The Journey…….
As I embark upon this journey with SET Lab this year, I thought it fitting to include this image as my background. I am excited to begin this project and again conduct action research with my students.
For some background, I teach world history and government at the high school level and I am the chair of the History Department at Commonwealth Academy (C/A) in Alexandria, Virginia, where I have been teaching for 5 years. C/A is a college preparatory school for students who have organizational, attentional, or learning differences. My original career was in government affairs and communications for nonprofits. I began my 17-year career in education teaching psychology and educational technology. I then began teaching History at both the middle and high school levels and eventually college courses in psychology and education. I received my BA from Baylor University in Psychology and my MA from American University in International Affairs. During my education career, I completed my MA in Curriculum and Instruction and my PhD in Educational Psychology from The Catholic University of America. My dissertation focused on combining reading strategy instruction with the motivator of choice to increase engagement in history and my study was conducted with my own students.
I am teaching 12th grade government and honors government for the first time this year and am excited to have this opportunity during an election cycle. This, therefore, therefore led me to my SET Lab research question: How can I maximize the civic engagement of my 12th-grade government students upon their graduation in time to vote in the 2020 election?
I developed this topic as a natural progression of my past research and from the desire to prepare my senior students to vote in their first presidential election. As previously stated, I began researching engagement in social studies for my dissertation study and am excited to continue engagement research with students at the high school level. The first issue that is evident with this population includes the fact that many students lose interest in working hard in school during their senior year. This typically occurs when students have started hearing back from colleges. In addition, there are numerous instances of students who have had their college admittance and/or scholarship jeopardized after schools see a sharp grade decline during the senior year.
A second issue with this population regards civic education. Civic participation is an important right and privilege in America and current seniors in high school will be voting in their first election in the fall of 2020. Students who are not informed citizens are not full participants in U.S. civic life Thus, it is important that they be engaged in the subject of government.
Therefore, the desired state I hope to attain through this project and research is to increase engagement of 12th grade government students and to improve their desire to participate fully as citizens about to vote for the first time in 2020.
My research hypothesis states: Teacher design of class activities along with collaboration from student ideas will create an engaging atmosphere of learning whereby students will continue to actively participate and seek knowledge about the governmental process in the United States. I will study the independent variables of class activities designed by the teacher with student input and their effect on the dependent variable of student engagement, as measured by student self-reports.
Join me on my journey on this Medium blog and also on Twitter, hashtags #setlab, #educationscientist, and #changebydesign.
