence
• Learning is the process of developing new or richer
views of the world; learning is change
• Learning (surprisingly) is often ignored in place of
curriculum, teaching, assessment, technology use
• This interest in grounded in my experience as a teacher
of mathematics (what are they thinking?)
More on Math
Learning
• Sadly, mathematics is a dangerous subject (for many)
• Sadly (again), school is often boring, not a place of wonder,
exploration, and figuring out
• For me, mathematics remains wonderful and is fully within the
reach of all people to understand, not memorize
• My professional goals
• Reveal what kids “know,” how “knowledge” is structured, and
explore how that knowledge was learned
• Support teachers in understanding more than they did as students
• Levering assessment out of the 19th century
• Knowing mathematics = assimilation of some school lessons + a
great deal of individual sense-making and construction
What’s Changed?
• Basic project hasn’t changed since grad school
• Become more knowledgeable across years and projects
• More confident about my message; issues relate to where to
take it
• Become sadly (3rd time) sensitive to the inertia of educational
systems
• Look to make small scale ripples of goodness; just need some
partners
“gOOD” research Qs
• Segue: These questions put me in teacher mode
• Two types of questions
• Those we really want answers to
• Those we can actually answer
• Being a scholar means managing the gap; getting the second
set of questions closer to the first
• Good RQs have well-defined nouns and verbs
• Ambiguity seems often not a problem for the field; it is to me
• Research is a kind of communication; ambiguity is usually not
good in precise communication
Thinking Like a
REsearcher
• One feature: Think always about reasons; educational
practices should happen for reasons; pursue some
design/intentions; Designs should make principled
sense
• An associated feature: Adopting a critical perspective:
When an argument is advanced, are there holes?
Where are they?
• Design: Looking for promising settings—where you
dig in and use your data to make a point
Convincing Research
• Basic terms are clearly defined
• Method is well-described and evidence suggests that it
has been followed
• Results seem plausible; not from Mars
• Coherence with other studies
What’s A critical
Perspective?
• It is what you are here to develop!
• First step: Being “critical” does not mean “being negative”
• Background premise: Simple solutions (work great for all)
generally don’t exist in education
• Programs and perspectives compete with each other in
goodness and cost
• Your job: Acknowledge the competitive field
• Question your own assumptions and favorite approaches &
programs
Academic Literacy
• To reading and writing, I would add speaking
• Academic language patterns can separate and isolate people
(e.g., via jargon)
• Positive elements: Precision & reasoned argument
• Be careful about words we take for granted, e.g.,
“understanding”
• Educational practices require intellectual support; academic
literacy is like the preparation of legal briefs—argue for a
position, with conceptual and empirical support