Dissertation Draft: TAKE 3- You better LOVE your topic

This is the advice I remember hearing years ago.  Advice, I must admit, that I brushed off  and stored in the "useless suggestions" part of my brain.  WELLLLLLL, let me tell you something: It has been re-assigned to the "CRITICAL INFORMATION" section of my brain.  Here is why:

I am SO FREAKIN' sick of the word capacity.  School capacity.  Human capacity.  Material capacity. capacity, capacity, capacity.  I am living, sleeping and breathing this word.  I mean how many different ways can one use this term???????  SERIOUSLY.

They, whoever they are, were right, "you better LOVE your topic" because you will live with it for A LONG TIME and if you don't love it, you may just throw it away out of shear BOREDOM.  And then you'll never finish.  What a shame that would be.

So, good for me, I do LOVE my topic.  And even with this love I am SO SICK OF IT.  The thing that worries me most is that I haven't even started collecting data yet.  This means that I have to live "capacity" for another 7 or 8 months. AND, I have to get others, my committee and proposal panel to be specific, to LOVE capacity too!!!!  Lord, help me!

OMG, I have a date!

Borrowing the slang, OMG (OH MY GOD), from my seven year old I share with you that I have IRB approval to collect data AND a proposal defense date set: September 10th at 3:00 PM.

YIKES!!!

It's time to get serious folks.

If all goes well I'll collect data in October and November, analyze in December, write in January, edit/revise in February, defend in early March, edit/revise AGAIN in late March, submit in April and WALK in May.

That keeps me on track for May 2013 graduation.

WOOHOO now THAT is just the motivation I need!

Look for this title coming out in November...

Unifying Educational Systems encourages leaders to move beyond the traditional forms and rituals of leadership for special education that are caught within traditional definitions of a continuum of services. Grounded in public policy debates, research on teaching and learning, and an emerging consensus throughout the leadership community that calls into question our current practices, chapters in this volume provide a discussion of the purpose, principles, and paradoxes extant in the implementation of current special education policy. Chapter authors discuss how students are currently served, the feasibility of re-conceptualizing special education leadership in the current policy context, and the challenges for the future. Ultimately,Unifying Educational Systems calls for a new policy framework to integrate special education within the larger instructional support system in schools, in order to support a social justice and inclusive practices agenda.

Dissertation Proposal Draft: TAKE 2

This is just a project. This is just a project.  This is just a project.  It's not the culminating point of my career.  JUST FREAKIN' DO IT.

(my mantra to keep me moving forward without paralysis brought on by being overwhelmed)

I CAN DO THIS!!!!!!!

Dissertation Draft: TAKE 1- School Capacity Conceptual Framework

_____________________________________
Top circle: Coherent School Structures & Instructional Programs
Center-Right Circle: Individual Staff Member's Knowledge, Skills, Dispositions and Will
Bottom Circle: Organizational/Professional Community
Center-Left Circle: Material, Technical and External Human Resources
_____________________________________


Past research helps us to see that the concept school capacity is not uni-dimensional.  Instead, it should be viewed as a set of dimensions that are coherent and interactive (Century, 1999; Newman, King, and Young, 2000).  These theories of school capacity argue that the greater the alignment and coherence of all dimensions of school capacity (i.e. material/technical, structural, organizational and individual) the more overlap with each dimension would exist, as visually depicted in Figure 1. Alignment of the capacities could be shown in the diagram as overlapping circles.   This overlapping Venn would then cover up more and more of the yellow circle in the background.  Thus, as the principal and district work to align their programs and capacities around common goals for learning, the tighter the four circles representing each capacity would become, depicting alignment.  
     Figure 1 above is an example of a school that is theoretically in the early stages of alignment, but still not fully aligned.  Alternatively, a 100% aligned school would show no yellow and one large circle would appear, depicting that all four dimensions of capacity are interacting at all times with one another, aligned with one common purpose for learning.  Conversely, a school whose principal and/or district has not worked to align the capacities, such as can be the case when multiple school improvement initiatives occur simultaneously, would potentially have 0% alignment.  This school’s diagram would show no overlapping circles, but instead each circle would occupy it’s own space outside of the yellow circle, and even quite possibly appear outside of the arrows all together in a sporadic manner.  Thus, this framework graphically depicts that the greater the alignment/integration of all four dimensions of school capacity around a common  purpose, more concentric overlap/less yellow showing, the greater the instruction for all students and staff (Spillane and Thompson, 1997; Century, 1999; Newman, King and Young, 2000).

