New Tech schools

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Mosier, G. G., Bradley-Levine, J., & Perkins, T. (2016). Students’ Perceptions of Project-Based Learning within the New Tech School Model. International        Journal of Educational Reform,25(1), 2-15. Retrieved February, 2019.

I found this study to be very interesting for my topic of research. New Tech schools are a new style of schools that are more centered around project-based learning (PBL), a democratic school system and technology integration. This is very interesting because some of the methods that they use could possibly be used in newer CTE education reform. In summary this study was centered around two main research questions: 1. “How do students perceive PBL and the NTS model?” and 2. “How do students’ perceptions of PBL connect to their views of NTS implementation?” ( Mosier 5). The used a survey method to collect data from 6 New Tech schools and had 710 student participants. they wanted to understand how the students perceived their education and what aspects appeal or don’t appeal to them.  Their findings found that there were many strong correlations to the student’s happiness at school and the PBL/ New Tech school practices. I found it really interesting that many of the student correlated the PBL methods to creating a “culture of “trust, respect and responsibility” (11). I think it’s a great idea to get the reactions and feelings of the students because they are often left unaccounted for. When trying to come up with a new educational curriculum its important to poll the feeling of everyone involved in order to make sure the curriculum is effective. More importantly I loved how the research was done. There survey seemed really thought out and covered almost every aspect of their education. In my favorite section they have the students describe what behaviors their teachers demonstrate when using the PBL methods. I believe that it is important when creating a curriculum to look at it from the student’s perspective. This allows you to understand what the what the teacher is doing to help or not help these students. The finding saw that when the teacher was enthusiastic about the PBL activity the students enjoyment and understanding of the material was much higher than the teachers who are not thrilled to be teaching PBL.

Music and Behavior

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Journal for the theory of social behaviour
Oxford : Blackwell Publishers; Print began with vol. 1, no. 1 (Apr. 1971).; 1971
My research topic is based upon the influence music has on conversational behavior. More specifically on how music above and below 65 beats per minute affect conversations on politics and religion. This topic is heavily based on social behavior, and the music impacts how the social behavior and interaction unfolds. Sociologist George Herbert Mead believed that people develop self-images through interactions with other people. Applying this belief to my research project, I would have to strategically select people with different “self-images”, to get the most out of the conversations about politics and religion. If I gather a group of people who have the same beliefs and want to be seen in the same image, then the conversations will be bland and with little to no effect with the change in music. With a mixture of beliefs, social statuses, and values, conversation will thus shift in different directions. Now my question is will the different tempos in music change whether or not people in the group will concede to other beliefs despite their desired self-image? Or will the tempo in the music cause people to argue more strongly about their beliefs even more pushing their self image? With this theory from the journal, I would include a person who does not have a set of beliefs in the subjects of politics and religion, thus having so self-image to push in this scenario. Will the change in music influence what side this person takes in each discussion? Developing a self image is important in today’s society, so with this research project involving two topics with controversial abilities, people may dive in or get out of the pool in the conversation, in hopes to push or save their own self image because of their true beliefs.

Research Example #1

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In this article, “Applying Geography Course Projects to Issues in City Resilience and Global Connectivity” by Ronald V. Kalafsky and Helen M. Rosko, the authors present the findings of a course project for upper-division undergraduates that explored the impact of geography, city resiliency and global connections. One of the missions of the course project was to bring different intellectual perspectives from varying fields and apply found knowledge to real-world problems in an engaging application of geographic knowledge. The students were prompted to analyze many different factors and risks that cities face and use critical geographic planning to best prepare and plan for long term socioeconomic and global impacts. The authors found that creating opportunities for students to think and engage in spatial and geographic terms can lead to an increased interest in geography and geographic impacts such as social welfare and environmental health. Each student was assigned a different global city and engaged in a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis to ask central questions to the project including the strengths, weaknesses and global connectivity of a city; whether it benefits from external opportunities/obstacles; the external threats to the city as they relate to global economic networks. I was able to relate this to my topic by looking specifically at the results students found in terms of city resilience in cases of natural hazards and disasters as well as the role of human capital and (inadequate) infrastructure in cities like Dubai, Bristol, and New Orleans. Although the results of the analysis for the related topics focused largely on opportunities for redevelopment in the hopes of designing a “global city” stray from the perspective of my proposed research, it provides an opportunity to gather more organizational and economic data as I explore other sources of information and perspective.

