Standard 11 Inquiry/Research: Competently consumes and produces where necessary empirical data to guide educational practice.
I wrote a research proposal outline for an imaginary research study on the effects of extracurricular activities on academic performance. Using databases such as Proquest and EbscoHost, I searched for journal articles similar to my proposal to determine what research had already been done and what was left to do. I found there has been very little research examining the link between extracurricular activities and academic performance. I included the method for collecting, how I would present my data, how the population and sample group would be chosen and what the variables were. Although this study was not meant to be conducted, it did provide me with a good opportunity to become familiar with the research literature available on the internet. I can access these resources to inform my teaching in the future.
Artifact: Research Proposal Outline
My second artifact involves presenting and interpreting raw data in a form which is accessible. I used a given set of data from a fictional school district and created histograms, box plots, performed ANOVA and turkey HSD tests to draw conclusions from the data on the equity of school funding and the effect on academic performance. I can use these new skills to generate and interpret data from my own school and classrooms as a way to better understand my students. It will allow me to determine how well the class understands a standard, how wide that range is and if there are outlier students.
Artifact: Excel Project
