RES 5040: Teacher as Researcher (spring 09)

Very interesting project, Sherry. In fact, I just received a "goat" from them for Christmas. It's an excellent group, and I think the "animals" and levels will help spark the children's interest and translate well to lesson plans. As for your question, will your project center mainly on the lesson plans and activities (what and how the children learn) or participation in the program (raising money, etc)? You have a good, open-ended "how" question, as recommended in the Hubbard article, but I was wondering what the emphasis of the program would be.

It fits well Stringer's emphasis on the growth of participants and researchers, as I feel the teachers will be learning as much, if not more, than the students during this process, and it takes the idea of community uplifting to an entirely different level.

Very interesting project, Sherry. In fact, I just received a "goat" from them for Christmas. It's an excellent group, and I think the "animals" and levels will help spark the children's interest and translate well to lesson plans. As for your question, will your project center mainly on the lesson plans and activities (what and how the children learn) or participation in the program (raising money, etc)? You have a good, open-ended "how" question, as recommended in the Hubbard article, but I was wondering what the emphasis of the program would be.

It fits well Stringer's emphasis on the growth of participants and researchers, as I feel the teachers will be learning as much, if not more, than the students during this process, and it takes the idea of community uplifting to an entirely different level.-john harrington

Very interesteing research here. I think the growth of participants will be very well taken according to Stringer. Sometimes we get to caught up in the mindset of textbooks and not what the students learn. Think about it.
Scott Harrill

Sherry,
What an interesting project to research!! It really is an eye opener for some students to learn about poverty in other countries and also here at home. I think it is so important for students of all ages to be aware of the world around them. Will you interview the students and see what the impact of the project as had on them? I think this is a great project and there is alot of literature out there!

Hey Sherry,
It's really cool to hear that these students have a teacher who is aware of Heifer International. It says a lot about her social and economic world analysis. I would say those students are lucky to have her. I have given many gifts through this organization. It not only gives disadvantaged people food, it also gives them a means of which to earn a living. It is really about empowerment for them.
My suggestion would be to implement some lessons and or activities within this program that makes the students feel like this exchange with Heifer recipients is more of a reciprocal exchange. What I mean by that is, it would be good for the students to learn some things about the culture of the country (or countries) they are helping. They can see that these people may need assistance, but they also have something to teach.
Congratulations on this project. I bet you'll have a great time seeing this through.
Lyme

Wow. I think this is a wonderful program and research project! I'm interested to see how the Kindergarten students react to this project and this is a great way for students to learn cultural awarness.

This is definitely a positive project for students. It may be challenging to find other research on the impact of student philanthropy on classroom performance, but it will certainly be worthwhile if you are able to demonstrate a correlation. Good Luck!

I just wanted to provide a little more info about the project and answer a few questions in the process. The idea for this project came from my Multicultural Curriculum Project that I am doing for my cultural diversity class for my M licensure. My partner for that project is the Kindergarten teacher I am working with. For that project, we are using a book that came with the Heifer packet to study the different skin colors as related to geographical location in proximity to the equator. We are still tweaking our approach to that project. This AR project may take on more of an integrating cultural diversity into the classroom at the Kindergarten level face. We'll see what kind of literature I can find to support both topics. I do think that introducing cultural diversity at such a young level might lessen prejudices as they get older?

Sherry,
This sounds like a very interesting assignment/project! I love the service emphasis of the project and would be interested to see how that impacts the learning of the students. Have you been able to find any relevant research?

John asked a good question:

"Will your project center mainly on the lesson plans and activities (what and how the children learn) or participation in the program (raising money, etc)? You have a good, open-ended "how" question, as recommended in the Hubbard article, but I was wondering what the emphasis of the program would be."

While your research question is open-ended, which is good, I think you do need to specify the emphasis that you are examining. For example, are you really studying what the children actually *do* to feed the hungry? That's not exactly an action research study; that is, it's not really a problem. The problem is more about service learning outcomes, about awareness of cultural diversity, about learning overall, etc.

Try to tweak the research question to get at what you really want to study (a caveat: you can't really study "lessen cultural prejudices" because of the nature of this project).

Hey! I could have sworn I've been to this blog before but after browsing through some of the post I realized it's new to me. Anyhow, I'm definitely delighted I found it and I'll be book-marking and checking back often!