KA Action Oriented Research and Dissertation 5/3/09

Started the KA on Action Research 3 weeks ago and it has been very informative and in someways hard for me. I am not that familiar with research in the social sciences and in general so the terminology has always been difficult and honestly not that well crafted for getting things done. However, I will prevail, although at this moment is a bit like learning the IRS code. At the end of this class in June, we will have finished our concept papers for our dissertations so I'm hoping this will produce a lot of clarity for my first dissertation committee meeting at the National session in late July.

here are the books I am reading:

Fitzpatrick, J., Wright, D. J., & Secrist, J. (1998). Secrets for a successful dissertation. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.

Rudestam, K. E., & Newton, R. R. (2001). Surviving your dissertation : a comprehensive guide to content and process (2nd ed.). Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.

Tashakkori, A., & Teddlie, C. (2009). Foundations of Mixed Methods Research: Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Girden, E. R. (2001). Evaluating research articles from start to finish (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.

Salkind, N. J. (2008). Statistics for people who (think they) hate statistics (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.

Coghlan, D., Brannick, T., & ebrary Inc. (2005). Doing action research in your own organization (2nd ed.). London ; Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE.

KA Leadership and Systems, 3/17/09

I've been very busy posting on the forum for our group KA in Leadership. I posted 74 times using many of the following references. I also wrote two papers, one on the Future of Education and the second on Gloria Ladson-Billings' work. Some of the articles I will read later, but here are the references I have collected for the KA:


Ansoff, H. I. (1984). Implanting strategic management. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice/Hall International.

Au, W. (2006). Teacher Quality: Conversations on Quality. Journal, Winter 2005/2006. Retrieved from http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/20_02/glor202.shtml

Banathy, B. H. (2001). We enter the twenty-first century with schooling designed in the nineteenth. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 18(4), 4.

Berg, G. A., Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Nakamura, J. (2003). A Mission Possible? Enabling Good Work in Higher Education. [Feature Article]. Change, 35(5), 40-47.

Burgelman, R. A., & Maidique, M. A. (1988). Strategic management of technology and innovation. Homewood, Ill.: Irwin.

Christensen, C. M. (1997). The innovator's dilemma : when new technologies cause great firms to fail. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press.

Christensen, C. M., Anthony, S. D., & Roth, E. A. (2004). Seeing what's next : using the theories of innovation to predict industry change. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Fisher, J. L. (1984). Power of the presidency. New York
London: American Council on Education/Macmillan ; Collier Macmillan.

Frey, T. (2007). The Future of Education. Retrieved 2/6/09, 2009, from http://www.davinciinstitute.com/page.php?ID=170

Gary, A. B., Mihaly, C., & Jeanne, N. (2003). Mission possible? Enabling Good Work in Higher Education. Change, 35(5), 40.

Haberman, M. (1995). Selecting 'star' teachers for children and youth in urban poverty. Phi Delta Kappan, 76(10), 777.

Haberman, M. (1997). Unemployment training: The ideology of nonwork learned in urban schools. Phi Delta Kappan, 78(7), 499.

Howard, G. (2002). Tests of good work. Executive Excellence, 19(2), 12.

Howard, G. (2007). Good Work. Leadership Excellence, 24(10), 3.

Kielsmeier, J. C., Neal, M., Schultz, N., & Leeper, T. J. (2008). Growing to Greatness 2008: The State of Service-Learning Project: National Youth Leadership Council.

Lakoff, G. (2008). The political mind : why you can't understand 21st-century politics with an 18th-century brain. New York: Viking.

Lareau, A. (2002). Invisible inequality: Social class and childbearing in black families and white families. American Sociological Review, 67(5), 747.

Lareau, A., & Horvat, E. M. (1999). Moments of social inclusion and exclusion race, class, and cultural capital in family-school relationships. Sociology of Education, 72(1), 37.

Lareau, A., & Shumar, W. (1996). The problem of individualism in family-school policies. Sociology of Education, 24.

Lareau, A. P. (1984). SOCIAL BEHAVIOR AND THE FAMILY-SCHOOL RELATIONSHIP IN TWO COMMUNITIES (SOCIAL CLASS). Unpublished Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, United States -- California.

