Connecting my story to research

For five years I was a first and second grade teacher. While working as a teacher I taught and assessed students in various ways in my classroom while always administering the required materials and assessments. Typically, the required assessments were K-2 Running Records and traditional paper and pencil math assessments. The mandatory assessments gave me valuable information as a teacher, but I began to question if there was another way to assess students and gain even more information about student learning while working on my master’s degree in elementary education. It was during this time that I decided to do some research on assessment and discovered a new way to assess: Performance Based Assessment.
I read several articles and books about Performance Based Assessment (PBA) and decided I wanted to try this approach with the group of students that I was teaching. It was also during this time that the state of North Carolina decided that all schools must use PBAs with a mandatory math assessment. It became clear to me that I needed to complete my thesis around PBA with the group of students that I taught during the 2000-2001 school year. Through this experience I learned several reasons why PBA was used in the classroom and some of the drawbacks.
Today, PBA is still a type of assessment that is widely used. For my dissertation, I would like to expand my thesis and conduct a similar study with a larger group of students in a different school system. I would like to compare a traditional paper and pencil math assessment to a PBA in math that is required on the state math assessments. The math topic I would assess is ordinal numbers, and since this subject is taught in first grade, my subjects would be first grade students. I still do not have the details ironed out, but I am sure I can nail it down to make it a “doable” dissertation. I have spoken with Cabarrus County Schools Director for Elementary Education, the school system that I want to complete my dissertation research, and he recommends that I focus on one school within the county. He wants to help make the connection between me and the principal in hopes of the principal being supportive of my research.
While my topic ideas are still fussy and the school is not selected for my research, I know this is the path I want to proceed since I have knowledge of teaching this same content in my personal classroom. After reading today about invention strategies, I know I need to use one of these methods to help sort out my ideas. Choyce Cochran’s drawings on pages 72-74 would help me with my planning. I am now at the point where I need someone with dissertation experience to help me talk it through and create a clear plan. It is my hopes to finalize my dissertation topic and all the details during my advising meetings with Dr. Miller during the course of this semester. If I had the logistics worked out then I could begin giving serious thought to how the research will take place and be at a more comfortable place in my doctoral studies.