Research Proposal 3

I need to also decide on a paradigm (most likely qualitative or quasi-experimental)---so that means I need to start thinking of questions (rather than hypotheses), and different variables to compare or contrast... This is where attitudes (teacher and student), learning styles, teacher checks and balances, logistics and overall suitability of teaching methodology may come into play...

It'll be most likely action research (but could also make use of case study or grounding theory), so the understandings will come through the research, rather than test or validate hypotheses... I will probably need to propose small incremental changes, that can be implemented within the real system and evaluated on a regular basis...as consistent with action research (Kremmis & McTaggart 1988)

The methods and design I am still playing with. Definitely as an insider, I can offer a unique first hand perspective (but which can also cause bias, which I will need to account for in the design, methods and procedure section for sources of error), but there will be a need for interviews and/or surveys of teacher and student understandings of this kind of teaching and its perceived usefulness. Comparisons could be made within observations which could be undertaken of my own classes and other teachers classes (given that ethical considerations and rater bias are taken into account).
I think it will be difficult to delimit the actual question (but I will need to if I want to keep under the word limit), as there is a lot that can and should be investigated.

Oh well, that's where I am at...
ciao
Steven M

Research Proposal 2

I had a problem when trying to decide on a definition for this kind of teacher sharing of a class (which appears to be unique to this particular situation). I think that my lecturers comments in a discussion board post of giving our situation the labels of paired teaching and teaching pairs seem to encapsulate the idea more clearly...

I still want to go ahead with this topic, as
1. It is in operation, and has been for quite a while in my college,
2. It is a system that many of my Japanese administrators favor,
3. It is a system that has morphed from an original team teacher situation in the traditional sense (the reason it has changed I am still not sure of yet),
4. I want to know if there are any advantages of doing it this way, in comparison to the regular one teacher teaching both classes, and
5. I'd like to know how student's feel toward the paired teaching situation,
that's what I've come up with for starters...

I am not sure if the two systems are that different, in that they are offshoots of the same initial rationale, or are modified forms of the same thing. I think, however, that limiting myself to one would be advantageous to eventually getting clearer picture...

As for my proposal I haven't really thought too much into the future. I initially took this course just to get some grounding in research, in case in the future I may want to continue study at a higher level... At the moment I am just concentrating on finishing my masters and have at least two more subjects to do before even thinking about a true research project. At the moment I just want to know how to write a proposal...

This course has been the best so far (it is my 5th), and it has also been the hardest. I am really pushing myself, but getting a lot back...

Ciao
Steven M

Research Proposal 1

I have a million and one ideas for a research proposal, and I can't seem to decide on one...
Having said that, I am probably going to look into some action research that would be of direct benefit to the school program I am teaching in at the moment...
I have identified some discontent with the team teaching program that is running within the college I am working.
Team teaching is not unique in itself, as it can be found in many forms, and in Japan it has taken root within a number of niches (AET - assistant English teacher, in the JET program for instance).
However, I wish to look at the effectiveness of team teaching in an adult SLL environment, specifically focusing on the overall effectiveness of native-native English teacher, team teaching situation (which exists in my program) vs. native-Japanese English teacher, (which exists in a parallel program within the same organization). The teachers in both these programs have varying beliefs about the suitability of the native-native team teaching situation.
My limited review of the background thus far has been unsuccessful (can't seem to find anything on the native-native adv/disadv). The situation of two native English teachers (two Americans for instance), teaching on different days, but with the same textbook, doesn't seem to have any sound methodological purpose, yet the administration staff (mainly Japanese) seem to really favor it, as well as some ex-students, who say that it was pretty good.
My initial thoughts were that it was beneficial in terms of learning styles and exposure to varying cultural perspectives... This could be the angle that I could take.
However, for the team teachers it can be a logistic nightmare...which makes it difficult to plan lessons and evaluate student performance effectively...

I haven't quite sussed out the details, but this is the direction I am thinking about taking... I am part of the program, so I am an insider, which makes subjectivity a real problem, as with many kinds of action research, not to mention ethnography etc... Yet, I think that this subjectivity can be balanced with grounding of the findings in some way...

I hope that I am on the right track... Actually, my head is in quite a spin at the moment...