So I had this most fabulous meeting with my Chair and another member of my committee to talk about a way to narrow my focus on my dissertation proposal and to identify a pathway that made sense. He helped us to identify three lenses. Looking at a model of a professional learning community could use a critical relevant evaluation lens. This is a program evaluation lens that I could use that looks at a program to look for gaps in cultural relevancy. I really liked this advice because it provided the right structure I needed to see the elements that I could recognize as being culturally relevant in a program or model in this case that is sterile. You see the language in just about anything to do in education that is supposed to be used across schools has to be generic enough in order for it to be useful. In the case of a professional learning community there is a need to be almost prescriptive so that school leaders and teachers across the nation could apply its principles and get the sense of some hand holding. But there is a concern that too many schools are applying the principles without sensitivities to the students at the PLCs initial stages because too many schools are just trying to learn how to become a learning community.
The dilemma...the students are not the focus because teachers are too busy learning how to become a learning community and complete the products that are required of them. Now this is my assumption and there in lies the problem. So using the cultural relevancy evaluation instrument would assist in looking at PLCs at the onset for this need.
Another dilemma....I cannot find the darn evaluation. So as a novice researcher trying to get my proposal up and running this is a serious inadequacy and I just cannot go running to my Chair every time. And time is always the issue. So I will have to solve this problem. Anxiety is starting to mound.
The next lens my committee member said to use was a subset of Critical Race Theory (CRT) on colorblindness. As I am going through all of my articles I can see that I will need to beef this up. But this advice is right on the money but a task that I knew had to wait for a couple of days. So a spent some time setting up the proposal chapters up and what I wanted to write in each section or at least set aside the sections for me to fill in during my designated writing time.
The next lens was on leaders who really understood the need for cultural relevancy and recognized colorblindness how would they move this knowledge forward among their teachers. He recommended I look at a dissertation for the methodology of an instrumental case study. I did. As I read over the dissertation I was thinking this is good. I can see where this could be a good way to go. And continued reading. Anxiety started to mount. A survey? Interviews? Observations? Stats? This was a mixed-methods dissertation. I could see that it made sense to do a case study on a PLC but I wasn't prepare to go to this extent. So needless to say the nightmares are back and my anxiety is high. This is stressful not because I don't want to do this but because it is going another direction I wasn't planning to do. So now I wonder if I have too. This is how I resist when I don't think it's the right way.
The dilemma is whether or not I have to go this way. If so, I will...... But I will need to get some feedback as to whether it really is because I am really sick to my stomach. Why, I think deep down inside it is really because I cannot afford to and this is a deep sense of inequity that I am feeling personally. The irony is that I might have to give up my studies because I could not afford to keep paying tuition. And I am fighting this like I have for the last several years. But I don't know that I have it in me any more. So the stress is keep going or to quit and regret this decision for the rest of my life. My husband and I have to work through the finances every single semester. But I just don't know.
I just wanted to do a study on PLC discourse. Isn't this still possible?
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