BP5_D_Thornton_ Action_Research_Blog_110209

Action Research Activity Blog

My ACTION RESEARCH:

Can Students see or envision themselves as real scientists and make real world connections to science and their everyday life (for relevance)? Service-Learning: Can students learn better/become more proficient learners and /or find more relevance and be able to apply more of what they learn to real world situations through service-learning initiatives?

Description
This month in your blog posting, you will need to include:

What is your official problem statement?

My official problem statement is: Students do not see themselves as scientist or make regular and meaningful connections between science and their everyday life.

How did your research end up shaping this? Being a scientist and science teacher, I have had the opportunity to experience first hand real world connections with science in addition to teaching and learning science and community service project participation. I have witnessed student interest and apathy with projects that were meant to have direct connection that worked for some and not others. Why was that? I asked the question to some of my critical friends as well as reviewed research papers and found that some of it has to do with student interest, previous preparation, approach to activity and delivery. There is so much value in service-learning initiatives for all involved that I wanted to explore how to make this more of a mainstay instead of a every now and then activity.

What outcomes are you expecting? The research shows that used properly, service learning tools can enhance science education, particularly in environment studies courses. I am expecting that the following occur with my students:

-Active and experimental learning occur

-Theory -practice connections be promoted

-Student satisfaction increases for learning as will increase

-Students will develop workplace skills

-Will promote Civic engagement

-Build learning communities for students, teachers and others connected

-Help with recruitment and retention of minorities in school and workforce

-Encourage interdisciplinary work

How are your critical friends helping this process? By sharing with me their opinions from various perspectives of student demographics, age, background, teacher and community member knowledge of how these expectations can or cannot show up in the various environment in addition to how to make it better. Many minds exploring the same topic always shed light on great ideas. That is what I am excited about.

How is this month’s course helping shape your ARP? The most exciting part of this month’s course as it relates to my AR is the wealth of useful but manageable tools and the iGoogle website! I absolutely LOVE the ability to manage all of this wonderful information from one place. Being a visual learner, this helps me keep down the mental clutter and focus my energy on the content and specifics of my lessons. With daily practice and interaction, I can really see how each new Web 2.0 tool and application is most useful and complement each other.

Until next time....