Wes Akers

Whew! October flew by quickly.  My research team tackled our literature review head on by communicating often and keeping each other focused.  When researching and writing as a team, I have learned it is important to continuously check in with my partners to share rough drafts and our ideas about where our research is heading.  Working with Susannah and LaDawna has pushed me to think deeper about arts engagement by reflecting on my writing and explaining my thinking to them.  Although it was difficult to synthesize our research, I think it is rewarding to be engaged in a collaborative and supportive writing process. As a result, I feel like we have formed strong academic relationships with each other in addition to friendships.

When I consider my research process and educational technology, I think about the tools we are using to communicate – Google Hangouts, Google Docs, Twitter, email, and text.  Although Susannah and I have met face-to-face, my group collaborates remotely and I can’t imagine writing collaboratively another way.  Google makes it so easy for us to work together with shared documents.  Although my district started suspending student Google accounts, it makes me think about how my students could write collaboratively.  As it has for me, I think it will make them think deeper about their writing and ideas.

Reading peer-reviewed articles related to our topic continues to broaden my background knowledge around engaging with the arts.  As I read more articles, I feel like I’m strengthening my findings around our three major themes and I’m able to start triangulating my findings.  Peer reviewed articles also allow me to observe how researchers actually work, specifically as it relates to data collection and analysis.  I have been especially interested in reading about researchers collecting data through interviews and then coding participants’ responses.  I think it will help me code my student responses and identify major themes in my interviews.  Heather Moorefield’s article “Arts Voices” was helpful because she showed me how she identified themes by illustrating them with quotes from her interviews.  If I can adopt similar practices, I believe I will be successful when analyzing my data.

This month I feel like I have become a discerning consumer of research by continuously asking myself how the articles relate to my group’s questions.  I have sifted through a lot of articles and printed quite a few that I later decided were not on topic.  Aside from being related to our research questions, I’m also evaluating articles based on whether they will help me triangulate my individual and group findings.  With our different case studies, I think it’s important for me to consider the themes LaDawna and Susannah are finding so we are able to make connections across our settings.

While researching, the question I keep asking myself is “how does this article relate to our research question, what are the tools and practices used to engage with art?”  In my research, I have found articles that address practices used to engage with art in schools, but I feel a little lost on the tools part of the question.  Susannah and I have discussed how we are struggling to identify themes around tools.  I have bounced ideas off her about focusing my research on finding articles about the specific tools I use in my lessons in which students are engaging with art.  I have started to identify some research around teachers using multimedia to engage with art, but I’m not confident I’m on the right track.  

Being engaged in collaborative research and writing has made me curious about integrating action research into teacher professional development.  Karen Goodnough’s article “The Role of Action Research in Transforming Teacher Identity” is about science teachers engaged in action research and how the participating teachers became more reflective of their practice.  I wonder how this might look in my district or school and how to garner interest in participating in action research.