Jen Scott Curwood

From June 2009 to June 2010, I am collecting qualitative data for my dissertation research.  I have been fortunate to find two incredible research sites, and every week, I am excited to visit them and work with the secondary English teachers, library media specialists, and technology coordinators.  Here is a current dissertation abstract.  As I work to analyze the data, the focus may shift a bit.  But it gives you a good idea of where I’m at right now.

.

The Nexus of Continuity and Change: Designing Professional Development to Foster New Literacy Practices in the Secondary Classroom

This dissertation seeks to understand how secondary English teachers express, acquire, and challenge their cultural models about literacy and technology. Drawing on sociocultural theory, the goal of this year-long multiple-case embedded research study is to investigate how teachers’ participation in professional learning communities may afford or constrain the process of implementing new literacy practices in the classroom. To that end, I take a microethnographic perspective and closely analyze teachers’ discourses within the learning community. This work is guided by two key questions: 1) What kinds of professional development contexts facilitate changes in teachers’ cultural models about literacy and technology? 2) How are teachers’ opportunities to integrate technology in their classroom enhanced or constrained by power relations? In order to address these questions, the data analysis focuses on language at a micro level to understand how school-based discourse is shaped by macro-concepts, social institutions, and power relations. By using field notes, observations, semi-structured interviews, and artifacts to augment microethnographic discourse analysis, I trace how participation within learning communities influences teachers’ cultural models about literacy and technology. Furthermore, I suggest that this qualitative analysis sheds light on how teachers’ professional learning operates within social, cultural, and ideological contexts.

.

(Image credit: MaxCarnage, Printed Circuit)

This post is tagged