Day 2 Reflection:

The Purpose Driven Life of Research

Today’s posting will be in two parts, one for each class

Defining Purpose – EDUC 5410

1.     What are the information needs about students, teachers, or administrators that you need to fill?

·      How are teachers in faith-based schools currently planning in a way that weaves a Christian/faith-based worldview into a government-mandated curriculum?

·      How will teachers in faith-based schools ensure a Christian/faith-based worldview can be woven into a proposed curriculum that is constructivist, post-modern, and thoroughly secularized?

·      How will administrators oversee such planning and ensure for quality education that meets the provincial requirements as well as uphold the mandate of the Christian/faith-based school?

2.     What do you want to know?

·      Students – are they making life-affirming connections between their developing Christian/faith worldview and the established curriculum

·      Teachers – are they purposefully integrating a Christian/faith worldview into their planning and activities and not just as an afterthought?  How are they assessing to ensure students are making connections to their beliefs while grasping the curricular concepts?

·      Administrators – are they overseeing and aware of teacher planning and providing professional development opportunities that will help ensure the highest level of education that is combined with faith?

3.     What inferences about student learning or program functioning do you hope to be able to make from your assessment data?

·      Students’ faith lives and beliefs are being enriched and solidified through learning about the social and natural world around them.

4.     How will you use this assessment data?

·      What decisions or actions will you take based on this data?

                                     i.     The evidence found in the assessment data can be used to guide future planning and assessment

                                   ii.     It can be used to gauge the school’s effectiveness in weaving faith and learning together

5.     Who are the stakeholders that will be impacted by this assessment procedure?

·      Teachers, Administrators, school board personnel, parents, and students.

·      What voice will they have in the design, implementation, and use of this assessment?

                                     i.     Much of this falls mainly on the teachers who must plan, teach, and assess the results.

                                   ii.     Administrators answer to boards (either private, separate, or public)

                                 iii.     Parents are key stakeholders as they send their children to these schools (and fund them to various degrees) and want a quality, yet faith-based, education.

·      What voice will they have in the decisions being made on the basis of this assessment data?

                                     i.     All stakeholders will have a voice to varying degrees.  Clearly, as the planners/assessors of the learned content, teachers will have the largest voice in what this will look like.  But administrators must have a voice in regards to the quality of what is being planned and assessed, while the students’ responses will indicate how effective it has been.  Parents, who are expected to be aware and involved in their children’s schooling, would also have a voice in the sense that they may conference with teachers regarding content and how it is taught.  

6.     Who are the audiences for this information? 

·      Teachers, administrators, and school board/education committee members.

I'm a What? continued ... EDUC 5400

Having already established in my first post that I consider myself to be “a qualitative researcher with Constructivist and Pragmatic leanings all the while being affected by my Christian worldview”, I wish to go a little further in my exploration of these worldviews.

When I initially starred the points that described the four worldviews on Table 1.1 in Creswell (p. 6) it was obvious which views I ascribed to most, but with one exception.  Under Transformative, I find I identify with the concept of justice.  If a Transformative worldview studies the lives and experiences of groups who have been traditionally marginalized, what about those for whom marginalization is beginning or currently occurring?   As I begin to research how Christian/faith-based schools can exist and even flourish within a public system of education (either privately or alternatively), I have to acknowledge that matters of faith have been increasingly pushed from public to private life. 

Recently, the Calgary Herald (April 11, 2014) reported that there was a concern that Heritage Christian Academy, an alternative school under the Palliser School District, makes its staff and students sign a code of conduct.  The question immediately became whether such schools should receive any public funding as such a code of conduct would limit who would be allowed to teach or attend there.  But should they be defunded, wouldn’t this be a form of discrimination towards families and taxpayers who choose to send their children to faith-based schools?  And if this were the case, would not the fight they will need to engage in push them into a quasi-Transformative worldview?  This falls well into my belief in justice and perhaps makes my choosing of a particular worldview for the purposes of research even muddier than, well, yesterday.