Kalafsky, Ronald V., and Rosko, Helen M. “Applying Geography Course Projects to Issues in City Resilience and Global Connectivity.” Journal of Geography 116, no. 2 (March 4, 2017): 67–78.

Research Example #1

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The goal of this research was to  examine the ‘percentage of female elite athletes and controls reporting sexual harassment and abuse (SHAB), and whether a higher percentage of female athletes with eating disorders (ED) had experienced SHAB’.  The data type uses was a questionnaire. The questionnaire was distributed to 660 female elite athletes and 780 controls ages 15–30. Sexual harassment and abuse were measured by 11 questions on the questionnaire, ranging from light to severe SHAB. 121 Athletes and 81 controls results turned out to be “at risk” for ED and non‐ED controls participated in a clinical interview.  This study used qualitative analysis and was qualitative research. This study was incredibly eye opening to me.. I never thought of how these two variables could have possible correlations. The fact that athletes who struggled with eating disorders were found to be more often than faced sexual harassment/abuse is scary. It really made me think about the effect eating disorders can have on people in more ways that just internally.  This also showed me that sometimes when researching, some variables we might not think to have correlations can actually be strong correlations. We need to think outside the box.

Sundgot‐Borgen, J. , Fasting, K. , Brackenridge, C. , Torstveit, M. K. and Berglund, B. (2003), Sexual harassment and eating disorders in female elite athletes – a controlled study. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 13: 330-335. doi:10.1034/j.1600-0838.2003.00295.x

Research Example #4

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The goal of this research was to ‘examine the prevalence of anorexia nervosa(AN), bulimia nervosa (BN), anorexia athletica (AA), and eating disorders not otherwise specified (ED-NOS) in both male and female Norwegian elite athletes and a representative sample from the general Norwegian population’.  

 The researchers created a 2-step study.  This study included a self-reported questionnaire as well as clinical interview.  For data method, I was obviously classify this as questionnaire as well as using expert opinion.  This is qualitative analysis and data. In conclusion the study showed that the “prevalence of EDs is higher in athletes than in controls, higher in female athletes than in male athletes, and more common among those competing in leanness-dependent and weight-dependent sports than in other sports. A collaborative effort among coaches, athletic trainers, parents, physicians, and athletes is optimal for recognizing, preventing, and treating EDs in athletes”.  As an athlete myself this is shocking. Since athletes are known as people who are supposed to take incredibly care of their bodies would do exactly that instead of putting their bodies at risk…But it looks as if it is just the opposite. There is so much pressure to be perfect and perform to a certain standard, that we do what we think is going to help us succeed, but instead we are doing more damage and harm to our vessels that allow us to perform our sport.  This provides excellent insight to my research because it gives me an idea of the types of studies that have been done before, but has inspired me to go even deeper and get more specific, this inspired me to want to conduct research specifically on athletes at Redlands and see what I could find.

Sundgot-Borgen, J, and M K Torstveit. “Prevalence of Eating Disorders in Elite Athletes Is Higher than in the General Population.” Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine : Official Journal of the Canadian Academy of Sport Medicine., U.S. National Library of Medicine, Jan. 2004, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14712163.

Research Example #3

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Joy E, Kussman A, Nattiv A
2016 update on eating disorders in athletes: A comprehensive narrative review with a focus on clinical assessment and management
Br J Sports Med 2016;50:154-162.

This research is a review of ‘2016 update on eating disorders in athletics: comprehensive narrative review with a focus on clinical assessment and management. This article focuses on how eating disorders are incredibly devastating effects on health, especially in an athlete’s performance. To summarize, through survey, questionnaire, and in dept interview(data collection methods), this is about how Athlete medical teams need to systematically screen athletes (both male and female) as a part of the preparticipation evaluation. In addition to the team physician, dietitian and mental health professional, athletic trainers play a key role as the ‘eyes and ears’ of the healthcare team on the practice field and in the training room and oftentimes serve as the confidant and support person for the athlete who is struggling with and recovering from an eating disorder. These results was incredibly interesting and very helpful for my research proposal. It really sheds some light on the fact that eating disorders and disordered eating patterns can affect everyone-even those who are seen as “mentally tough”.
The type of data needed is qualitative and the method of data analysis qualitative research.
This was incredibly interesting research and a well done study.

