Teaching and Assesssing

When beginning the reading for this week, I was immediately struck by one of the biggest mistakes I made as an English teacher after seeing the following on page 142, "our failure to teach research as a recursive process may be, then, one decisive, if not the most decisive, element in unsuccessful literacy instruction" (Stripling & Hughes-Hassell, 2003, p. 142). As an English teacher I taught research the way my department chair instructed, or based on how the other teachers doing the same project taught. I also do not remember learning how to teach the research process when in my English education courses. We focused on literature and writing about literature, and once I started teaching, the idea of teaching research seemed very daunting to me. I remembered how I felt in high school doing research papers using the notecards and always feeling like I didn't have enough time. I didn't want to make my students feel this way, but I did. I made understanding research even more difficult becuase I did teach it in a linear fashion. Even as I taught it this way, I knew that I was leaving out a very important step in the research process. Much of the time, I felt I had to teach it in a linear way because it seemed we didn't have the time for students to constantly be going back and redoing certain parts of their research. If I did that, I'd have students all at different points in the research assignment. The thought of that freaked me out, because I was picturing some kids working very hard, going back and reworking areas that needed it. Then I pictured the kids that were able to zip right through, and I'd have to think of something for them to do without them getting too far ahead of the rest of the class.

Now I see that those fears should not have driven me to create research projects that were completed without going back to possibly find different information or look at a different topic. I also didn't have much help from the librarian during this process, and if the librarian, who is trained in teaching research, would have helped it probably would have gone much smoother.

I also agreed with the Kuhlthau model because it acknowledges that feelings of uncertainty and anxiety at the beginning of research are normal. Students should know that it is normal to feel that way, and all researchers feel that way during points during the research process. I also liked the worksheets in chapter seven. They would serve as helpful for the students and also as a means of assessing students throughout the research process.