When considering the audience for my capstone, I feel conflicted. On the one hand, I know I want to build a resource for teachers. I want to champion a classroom structure and culture and teachers are the ones who would use the product. However, if a student stumbled onto my capstone, I would hope that sections of it could still be useful to them. That is kind of a "win more" scenario for me though. Other educators, specialists, and administrators are my primary target.
Even though I know which group of the "big three" I'm aiming at, there is still a lot to consider. Administrators would probably want to see some data about improved student learning and performance about assessments. Academic Specialists and other teacher leaders want training resources. They want methods to deliver my content and help teachers get off the ground. Probably rubrics, checklists, exemplar videos and the like. Teachers probably want something different. Lesson plans, ready to implement classroom activities, and easy to use resources for tracking in their classrooms. That is a lot of different needs to consider within my primary audience of "Educators." I have some plans for addressing each of them with different pages of the website, but I might be better off trying to really focus in on things. So, if no one else uses my resource, I want teachers to use it. They are the ones in the rooms with the students, where the impact I want to happen is. I find myself with a slight dilemma. Wouldn't the teachers who come to my website already know things about growth mindsets, agency, and math classrooms? So, what do they need? Classroom resources? Is my product really serving a purpose if it is just giving lesson plans to teachers already on my side? I feel like my product should try to compel and convince educators to make a change in their room. That would imply they had classrooms that were not yet "agency-infused." So, I need to build for teachers with little to no experience with growth mindsets and choice in a math classroom. Space is limited though, so I don't want to cover unnecessary basics. I'm sure these questions will evaporate as they go through the process but it is food for thought now. What level of experience do I expect from my audience? How wide should I cast my net? Is it worth pages on my website to try to appeal to admins and specialists as well? I don't have solid answers for all those yet, but I look forward to working it out in the practicals.
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These are interesting questions, and ones we seem to all be struggling with right now. Who is the right audience? I noticed that the three samples we looked at basically had fellow educators at the heart of their projects, and it seems only natural that a course devoted to building innovative educators, would involve projects to help other educators become innovate educators. As to the question of whether or not educators would be aware of growth mindset and the like, I believe that they probably are. However, reading or watching videos about growth mindset is one thing, seeing how it can be applied in a classroom day to day, is quite another. Your real stories and impactful examples might persuade a teacher who only has an academic understanding of growth mindset and its power, to consider implementing something similar to what you did. Teachers listen to other teachers.
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Nai Saelee
9/26/2017 09:14:24 pm
Patrick, you and I are on the same page. My audience started out with students but I later realized that I should broaden my audience to include teachers so that my research could have a bigger and wider effect. As you said, I can still structure my capstone in a way that would largely benefit educators but still be of value to any students who may stumble upon it. I think my resources/tools page will be the most beneficial for students. I think my PrBL units and other materials will be of some value to teachers since you know how we as math teachers struggle to create cognitively complex tasks that are authentic and align with our standards.
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Nancy
9/26/2017 09:39:07 pm
Patrick,
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