Lynn, B., & Howard, G. (2004). Is the social entrepreneur a new type of leader? Leader to Leader, 2004(34), 43.

Marshall, S. P. (2006). The power to transform : leadership that brings learning and schooling to life (1st ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Porter, M. E. (1985). Competitive advantage : creating and sustaining superior performance. New York; London: Free Press ; Collier Macmillan.

These articles I made mindmaps for:

Benchmarking for Success: Ensuring U.S. Students Receive a World-Class Education. (2008). Washington,DC: National Governors Association.



Silva, E. (2008). Measuring Skills for the 21st Century: Education Sector


Lewin, R. (1992). Complexity : life at the edge of chaos. New York
Toronto: Macmillan Pub. Co. ; Maxwell Macmillan Canada ; Maxwell Macmillan International.


I also did a 23 slide powerpoint presentation for the Cluster meeting on Sat. March 21, 2009 entitled "Math Performance Success: the story of a problem and the solution within a learning organization". This will be my final presentation for the Systems piece of a joint KA in Public Policy and Systems Thinking.

Here is the mindmap that I did for as the basis of the powerpoint:

KA Leadership, 1/19/09

I've been very busy with Lee's KA on Leadership. Also trying to get a meeting to discuss results from my Community College survey. Logistics...

Read several more reports for my Systems paper that came out of the Leadership class. I did a mind map on this one:



Benchmarking for Success: Ensuring U.S. Students Receive a World-Class Education. (2008). Washington,DC: National Governors Association.

I have also been reading articles by Gloria Ladson-Billings which is my assignment to research in the Leadership KA:

Ladson-Billings, G. (1998). Teaching in dangerous times: Culturally relevant approaches to teacher assessment. The Journal of Negro Education, 67(3), 255.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2006). From the Achievement Gap to the Education Debt: Understanding Achievement in U.S. Schools. Educational Researcher, 35(7), 3.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2007). Pushing Past the Achievement Gap: An Essay on the Language of Deficit. The Journal of Negro Education, 76(3), 316.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1997). It doesn't add up: African American students' mathematics achievement. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 28, 697-708.

I watched a few videos online of Ms. Ladson-Billings speaking and also looked up bios on her.

She refers to teacher standards set by the the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. So I downloaded from their website the piece called "What Teachers Should Know and Be Able to Do". I plan to read that also.

Haven't finished the reading, but will do mind maps soon on these.

KA Systems 1/2/09

The survey results are in for the CA community college! Still waiting to speak with administration and deans, but the results are very interesting. Now I can finish my systems theory paper. Started to think about the focus for my paper as I finish the last few readings. Will definately focus on Basic Skills problems in CA colleges and particularly in Math, and probably focus on Algebra and skills leading up to that class. Ended up downloading a lot of government reports this week based on the AERA Journal titled "Special Issue on Foundations for Success: The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel", December 2008.

Capra, F. (1983). The turning point : science, society, and the rising culture. Toronto New York: Bantam Books.



Faulkner, L. R., Benbow, C. P., Ball, D. L., Boykin, A. W., Clements, D. H., Embretson, S., et al. (2--9). The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel: U.S. Department of Education.

Lee, J., Grigg, W. S., & Dion, G. S. (2007). The Nation’s Report Card: Mathematics 2007 (No. NCES 2007494): U.S. Department of Education.

Evan, A., Gray, T., & Olchefske, J. (2006). The Gateway to Student Success in Mathematics and Science: American Institutes for Research.

Baldi, S., Jin, Y., Skemer, M., Green, P. J., & Herget, D. (2007). Highlights from PISA 2006: Performance of U.S. 15-Year-Old Students in Science and Mathematics Literacy in an International Context (No. NCES 2008016): U.S. Department of Education.

Hilton, M. (2008). Skills for Work in the 21st Century: What Does the Research Tell Us? The Academy of Management Perspectives, 22(4), 8.

