PhD Philosophy Students in Training Summer Class of 2000
It’s been almost 15 years since I’ve graduated from SFU Faculty of Education with my Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction. Wow! Has it been that long? My family and I were purging (aka. spring cleaning in the fall) stuff in our house, which includes my office. It was time. Forging through papers, books, and tokens from my past, I came across this framed poem from one of my summer classes at SFU. In this illustration I am “Chris” and I gave a presentation about curling, systems, and roles in organizations. Hmm… it’s funny to look at this. I was in Dr. Michael Ling’s class. Looking back, I loved that I was able to connect one of my true loves, curling, with education and philosophy. I was so grateful that SFU held a two-year program on the Sunshine Coast to accommodate remote learners, like myself. The program was led by my edu-hero (and mentor) Dr. Geoff Madoc-Jones. He was ‘crazy’ sometimes, but he gave me the courage to believe in myself and my practice. I loved his mind, knowledge, and lived experiences. He was an innovator (and possibly a trouble-maker). I appreciated the stories that he would tell, the abrasiveness of the knowledge he imparted, and his kind gentle heart that supported me during the tough times. Geoff just seemed to know what to say at the right time to provoke deep thought and contemplation. I can only dream to be a fraction of what he was. Another edu-hero is Dr. Carolyn Mamchur. She taught about Myers-Briggs Personality Type Preferences and how it connects to teaching and learning. 100 questions. I loved her ENFP approach to her teaching, her research, and storytelling. At the time, I wondered if I was “the broken math teacher” who didn’t cry when a student cried, unlike my empathetic colleague who taught English. Problem solved. I was an ESTJ. Understanding my type helped me to understand those around me (a little bit better). Finally, I want to thank Dr. Murray Ross, who messed up my brain and had a brief mention in the poem as seen in the photo. He taught the first course in our program and he questioned everything. Another philosophy course and I was so challenged by (my now favourite) philosopher Alasdair MacIntryre and the “goods internal to the practice.” It was like a puzzle. Once again, I could only solve it by making a connection to curling. Crazy, I know, but the ‘nature of virtues’ provides me with an underpinning to my practice. Now let’s return to Dr. “Michael” Ling. His kindness, love for learning, and expertise highlight my learning experience at SFU. Although I am an SFU alumni, I have returned back to SFU as a doctoral candidate in the Educational Leadership program. The Master of Education program gave me hope as a learner, the tools to question, and the will to understand why. Thank you Michael, Geoff, Carolyn, and Murray for being stellar teachers. Happy 50th SFU. #proudtobeanalumni
Written by Christine Ho Younghusband, December 29th, 2015 | Comments Off on Happy 50th SFU
Wow. I cannot believe that I am at the next step in my dissertation. It seems almost surreal and kind of anti-climatic. Not to overshadow the awesomeness of this feat and all of the wonderful retweets, reposts, and forwards that happened almost immediately after I sent out my invitation email… it’s participation. For some reason I expected “hundreds” to self-identify and participate on first sight of my invitation??? Hmm… this is a poor expectation. It’s about patience and the will to promote.
Of course, I opted to sample teachers in the province instead of a particular group, school, or school district. How does one sample teachers within the province? The “Vital Sassoon” effect… she has two, and he has two friends, and so on and so on and so on. Seemed like a good idea at the time. I am happy to use social media and email to convenience sample teachers who may satisfy my participant profile of a non-mathematics subject specialist teacher. Yup. It is somewhat ambitious.
Worst of all, I have no idea what the population of non-mathematics subject specialist teachers there are who are teaching or who have taught at least one secondary mathematics class in BC schools. This statistic is not recorded or published. Based on my experience as a secondary mathematics teacher in BC school, I imagined as a researcher that this number to be relatively high. I am not referring to any list to acquire participants to for this study and participants must self-identify as non-math specialists. Moreover, this study is limited to those who get access to the study.
Here’s the crazy part… this process is just to get the survey to the desired participant. The survey is about the PROFESSIONAL LEARNING EXPERIENCES of these teachers and how they strengthened their knowledge of mathematics as a practicing secondary mathematics teacher in BC schools. Does this sound appealing to you? I’m totally stoked by this. It took me years to narrow my study down to one research question coupled with two sub-questions asking about the effectiveness of the learning activity and if the learning experience improved their teaching practice.
I love being curious. This is my motivation. My purpose is “to enhance the learning experiences of others.” And, my passion is teaching and learning… aka. Education. I don’t think that I am different from many others in the field of education but I am such an edu-junkie. I am always wondering about professional learning as a learner and teacher. I have great hopes for participation. Wouldn’t it be great to figure out what teachers like in terms of learning mathematics? I guess we’ll soon see.
This is only the first day of data collection with 13 more days to go. Truth, I got super excited when I got my first participant within the first few minutes of posting the email invitation on the BCAMT Listserve. A small part of me wanted the rate of participation to maintain itself throughout the day. Again, a poor expectation… but I do hope that there are lots of teachers “out there” who are compelled to tell me (anonymously) about their professional learning experiences. Come on… it sounds like a great way to spend 5 to 20 minutes of your time to contribute to research.
For more information about my study or if you’d like to participate or refer the study to a colleague, go to my webpage www.christineyounghusband.com/research.
Written by Christine Ho Younghusband, November 23rd, 2015 | Comments Off on Collecting Data
