Teacher Instructional Technology With New Literacy Instruction

¶ … teacher instructional technology with new literacy instruction to improve elementary (K-5) student achievement in reading vocabulary?

The alternative hypothesis would be that new literacy instruction does have th potential to improve elementary (K-5) student achievement in reading vocabulary. In other words that significant difference is found between classrooms that employ new literacy instructions and classrooms that do not use this method.

The null hypothesis would be that no significant difference is found between classrooms that employ new literacy instructions and classrooms that do not use this method.

The study will choose 2 different schools in a certain district with classes k-5 where one school has introduced new literacy techniques (namely technological strategies), and the other school is still employing traditional instruction.

The schools would be as closely matched as possible with students coming from a similar socio-economic background and with their parents generally sharing a similar educational niche (i.e. either largely college educated or largely high-school graduates alone).

Not only will students be closely matched but teachers will be too so that both schools will indicate similar teachers who have similar background experience and credentials.

The study will attempt to have schools that have similar cultural demographics and similar economic resources. In other words, the sole distinguishing feature will be investigation of the variable regarding whether or not new literacy instruction has impacted vocabulary in the school.

Data collection method

The researcher and an assistant will interview the teachers and students (k-5) in the school that has introduced new literacy instruction in their classrooms and have been doing this for at least the previous 2 years. Teachers of the other school (that does not use literacy technology) will be interviewed too. Literacy instruction will be defined as using technologies such as e-pals, blogs, wikis, and podcasts (McPherson et al., 2006) and employing these for the sake of teaching vocabulary to students.

The classrooms in both schools will be observed and exams as well as vocabulary assignments of students of k-5 in both schools will be evaluated and contrasted to see whether any differences exist in terms of vocabulary performance.

Teachers (of grades k-5) and students (of 3-4 grades) will be given a handout to fill out (a survey). A focus group may also be conducted in both schools where researchers, acting as facilitators will sound teachers k-5 on the influence of their technology as regards teaching (in the one case), and whether they see the need for technology (in the other case). This will be discussed in the context of an open-ended discussion forum with the emphasis on whether or not teacher consider technology to have improved the level of vocabulary attainment in their classrooms.

Data collection

Researcher will hand out the surveys ensuring participants of confidentiality. The survey would be collected at a certain date within that same week. participants will be informed of the purpose of the study and told that they can choose to exclude themselves at any time would they so wish.

Researcher would run the questions through an objective other to ascertain that questions are ethical, easily understood by participant, and does not hurt anyone's susceptibilities, nor are leading.

The same method would be employed with questions of the focus group.

In terms of observation, the researcher may be advised to observe the classroom from two stances, from sometimes entering and observing teacher instruction and other times observing though a one-way mirror and through audio recording since observation impairs and confounds the effects of the study decreasing its authenticity and implementing in a way that the participants react. There are behaviorists that say that participants can become habituated to the observer, but even then there are certain contexts and personality characteristics of both participant and observer that will always influence study and cause participant to react in a certain way.

Since the researcher is using grounded theory, he will look at all aspects of the educational situation and environment considering that all may be useful as data. This will include student feedback, student work, curriculum, state standards, teacher ideas, literature, the teacher's style, and the educational instruments used, as well as the classroom environment. The focus is on "what is" (Glaser, 2003, p. 15).

Data analysis

Grounded theory will be used since it approaches qualitative experimentation in general and education in particular in a fresh way (e.g Babchuk, 1996; Hutchinson, 1988). Using grounded theory, in effect, adds a substantial amount to the way researchers investigate source material, student feedback, testing results, and data.

The researcher appaorches the situation with an open mind telling himself that "All is data." (Glaser, 2001, p. 145). In this way, the researcher is not constrained to any specific kind of qualitative method, and can, in effect, combine quantitative methodology with qualitative. He uses the data to generate concepts, categories and assumption and later tests the assumption that he infers from the data. ( other methods are generally the reverse: the researcher has his hypothesis / theory and he conducts a study to test it).

In this case, researchers will pool the notes of observations, teacher-student surveys, and focus groups and will see whether they can generate any themes. Themes that will be collected will focus on vocabulary level per class, vocabulary level as organized in particular categories, and vocabulary level taking into account intellectual differences within the class. Also whether there is frustration in vocabulary learning; whether students are generally able to keep up; whether students excel in oral or written vocabulary; whether vocabulary has to be repeated multiple times until it is remembered; and so forth. Researcher will code and memo the data. Open coding will be employed where line by line of recording or video recording or transcripts of exams, lessons, and surveys will be checked for information. Memos record incidents as they occur with the researcher focusing on concepts.