KA Systems and SID 12/3/08

While I had hoped to spend more time on my 2 week RV vacation on reading (ended up working for 3 days and then we had trouble with the RV battery at night so reading was out), I still got some of what I planned done:

1. Finished reading Olds, L. E. (1992). Metaphors of interrelatedness : toward a systems theory of psychology. Albany: State University of New York Press. See mindmap below. Didn't like the writing, but some of the concepts were good.

2. Listened to: Thinking with Paulo Freire, 4-CD set on education, social change, authority, violence, motivation and liberation (spoken in English). It was extremely good and I particularly enjoyed Disk 2 and 3 (on education). I plan to listen to them again.

Paulo Freire (1921-1997), a Brazilian educator in exile, was a staff consultant with the Office of Education, World Council of Churches, Geneva, at the time of these recordings. Recorded during Paulo Friere's visit to Australia, 1974, for the ACC Commission on Christian Education.

Track Listing:
Disc 1. Christian faith and Marxism - Naive and shrewd Christians - Theology and liberation [75 minutes]
Disc 2. Education for liberation - Words and themes which 'open up' reality - Dehumanisation - generative theme? - Education motivation: role of
leadership - Praxis (action/reflection [76 minutes]
Disc 3. Education :authority and authoritarianism - Dialogue versus 'banking' education - Concientisation (critical awareness) - Violence - Class struggle
and illusions of neutrality [74 minutes]
Disc 4. The Church and the liberation of the oppressed - An adult literacy process [72 minutes]

3. Listened to Hawking, S. W. (1990). A brief history of time : from the big bang to black holes (Bantam trade paper ed.). New York: Bantam Books. It was about 6 hours and difficult material. The really good news is that my husband was with me and listening also (while we were driving to Death Valley) so he could explain - he has a PhD in EE and had to take physics.

4. Watched BLUE EYED by Jane Elliott, the original version and the debriefing. It was about 2 hours of video. Also read the training notes (word) that comes with the disk. Here's the description of the video per the website:

In BLUE-EYED, we join a group of 40 teachers, police, school administrators and social workers in Kansas City - blacks, Hispanics, whites, women and men. The blue-eyed members are subjected to pseudo-scientific explanations of their inferiority, culturally biased IQ tests and blatant discrimination. In just a few hours under Elliott's withering regime, we watch grown professionals become despondent and distracted, stumbling over the simplest commands.

5. Started reading Jantsch, E. (1980). The self-organizing universe : scientific and human implications of the emerging paradigm of evolution. Oxford ; New York: Pergamon Press. Very well written but really difficult material for me (the mathematics). Again, with my husband's help I was understanding the math somewhat, but I fear I need an entire class in college (probably in operations research/math) to really understand this book. I decided to wait on this one since it was taking about 1/2 hour per page.

6. Started reading Capra, F. (1983). The turning point : science, society, and the rising culture. Toronto New York: Bantam Books. Hope to finish this book this weekend.

7. This week, I finished the last changes to my final indepth paper on the Digital Divide for the KA on SID based on the feedback from Yolanda. I'm done. Yeah!

KA SID, KA Higher Ed 10/30/08

This month has been a very busy but productive month. I have finally finished my draft of the InDepth and Applied for SID. I used SPSS II and did many pages of graphs and crosstabs. Yolanda is reviewing my paper now - it's long! 39 pages without the appendices.



I also finished the KA contract for Higher Education with Sheila Gregory it is recorded.

I also finished the KA contract in Interpersonal Communication with Jenny Edwards.

This week I ordered most of the books for the KA in Interpersonal Communication and hope to start reading them in December after I finish my Systems reading.

My survey with Andrew went out and there are preliminary results but we hope to have a few more entries so we are waiting another week.

KA Second Life and Systems 9/15/08

This week I read took notes on books I've been reading for some time:

Tapscott, D., & Williams, A. D. (2006). Wikinomics : how mass collaboration changes everything. New York: Portfolio.





Capra, F., & Lamantia, P. (1997). The web of life : a new scientific understanding of living systems (1st Anchor Books trade paperback ed.). New York, N.Y.: Anchor Books.




I also drafted my InDepth paper mindmap: