John's Initial Research Notes, or Where in World is This Heading?

Introduction:

My initial hope: To evolve an approach for developing effective student leadership.

Over the past few weeks and as a result of the use of a number of AR tools, I have found that my initial topic is somewhat in flux. From time to time I would find myself getting closer to understanding what I was after, but then moments later I would find myself connected to some other part of the problem or direction I'd like to head. As this was happening, and in particular while engaged with the KAQF worksheet and then later on with the larger version of an Evaluation Clock, I began to find myself thinking more and more about difficult to define educational topics (such as leadership, but also topics such as tolerance, character, ethics, morals and the like) and what they had in common. In general, I was interested in the commonalities of the challenges in teaching of these topics, and in the difficulties of assessing success or failure in doing so.

Hand in hand in hand with this exploration came a notable change of perspective. I had started out focused on a programmatic approach to producing leaders, or at least viewable leadership. As time past, however, and I struggled to clarify the initial problem statement, I found myself thinking more about the teachers of these skills (and their teachers even). I began to find myself thinking that I needed to consider more carefully the relationship between teachers of these difficult to pin down skills and the hoped-for performers of the skills, and that success in my venture was somehow tied up in maximixing the collaborative opportunties between the two. While perhaps not rocket science, it took me some time to arrive at that point of entry to my problem. Deciding on the "teachable moment" of teacher-student interractions as the window through which I would look, I began to focus on interractive teaching momemnts in my research and I began to make some progress. The phase of my thinking about this issue that expanded so rapidly permited me in the end, it seems, to begin to get down to the actual work that most interested me.

My most recent direction: To evolve approaches aimed at maximizing the effectiveness of "teachable moments," such that personal progress in one or more character areas (leadership, tolerance, ethics, etc.) might be viewed and measured.

KAQF Worksheet and Evaluation Clock (both still evolving), and the research directions they suggested:

KAQF Worksheet.xls
Proj_EvalClock1.doc

My research will take a number of different forms:

1. I plan to use surveys to begin to identify the characteristics, attributes and patterns of successful and unsuccessful student leadership. I hope to survey recent leaders, students currently in leadership positions, and students in the 9th and 10th grades (eventual leaders). I will use the information gathered during this phase as the basis of work in dialogue groups.

2. My work thus far suggests to me that a high level of collaboration between teachers and students will be required, and so I plan to employ some number of dialogue/conversation group opportunities. The goals of these are numerous: To build engaged and invested constituent groups; To evolve through consensus a workable (within the school environment) definition of leadership that can serve as a guideline moving forward; To promote a collaborative spirit between adults and students; To identify motivation for working on this issue within the constituent groups.

3. I have started to research other environments -- educational and otherwise -- that feel they have been effective in developing student leadership, and have also evolved asessment methods. I am primarily using work-related contacts and the internet for this material. I am furthest along in this part of my research.

4. I plan to do some level of research about the developmental and sociological aspects of adolescents and leadership.

5. Because resources are so often a factor in expanding or creating programmatic approaches, I plan to conduct an internal examination of school programs in hopes of discerning sensible places of overlap. This examination will likely take place in the latter phases of my research, once guidelines and goals have been established.

Resources:

Work in Progress Presentation:
JQ_CCT693_Presentation.ppt