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Visual Guide to the first version of
"PARENTS" (screen shots):
- Microsoft PowerPoint
Slide Show format (1.6MB)
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format (2.7MB) [View =>
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PARERS:
- - Work in Progress - - DRAFT - -
Roushias, C., Calabrese Barton, A.
& Drake, C. (2003), Ecologies of Parental Engagement and
Preservice Science Teacher Education: The Design and Development of
a Multimedia
Case-Based Environment: “PARENTS”, Paper presented
at the National Association for Research in
Science Teaching, Philadelphia, PA, March.
- Microsoft Word
format
- Adobe PDF format
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
This research study is considered as a first step of the development
process of a Multimedia Case-Based Environment (MCBE), which we named
“PARENTS”, one of the various products that will be used to
communicate the knowledge, which is currently being generated by the
“Ecologies of Parental Engagement” project - an ongoing project
that examines in theoretically rich and practice-based ways, the parental
engagement in poor, urban elementary schools that are active in implementing
reform-based science education - to a diverse audience: preservice teachers,
school actors, practitioners and researchers, through an interactive
multimedia environment.
The purpose of this study is twofold: to help preservice science teachers
explore and reflect on the parental engagement in poor urban school
settings, and address the problem of design and development of this
multimedia product. More specifically, through the use and interaction
with this environment, we aim to help preservice teachers to:
1. Identify issues, problems, and ideas that
are embedded in the multimedia environment, by having them pose their
own questions or dilemmas.
2. Interpret those questions from multiple perspectives, using the
various information resources provided in the product.
3. Form their initial conjectures around the issues they identified
and explored.
4. Provide evidence and supporting information, gathered throughout
their interaction with the multimedia environment, that will help
them shape informed suggestions or solutions to their initial questions
or problems as well as other “problematic situations” introduced
by the system itself.
Our study is unique in regard to the content
of the cases we are incorporating into our product. The “Ecologies
of Parental Engagement” project, from where the content of PARENTS
is derived, attempts to create the part that the many research studies
and other reform initiatives that acknowledge the importance of parental
involvement seem to be missing: a deeper and comprehensive framework
for a critical understanding of parental engagement in poor urban schools
that initiate reform-based science education.
Our attempt to design and develop this case-based multimedia environment
might be considered as pioneer, since it first addresses the specific
field of parental engagement in relation to the preservice science teacher
education. We expect, that implementing and testing a prototype version
with a small number of preservice science teachers will provide valuable
insights for future development of this product. At a future stage,
PARENTS might be disseminated to other graduate programs within Teachers
College, or even to other graduate schools of education.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
In accordance to the above goals, the overall research questions that
will guide the study are as follows:
- How are the preservice science teachers’
beliefs and ideas about parental engagement in poor urban school settings
crafted/mediated/expressed within a graduate course classroom setting
that draws upon the PARENTS multimedia environment? How their interaction
with PARENTS and others (classmates and class instructor) inform or
influence their beliefs or ideas?
- What are the a) design features and functions,
and/or b) content parts of PARENTS that frame/enable/enhance student’s
thinking about parental engagement in poor urban school settings?
How (in what ways) this was achieved/done and to what degree? How
each feature/function and/or content part contributed to students’
thinking?
- In which order/sequence did the preservice
science teachers use the above content parts or functions of PARENTS,
and how much time did they spend on each of them? How does this order
and/or time spent relates to the way these parts contributed to their
thinking?
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This study should be seen a first step of a continuous process of design,
development, and evaluation of the under-development prototype version
of PARENTS. Therefore, we are grounding our methodology in the theoretical
framework of “development research”, that originated by Ann
Brown (1992) and Alan Collins (1992), and further discussed by Van den
Akker (1999). In accordance to the above model, and in order to address
our study goals, we have proposed a solution (a functional prototype),
which we have based on a tentative framework of design principles. We
consider the research activities of this study as ways to improve PARENTS,
in a continuous effort to come up with the most optimal version. The
documentation and analysis of the research data will inform all our
steps throughout this design process.
The first version of PARENTS was used by preservice teachers who will
be enrolled in the “Elementary Science Methods” course, which
is offered by the Science Education program at Teachers College, during
the Fall 2002 semester.