         Based upon this framework, the purpose of this study is to examine what the material, human, organizational and structural factors are that influence a school’s capacity to inclusively educate all students within their age appropriate general education, or other naturally occurring, environments. Specifically, I will be examining one school's inclusive education capacity development.  This school has spent the last three years shifting their service delivery model for special education.  They went from from educating all students with disabilities in isolated disability specific special education classrooms in trailers behind the school building to educating them all, including those with significant disabilities (i.e. autism, down syndrome, multiple disabilities), in age-appropriate general education classrooms along side their same age peers with and without disabilities.  Thus, they shifted from being a school with segregated special education to an inclusive school.  I will examine the following dimensions:

1.     Human/Staff Capacity- What shift in knowledge, skills, dispositions and will of the staff occur in a school that moves from segregated to inclusive education?

2.   Organizational Capacity- How is the school community organized both within it’s own building (professional community) and in terms of it’s connection to the district and greater community (external supports)?

3.  Structural Capacity- What school structures exists that foster/support inclusive education

4. Material, Technical and External Human Resources Capacity- What material, external human (i.e. outside trainers, university consultants) and financial resources are utilized within the inclusive education classrooms and school?

I couldn't have said this better...

... so I won't try.

Here are the words of Yong Zhao explaining how standardized testing does not promote creative thinking.

Taken from the EdWeek on-line article, "Double Think:The Creativity-Testing Conflict" by Yong Zhao:

....Most important, as the education historian Diane Ravitch observed in The New York Review of Books earlier this year: "The central aim of Finnish education is the development of each child as a thinking, active, creative person, not the attainment of higher test scores, and the primary strategy of Finnish education is cooperation, not competition."

SEE ALSO

For more on Yong Zhao's opinions about education, read Education Week blogger Catherine A. Cardno's interview with the author, "Zhao on Entrepreneurship, the Common Core, and Bacon."

The United States saw a decline of creativity over the past two decades, as a 2010 Newsweek article reported. Titled "The Creativity Crisis," the article cites research by Kyung Hee Kim, an educational psychology professor at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va. Kim analyzed performance of adults and children on a commonly used creativity measure known as the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. The results indicate a creativity decrease in the last 20 years in all categories. This decline coincided with the movement toward more curriculum standardization and standardized testing in American schools exemplified by the No Child Left Behind Act. "NCLB has stifled any interest in developing individual differences, creative and innovative thinking, or individual potential," Kim said in an interview on the Encyclopaedia Britannica blog.

Standardized testing rewards the ability to find the "correct answer" and thus discourages creativity, which is about asking questions and challenging the status quo. A narrow and uniform curriculum deprives children of opportunities to explore and experiment with their interest and passion, which is the foundation of entrepreneurship. Constantly testing children and telling them they are not good enough depletes their confidence, which is the fuel of innovation. So, by any account, what policymakers have put in place in American schools is precisely what is needed to cancel out their desire for creative and entrepreneurial talents.

I don't know how policymakers can hold, simultaneously, these two ideas, creative entrepreneurship and test-driven curriculum standardization, that both research and common sense recognize as contradictory unless they change the slogans of 1984's Oceania, "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength" into "Standardization is Innovation, Uniformity is Creativity, and Testing is Enterprising" for education today.

Yong Zhao holds the presidential chair and is associate dean for global education in the college of education at the University of Oregon, in Eugene, and a professor in the department of educational measurement, policy, and leadership. He is the author ofCatching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization. His latest book, World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students, was published by Corwin Press in June.

Dissertation is taking off

This summer marks two major milestones:
(1) I passed my qualifying exams
(2) I'm officially writing my dissertation proposal.