Critique of Curtis Elementary School Case Study

1. Area of focus:  Does not define what type or the subject of “performance” that the researchers are interested in.    The teacher, Jonathan, states that the area of focus will “describe the effect of an ‘altered curriculum” on student achievement in reading.”  How will “altered curriculum” be measured?  These should be spelled out in the original plan, or modified and quantifies throughout the research.

2. Research questions:  What is the effect of “altered curriculum” on student performance?   This research question should be better defined.  What student performance is being measure?  What types of altered curriculum are being considered?

3. Locus of control:  Jonathan defines his research as ocurring on his own students.  This is within his locus of control.

4. Data collection:  The teacher originally declares three methods data collection:  comprehension/recall activities, cloze procedures in reading passages, and reading and retelling of specified passages.  However, he ends up using data collected from student journals and anecdotal observations, as he indicated in his “Data Collection Ideas”.  These other sources should have been formally declared and quantified if he intended to use them.

5. Ethics:  No mention of informed consent from parents or students or IRB.  No mention of how the data will be used.  The measures of anonymity or confidentiality are not stated. The intended audience is not declared.  Information is not provided regarding how data about the participants will be disseminated.

6. Reflective stance: 

Jonathan observed and reflected.  He seemed to use these reflections as a way to make sense of his observations.  He seems willing and eager to use what he is learning to make positive changes to his teaching.

7. Action:   The teacher clearly takes action in his classroom as a result of the research.  He makes positive changes that support student achievement and growth.

8. Action-data connection:   Many of the proposed actions involve vocabulary development.  However, it seemed that the basis for the research was to try to improve student scores on state reading comprehension tests.  In particular, the teacher wanted to improve how students constructed meaning from a reading.  Due to the vague nature of the research question, the teacher researcher wandered from his original query.  He does propose action based on positive correlations found during his research but the actions suggested are primarily vocabulary comprehension and development.