Don't Ever Give Up

My personal STEMS^2 research project is straight ruining me.  It is a very time consuming project that eats up all of my free time.  If I am not working I am doing research for my plan b paper or revising research tools such as survey forms, focus group questions, and or consent forms.  I feel like David after the dentist. 

And after I stop crying I realize oh yeah I have no one to blame but myself for wanting to get my masters through a one year intense program.  So when I only sleep for four hours and need to work for 10 hours then come home to do homework I tell myself

I always feel like I am behind on my project that I can never be in a position where I feel comfortable.  However, I just turned in my first draft of my plan b so a good chunk got taken care of.  I do know that it will go under revisions though. 

The next big thing on my list that I want to tackle is submitting my IRB application.  I am hoping to turn that in this week so that I can get approval for my research project by March 21, 2016.  March 21 to March 23 is the dates for my camp where I will be implementing my STEMS^2 unit.  The camp will last for the majority of the day from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm.  Students will also take a field trip to bishop museum which should be pretty cool with all the Lele o Na Manu: Hawaiian Forest Birds, 'ahu 'ula and mahiole of Kalani opu'u, and Sweet: A Tasty Journey.  You can check out the upcoming exhibits for yourself here: http://www.bishopmuseum.org/exhibits/upcoming.html 
You will be glad you did =)

The camp date is quickly approaching, but luckily I finished all the training units early and now that the first draft of my plan b is complete it shouldn’t be too hard to fill out the application.  I do need to finalize the consent, surveys, and focus group questions, but I am on my second draft now.

I like to look ahead and have a plan in mind so I was happy to see that our next readings will be on data and analysis.  I started looking up other resources online on techniques people use to analyze their data.  I am hoping that my math back ground will help make analyzing the data a little easier for me.  But just in case it isn’t, I am prepared to continue to tell myself that I can do this and 

                                                      

Blog 2

Arriving at my current research question was a very stressful process for me.  I suppose to fully understand how I arrived at my current research question some time traveling is in order. 

 

 

 

 

 

The year is now 2006 and I got my first job in the math field as a tutor at Leeward Community College Math Lab.  As soon as I began as a math tutor I would hear students say things along the lines of, “I hate math,” or “math is my worst subject.”  I even once heard, “Me and math are not friends.” Every time I heard someone say one (or all) of these statements I made it a goal of mines to change their perspective of math.  However, I didn’t really have a way of doing this besides just working with them through problems in a traditional ("drill and kill") method.

Now back to the future

 

 

 

Originally my question was how can we take a negative space like math and begin to turn it in to a positive space?  This was too general and after the readings from this week and last week I can say not a very good question for my project.  I tried to come up with other (better) questions; What affect does STEMS^2 lessons have on students attitudes on mathematics?; how is a student’s perception of math transformed by math events; what impact does place based education have on students from Ewa Beach, HI?  One big problem with these questions is that the questions and data I want to collect align too much with my job.  I work for a research project that is investigating how culturally relevant math activities can help students learn math as well as change their attitudes towards mathematics. 

I needed a research question that would allow me to have a study within a study.  I knew I wanted a question that would help enrich and add to the research already being done with my job.  After much frustration and talking with my advisor I came to two possible research question; How do students (middle to high school) attitudes towards math affect their parent’s attitudes towards math? Or how is a parent’s perspective of math affected when their child experiences a positive math experience?  I know I need to choose one of the questions, but I am not quite sure yet which question to stick with.  I feel both questions are just slightly different from each other.

Lastly, finding literature that supports my research question is becoming increasingly frustrating.  At the moment there seems to be no research done on the influence student’s attitudes can have on their parent’s attitudes.  However, I could find articles on parents passing their negative math attitudes on to their children and articles on how friends and colleagues attitudes can affect your own.

My research project has changed course over the last two weeks.  At first my project was attempting to answer a question I had long ago when I first began working in the math field.  As a math tutor I always heard one quintessential question and comment of when am I ever going to use this?  And I hate math; math is my worst subject.  When I heard this as a tutor I made it a practical goal of mines to change the student’s outlook on math, to make it a subject that they can at least tolerate and not hate. 

I had a hard time figuring out what to do with my paper and felt that my qualitative research was at a standstill.  I felt that I couldn’t further my research because all my research questions were too general.  I didn’t have a clear path to take my research because I didn’t have a particular question.  Thus, the reading on research questions was a huge help.  It helped me go from questions like

—  How can we take a negative space like math and begin to turn it in to a positive space?

—  What affect does STEMS^2 lessons have on students attitudes on mathematics?

—  How is a student’s perception of math transformed by math events?

—  What impact does place based education have on students from Ewa Beach, HI?

These questions not only were too general, but conflicted with my job since I work for a research project (called Ka Pilina) attempting to answer very similar questions.  Another main concern has been, what do I bring to the table? How does my research project enrich and expand the realm of education (and Ka Pilina)?  After hours and days (and hair loss!) my advisor helped me come up with a better (work in progress) question:  What affect does STEMS^2 lessons have on parent's perceptions of mathematics of students attending Ewa Beach middle to high schools?

What I really like about this question is it helps to capture something that doesn’t get seen within the scope of the current data of Ka Pilina.  Nowhere in the project do we report on feedback from students’ parents.  However, my perception of parent’s reaction to Ka Pilina is positive.  Parents come to talk to me about their child’s grades improving or their perception of their child’s attitude towards an event like math camp. Another aspect that I like about the current question is I feel the question is now more of an instrumentalist question that will reflect the limitations of my research, and at the same time it is enriching the education field (and my project, yay!)

With this new research question I plan to have focus on the topic of affects I have on parent’s perceptions.  I currently will collect data using a survey that contains qualitative and quantitative questions.  However, I have yet to finish the first draft of this instrument.

Lastly, I would like to blog about my overall state of being.  I have gone from the famous last words of “eh how bad could it be?” to… I am completely freaking out!

T_T