My research will be action orientated within my preschool classroom. With the findings and data I intend to gather, I would make changes to my practice and inform other teachers and child care givers of the importance in regard to art and fostering literacy in young children. As an adult listens, makes thoughtful inquiries and talks with children about their artwork the child is learning to verbally communicate through their artistic expressions. The technique I will use to collect data will be observation and transcribing dialogue of children as they respond to art with teacher lead cues.
Non verbal communication will also be noticed and documented along with my own responses. Bakhtin’s concept of human nature is based on dialogue. We are the conversations that we have externally and internally. We understand human thought by exposing the conversations and psychology of the mind. “Our conversations do not occur in a vacuum “(Moen, 2006, p.58). After doing the pilot study, I can see that the conversations with children are multilayer-ed. It is wise to digitally record the conversations in order to capture all the sounds and nuances of the dialogue. Through the pilot study I became aware of the time it takes to listen and trasnscribe a five miniute conversation. Making choices on what to include and what to leave out according to what I want to prove is difficult.
“Looking through one lens cannot be isolated from the act of looking through another” (McCormack, 2001, p.314). The McCormack article From Interview Transcript to Interpretive Story: Part 2- Developing an Interpretive Story, gives a view of approaches toward a research narrative that can be interpreted with multiple lenses.
Writing a narrative from a transcript should include the multiple lens of the narrative process which includes his/her use of the spoken language, the context of the participant, and the moments or situations that reflects an emotion or attitude. By analyzing specific codes of the conversation, we can build a clear, rich and more accurate voice of the participant. There are meanings that can be conveyed in a conversation in respect to the context that brought the participant to the study, the manner or hesitancy in the voice or the silence in response to questioning. As a researcher I am interested in the phenomenon of children fostering their literacy through art and the structure in which it takes place. I also have to be cognizant of the individual child’s manner and developmental stages. Most preschool children are open and are naturally inquisitive and will respond in inquiry. Yet there are children that are very shy, and one wrong question from the teacher can send them away without a word. Trial and error is also valuable information.Are the children merely responding to me because I am their teacher? I realize that when I encourage the activity of paint a picture, the children may use my idea to begin, but, soon thereafter a child my switches gears and begin to create from their own imaginings. This shows how the child constructs knowledge.
Action research is the methodology I will use for further investigation. The research is fluid, transdisiplinary and heuristic as I focus my attention to children's literacy.
Moen, T. (2006). Reflections on the narrative research approach. International Journal of Qualitative
Methodology, 5(4), 1-11.
May, W. (1993). “Teachers-as-researchers" or action research: What is it, and what good is it for art
education? Studies in Art Education, 34(2), 114-126.
McCormack, C. (2001). From interview transcript to interpretive story: Part 2— Developing an
interpretive story. Field Methods, 12(4), 298-315.
Smith Koroscik, J., & Kowalchuk, E. (1997). Reading and interpreting research journal
articles. In S. D. L. Pierre & E. Zimmerman (Eds.), Research methods and
methodologies for art education (pp. 75-102). Reston, VA: National Art Education
Association.
Marcia, It seems as if you are well on your way with your research. You articulate, so well, what it is you will be doing, and what methods will work for you, as well as sharing questions that may help/impede your research. I wish my research practice was as organized and thought-out as yours. I haven't read the McCormack article, but after reading your post I plan to add it to my reading list.
ReplyDeleteYes I really was intrigued with the "code of conversation". I am thinking about when you are engaging your conversation how will you decode or translate the mimicking of young artists.
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