Research #6

Research I might use for my project

This article, “Scuba diver behaviour and the management of diving impacts on coral reefs,” written by N. H. L. Baker and C. M. Roberts is interesting because they are researching how scuba divers damage reefs. I never thought the divers are deadly to the reefs, only a nuisance because their fins are always kicking up sand. I have been scuba diving since I was certified at 10 years old, and at a young age I was taught to never touch the reef, and to never kick up sand. Until researching coral, I never knew sand harmed the coral, but I digress. This article is about the results the researchers obtain when observing 353 divers in St. Lucia during the height of tourist season and the low. What they discovered is that if the divers were only briefed about not touching the coral, there was no decline in damage from kicking or touching the coral. It was only if the divers were briefed and a divermaster swiftly intervened when a diver was damaging the coral somehow. Another result, which was unsurprising was the more inexperienced the diver was, the more damage they caused to the coral. They discovered that kicking was the most deadly way to damage coral was because the fins kick up sediments, which land on the coral and then the coral has to focus on removing the sediment from themselves than growing and reproducing. It was interesting to learn how much damage divers cause to reefs, because it is smaller than other factors like climate change but left unchecked can cause major damage to specific reefs. Poor scuba diving etiquette is a localized driver to coral reef damage that is being fueled by tourism and poor education on how delicate these beautiful reefs are.

Baker, N. H. L., and Roberts, C. M. (2004). Scuba diver behaviour and the management of diving impacts on coral reefs Biological Conservation: 1-9

Research Example #5

Research I might use for my project

In “The 27-year decline of coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef and its causes,” De’ath and the other researchers studied for more than two decades what is making the coral reefs at the Great Barrier Reef die quicker and quicker. This article is great source for my research project because it lists many drivers that affect coral reef mortality, and the few that are only affecting the Great Barrier Reef, especially the southern side. The drivers that these researchers believe are affecting reefs worldwide are the rising seawater temperature, pollution, ocean acidification, overfishing, destructive fishing, tourism, development along the coast, predation and storms (De’ath et al, 2012). After measuring the mean coral coverage in three areas of the Great Barrier Reef for 27 years, the researchers decided cyclones, the increase in the invasive species Crown-of-Thorns Starfish, and coral bleaching which is influenced by the rising temperature of seawater. These drivers affected the rate of regrowth of the coral. Since the temperature has risen in the water and out, tropical cyclones are more frequent and more tense, which physically damages the coral. That means the coral has less time to regrow if there are more storms. Crown-of-Thorn Starfish eat coral, and the more there are of these starfish, the more coral is being eaten. The rising water temperature cause coral to bleach because the hotter temperatures kill off the algae that gives nutrients to coral. Without the algae, the coral stops growing and reproducing. If the coral is bleached for a short period, it will be able to revive itself. Unfortunately, the bleaching periods have become longer and the coral is not able to recover from it. These three drivers affect the coral in the Great Barrier Reef, and other combinations of drivers affect other reefs. It was interesting to learn that the declining rate of coral growth was more deadly than bleaching on its own, or storms.

De’ath, G., Fabricius, K. E., Sweatman, H., and Puotinen, M. (2012). The 27 year decline of cora; cover on the Great Barrier Reef and its causes, PNAS 109(44): 17995-17999

Research Example #6

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I found a book that talks specifically about the Hawaiian culture and encouraging a culture based education that implements a Montessori education and not a place-based education. I thought that it would be important for me to continue to research what has been done in the past in regard to the improvement of public school education. This study was done specifically in Hawaii which is one of the main reasons why I chose it. I can look through this text and see what my results are and if this Montessori education encouraged a similar result. I also thought that it would be important to look into this study because they used the Montessori education which is actually pretty similar to a place-based education. Marie Montessori encouraged students to, in a way, discover and learn for themselves. She believed that students needed to have tangible resources so that they could learn through a more hands-on experience. This includes a close proximity and involvement with nature, with other students and with learning tools. This is all very similar to the place-based education. The place-based education encourages close proximity and involvement with nature and people as well, however, it also encourages involvement in community and it emphasizes how students can relate through the place that they live in. A Montessori education is more culture based and it focuses on the cultures and backgrounds of the students to create a cohesive classroom.

I grew up in the Montessori education so it does work and helps students to learn and to create a good relationships with classmates. However, it did not encourage a lot of community involvement. It created it’s own world within the classroom which is not what I prefer in the education of my future students and what I believe is the most beneficial for students.

Schonleber, Nanette S. “Hawaiian Culture-Based Education and the Montessori Approach:        Overlapping Teaching Practices, Values, and Worldview.(Report)(Author Abstract).”                  Journal of American Indian Education 50.2 (2011): 5. Print.