Chapter 1: The Nature of Inquiry

Posted by Scott Wojtanowski on September 8th, 2008

Practice of Research 

  1. Scientific and Positivistic Methodology
  2. Naturalistic and Interpretive Methodologies
  3. Methodologies of Critical Theory

Three Broad Categories (Environment and Understanding)

  • Experience (Common-Sense Knowing)
    • Loose and uncritical manner of understanding
    • Control is used to systematical find a sufficient reason to predice a causual link/relationship.
  • Resoning
    • Methods
      • Deductive
        • Syllogism –> Priori (Self-Evident Proposition) –> Minor Premise providing particular instance –> Conclusion
      • Inductive
        • Study number of cases leads to a hypothesis and generalization.
      • Combined Inductive-Deductive
        • Comes down to the modern scientific methos.
    • Leads to Categories
      • Hypothesis
      • Logical Development of Hypothesis
      • Clarification and Interpretation of Scientific Findings and their Synthesis into a conceptual framewor
  • Research (Kerlinger, 1970 - Systematic, Controlled, empirical and critical invesitagation of hypothetical propositions about the presumed relations among natural phenomena)
    • Experience deals with events in haphazard manner, systematic and controlled
    • Empirical - Experience for validity
    • Self-Correcting - Public Scrutiny

Social Science Reality - Explicit and Implicit Assumptions (Burrell and Morgan, 1979)

  1. Onotological (Nominalist-Realist Debate)
    • Assumptions which concern the very nature or essence of the social phonomena being investigated
  2. Epistemological
    • Nature and forms of knowledge, how it can be acquired/experienced
  3. Relationship between humans and their environment

Key Terms: 

  • Nomothetic
  • Idiographic:  Understaning of the way in which the individual creates, modifies and interpret the world.

Inquiry

 

Positivism

  • Knowledge is based on experience advance by observation and experiment. 
  • Accept natural science as the paradigm of human knowledge.
  • Less successful in human behavior:  Imense complexity of human nature
  1. Determinism:  Events have causes that events are determines by other circumstances
  2. Empiricism:  Relable knowledge only originate in experience.
    1. Experience
    2. Classification
    3. Quantification
    4. Discovery of Relationships
    5. Approimation to the truth
  3. Parsimony:  Phenomena should be explained in the most economical way possible.

 

Quick Start Guide

Posted by Scott Wojtanowski on April 2nd, 2007

Needs This environment should meet the needs of our students, which is preparing them to be effective teacher. This environment also needs to meet NCATE standards.

Background Be sure that students participating in this program are technology aware. Early adopters of this program should most likely have a higher affinity for how to interact with technology.

Motivation We need to create a program that doesn’t do what every other program allows. This needs to be different which will motivate our students to participate. An example of this would be to allow our students join a broader community. Limiting our students within their own geographic region is limiting their capability.

Posted by Scott Wojtanowski on April 1st, 2007
You are a member of the Council of Teacher Education for a local university where there have been many discussions on developing an online teacher education program. During these lengthy discussions you hear the word “community” being thrown around a great deal. You hear things such as, “We really want this cohort to feel like a community” and “How can we get them to be a community?” As you hear these comments and the responses, you cringe at the conversations. You really want to jump in to define community and discuss how community can be developed within an online teacher education program. What would you say?

Fellow colleagues, I’d like to be sure we maintain our focus for developing this online teacher education program. I’ve heard the term community mentioned several times and rather than using this term again, I’d like to define the qualities we like to see in this program and see if and how our online teacher education program can achieve this.

Of these qualities, I’d like to remind you that as we fulfill NCATEs six standards for accreditation, we have the opportunity to foster an environment were students can feel completely immersed in their work. These standards are:

  1. Candidate Knowledge, Skills, and Dispositions
  2. Assessment System and Unit Evaluation
  3. Field Experiences and Clinical Practice
  4. Diversity
  5. Faculty Qualifications, Performance, and Development
  6. Unit Governance and Resources

Source: NCATE

When we look within the context of each of the standards, technology is embedded within each one. You can also see how ISTE has also shown how NETS is being integrated with NCATE.

Beyond simply using technology within this program, I want to be sure we are not simply replacing the idea of forming community with other programs forming groups. Other preparation programs have begun grouping incoming students together, this grouping doesn’t necessarily illicit support and collaborative learning.

We do need are quality instructors that know how to effectively facilitate and nurture our students in this online environment.

Previous Articles

My Dualities in an OLE

Posted by Scott Wojtanowski on February 23rd, 2007

Designing an Online Learning Environment

Posted by Scott Wojtanowski on February 23rd, 2007

“Voices” Used in an OLE

Posted by Scott Wojtanowski on February 23rd, 2007

Social Communities or Learning Commmunities

Posted by Scott Wojtanowski on February 19th, 2007

Missing out on the group

Posted by Scott Wojtanowski on February 19th, 2007

An e-mail brings me back and encourages me to participate

Posted by Scott Wojtanowski on February 19th, 2007

Not just a building, but an entire campus

Posted by Scott Wojtanowski on February 12th, 2007

Welcome to Learning With Technology

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog! Take a second to peak around and check out some of my previous posts. Of course, I would love to find out what you think as well, so make sure to comment. See you around!