DATA COLLECTION METHODS
PART 1
1. Initial and Final Surveys
Two surveys were administered:
a) Initial / Background Information Survey: Using a survey/ questionnaire,
we aimed to document a) some background/personal information (gender,
age, ethnicity, education, teaching experience if any, computer use
skills, etc) and b) participants initial beliefs or ideas around a number
of issues related to our project, such as “high poverty communities
and schooling”, “what is or how should be the “ideal”
parental engagement in (science) education?”, “how are the
teacher’s and parent’s roles related?”, etc.
b) Final Survey: Additionally we intended to collect participants’
comments about their overall experience with “PARENTS” (design,
navigation, usability, user-friendliness, etc) and their suggestions
for further development.
Both surveys were administered separate from class time.
2. Classroom Observations
a) Use of PARENTS in the lab sections: As part of the MTSC 4040/4140
course, the participants used “PARENTS” during two lab meetings.
Each participant individually interacted with this environment using
a personal computer (one for each student) provided by the Science Education
department.
We videotaped these lab sessions and we also tracked the time the participants
spent at every component of PARENTS along with the order that these
components were used.
b) Whole-Class Discussion: We observed the participants in a whole-class
meeting time that has been assigned for discussion and presentation
of preservice teachers’ work (final suggestions, solutions, ideas,
written artifacts). Participants’ presentations were videotaped
for our research purposes.
3. Collection of Written Artifacts
a) i-Journal Notes: The tracking/logging feature of “PARENTS”
collected each user’s written work that has been generated throughout
their interaction with the environment. In this way we will be collected
participants’ input (from the note-taking tool, called i-Journal)
at each step of their exploration.
b) Collection of course artifacts: As part of this course the students
were asked to write their reflections at the end of each lab section
that they will use “PARENTS” (total of two short, take-home
reflections). This written work was collected for our research purposes.
PART 2
In our attempt to gain a better understanding of how the users interact
with PARENTS and form their decisions and ideas, we formed an “in-depth
exploration group”, on a voluntary basis, consisted of 3 of the
participating preservice teachers. We conducted two individual interviews
with each of them and a group discussion at the end of the semester.
1. Interviews
- 1st Interview:
During the first interview, the participant walked the interviewer
through PARENTS in a “think-aloud” mode, explaining their
final suggestions, ideas, and reflections about the issues they have
written in their i-Journal.
- 2nd Interview: During the second interview,
the participant explained his/her interactions, decisions, and use
of the PARENTS components.
- 3rd (Group) Interview:
The participants were asked to present and negotiate their ideas and
reflections during a group interview.
All the conducted interviews as well as the
group meeting were videotaped and will be transcribed.
The exploratory and descriptive character of the study implies the use
of a mixture of methods: we intend to use both qualitative and (basic)
quantitative methods of data collection and analysis.
The data analysis process will be ongoing and always in accordance to
our research questions. Analytic procedures that might be followed include:
a) organizing the data, b) generating categories, themes, and patterns,
c) coding the data, d) testing some initial understandings, e) search
for possible alternative explanations, and f) synthesize the final report.
We expect to detect emerging patterns and themes in the user-interface
interaction as well as in the preservice teachers beliefs around parental
engagement.
References
Brown, A. L. (1992). Design experiments: Theoretical and methodological
challenges in creating complex interventions in classroom settings.
The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 2 (2), 141-178.
Collins, A. (1992). Towards a design science of education. In E. Scanlon
& T. O’Shea (Eds.), New directions in educational technology
(pp. 15-22). Berlin: Springer.
Van den Akker, J. (1999). Principles and methods of development research.
In J. Van den Akker, N. Nieveen, R. M. Branch, K. L. Gustafson, &
T. Plomp, (Eds.), Design methodology and developmental research in education
and training (pp. 1-14). The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
RESEARCH GROUP:
PIs:
Angela Calabrese Barton, Corey Drake
Research Assistants:
Christos Roushias, Magnia George, Gustavo Perez, Kathleen St.Louis
The project is funded by the National Science Foundation
(REC 9980592)
A dissertation research study by:
Christos Roushias
Ed.D. Candidate
cr265@columbia.edu
Dissertation Sponsor:
Angela Calabrese Barton
Associate Professor of Science Education
acb33@columbia.edu
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