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.