I just spent a significant chunk of my Saturday afternoon refining the rough draft of my research proposal for my Master's capstone project. I am designing a study to investigate the impact of Illustrative Mathematics' Open Up Resources curriculum on middle school girls' math self-efficacy and math performance. This is meaningful work to me because when I was in middle school, I had a series of disempowering experiences that pushed me away from science and math, and I only found my own confidence to pursue these subjects again when I started college. That is why it is important to me to contribute to the growing body of research on middle school girls' experiences in mathematics. As meaningful as the work is, writing my research proposal rough draft has caused several questions to arise from me. Because I have a Biology degree, I am familiar with experimental design and writing scientific research papers. However, action research in education is different from scientific research, and it is hard for me to separate the two sometimes. I want to control all of these variables in my study that it is impossible to control, and for that reason it is hard for me precisely to narrow down my research method--in particular my participants section. I am not sure whether I should only measure girls' self-efficacy and performance, or boys' as well. My fear with making this study co-ed is that it will become a comparison study between girls and boys, instead of an inquiry into girls' experiences. I don't want to look at my students as research subjects from that lens of comparing male and female achievement. However, from a scientist's perspective, can I actually make any meaningful conclusions without comparing both genders in this study? Right now, I am planning on only including girls in my study, but I am still on the fence and having trouble deciding what to do. The most enjoyable sections for me to write in my research proposal were the abstract and the literature review. I actually really enjoy technical writing, and since this is a subject I am authentically passionate about it was easy to do the research required to write the literature review. The abstract was really fun to write because it made this whole process feel very official. It is exciting to know in a few months I will have completed my own research study on middle school girls' experiences in the math classroom. Seeing the abstract typed out really validated for me that this is great work I am doing, and I know that middle school me would be so proud!
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Emma BooneFirst year 8th grade PBL math/science teacher and graduate student, wondering a bunch and figuring a few things out here and there. Archives
December 2018
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