thanks Nicole

your ideas are excellent and good to practice them when i am back home
, but within UK i am not a teacher so that i gain some suggestions and
think about positive things in the classroom.

i am thinking of a survey that gives me information on how to let
teachers think of research as a professional development in general
and because in my home country little information about this theme i
could get i decided to do it from this country( rich in data) .

i am looking to hear further suggestion

thanks
fatma

On 28/02/2008, Nicole Schnappauf <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> HI again
>
> Sarah i agree with you at looking from within and at a positive  approach to
> what works  - as a different approach to the traditional where  are the
> problems and how can these be solved (if they ever can be)
>
> When i started teaching in the UK much interest in teaching dyslexics in
> maths was on skills training - well thats dead boring - i love maths and
> physics
> and i wanted my students have fun in maths and Physics rather than  seeing
> maths as something they are not good at - (drives me mad that  constant
> excuse i
> am not good at maths)
> so i went against the main teaching approach at the time and did what i
> like
> - talking about maths and relating it to everyday things - and there you go
> suddenly maths became fun and the students managed to learn the skills they
> needed some how too but the important thing was that they were able to
> describe
>  their factual experience in a mathematical way even if it was subjective to
>
> their experience and GCSe results improved each year  too (nice side
> effect)...
> This positive experience was for me the point to explore my teaching and I
> tried to explore what my studetns may actually do as they talk and laugh and
>
> build and design things ...
>
> I think that teacher research is a very different bread to traditional
> academic research even in education and gives us actually access to things
> we
> never thought they existed .. but this has implications on the whole study
>
> for example i would say that most of my teaching and researhc is build on a
> socio cultural framework - learning to me is a social activity and so is
> research ... but in terms of teaching there are moments when i have to do
> boring
> skills stuff in particular when it gets to Alevel stuff although i try to
> avoid  it where ever possible - however in those skills episodes my teaching
> may
> still  a social activity but its driven by me and focuses on the individual
> student's  learning rather than the group ( so it might be more in terms of
> constructivism)  i prefer my students to learn about differntiation through
> the
> application  of differentiation in designing of for example safe play ground
> slides or  stable vases that wont fall over rather than endless abstract
> curve
> discussions  - however there are rules attached to differntiation and they
> have
> "to know" these before - in short i think as a teacher researcher i
> constantly jump between methodologies and epistemologies in teaching and
> research
>
> the same goes for the way i do my research - i simply started by taping my
> lessons and than listening to them and eventually tanscribing them - after
> the
> transcribing i had some idea about codes i wanted to use but whilst i was
> coding lots more emerged - to keep some rigor i constantly recoded a
> sequence of
>  data until i reached a final set and started with all the data all over
> again -  and how do you write all the intuitive stuff up? it drove me mad
> and i am
>  still worried that my supervisor is going to tell me again why this? and
> why
>  that? - and all i can say is well because i know but dont ask me why its
> just  the way it is. in the traditional academic sense thats explosive stuff
> because  how do you generalise or validate such research i dont know to be
> honest
> -  all i know is that what i do works in special needs classes, in inclusive
> and  mainstream classes and with kids who are gifted ... i havetried it
> soooooo
>  often with lots of success
>
> so instead of coming with a template look at what is going on and talk to
> teachers - they have million things to say and it wouldnt surprise me if
> many of
>  them do their small informal stuff - from that develop your questions and
> go
>  back and than revise - research that wants to explore what is going on is a
>
> trial and error thing - maybe you are better off having a "chat" with
> teachers  with openended questions that you can tape and listen too - i bet
> milliions
> of  intersting things are emerging for you.. Sience is great - thereare so
> many ways  to teach one topic -
>
> I am just starting to set something up on colaborative learning and
> teaching
> at the place where i am teaching now - i have no idea how it will look  like
> any other that i am going to ask studtns and teachers to talk about
> situations they found successful. And than i will look through it for
> themes.
>
> I am originally a physicist - and there you need a clear defined
> methodology
> and method and than you record minutely all you do and the changes -  but i
> think researhc in teaching and learning are different - neither teaching
> and
> learning is as predictable as the sciences (although funny things happen too
>
> and they keep themomentum going ... ) but i think its the openenss that lets
> us
>  explore differnt things and opens new doors. It is not the use of already
> refined templates that have not emerged from the actual situation that tell
> you
>  whats going on - it always drives me mad when people from the outside come
> with  their ideas of classroom research and what should be taught  they
> design
> something for 6 weeks or so - test the studetns at the ned of it and  claim
> their work had a positive effect ... come back in three months and see  what
> has happened and you are likely to be disappointed .... sorry but i think
> that
> there nees to be a discussion - there is luckyly an increasing discussion
> between researchers and academics but i still think we are often not
> listened
> too enough - i feel i am somewhere in between - to get the doctorate i do as
>
> much of the theoretical method stuff as i can but in reality i started from
> somewhere different  ... and i do hope that my teahing will alwaysremain as
> experiemental as it is now
>
> i dont know if that makes any sense and i better sort my day out tomorrow
> and think about something fun with vectors ...
>
> but all i wanted to say is play about and be open to what you do - the nuts
> and bolts on how to do it can be put on in the writing and dont forget to
> talk
>  to the students about the researhc too - i have done researhc in classes
> where  students felt that the researhc was so important to them that they
> would
> bring  out dictaphones if i didnt bring one in because i didnt want to tape
> the
> lesson  - and in many senses they were the motivation to do research in the
> first  place and feeding back ideas from what i thought was going on to
> mystudetns was good too - they love talking about the way they learn if you
> let
> them ... nd sometimes had very differnt ideas to mine ...
>
> all the best
> Nicole
>
>
>
>
>
>