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Education 429-4 Research for the Classroom Teacher

Summer 1985 July 1 - August 10 ?

Instructor: Robert F. Stake

Tue - Thu 8:30-12:20 ?

University of Illinois

MPX

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This is a course for certificated teachers on research practices in the classroom

with emphasis on action research and self-study. The primary orientation will be

on observational inquiry leading to a better uiiderstanding of one's own pedagogy.

Curriculum evaluation and evaluation of teachers will he side-issues of interest.

The enrollees in this class are expected to read perhaps 50 pages of weekly

assignments plus other materials they will select, complete one small writing

assignment each week, plus design a small research study suitable for their own

practice, plus participate in daily discussions of educational problems.

The textbook for the course is The Complexities of an Urban Classroom by Louis

Smith and William Goeffrey, 1968. (It is out of print and we expect to photocopy

copies for students who want their own copy.) The critical feature of the class-

room Smith and Goeffrey studied is not that it is urban, but that the stu4ents

share little of the cultural experience of the teacher, and among themselves, the

students have quite different cultural backgrounds. In spite of our various

interests in curricula, teaching process, and classroom management, we are frequently

drawn toward an ethnographic consideration of what is going on. To put those con-

cerns into a more disciplined and personally useful design for inquiry is the pur-

pose of this course.

The outline of topics follows the chapters of the book:

Week 1 -- The Nature of Classroom Microethnography

2. - - School Begins

3.-- Classroom Processes

4 - - Reconcetualizing Teaching

5 -- The Flow of the Semester

6 -- Activities

7 - - The Culturally Deprived Child

8 - - Reflections on Classroom Analysis

A major concern will be the identification and presentation of a problem or issue

that is worthy of study and amenable to research. By the end of the course each

of us should have a technical statement of one good researchable problem within

our own practice situation.