*All citation/references must have the page number according to APA 6th edition
CONCEPT PLAN: ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS
This course is designed to help you plan and build a dissertation concept and is formed along five milestones, each described below. The concept plan describes a possible dissertation agenda. It may be a revision of one you have already created. It is not necessary that you wind up with a finalized version and your ideas may change a bit with time. Using a well-considered concept plan will, however, make learning action research designs and other research approaches and methods a more meaningful process.
You will work through five milestone assignments to complete a concept plan.
1. Early Concept Plan (1 and ? pages)
2. An Annotated Bibliography (2 pages)
3. Review of Action Research and other Research Approaches (1 and ? pages)
4. NOT APPLICABLE
5. Final Draft of the Concept Plan (5 pages)
MILESTONES
MILESTONE 1: EARLY DRAFT OF THE CONCEPT PLAN
Description
Review the concept plan questions and create a bulleted list of responses (1-3 sentence answers) to the questions.
Deliverable 1
1. Submit a concise, well-considered response to each of the guiding questions.
2. Homework help – Discuss and share as needed in the Homework help – Discussion Forum for Early Concept Plan Questions.
CONCEPT PLAN QUESTIONS:
1. What is the issue, topic, or problem you seek to understand or address? Does it exist globally, nationally, and
locally? What evidence from the literature confirms that it is a real problem?
Please identify and define the main issue, first focusing on it generally, drawing from published literature to support your argument.
2. What are your dissertation goals?
Please state your goals for the dissertation. If you aim to do action-oriented research, how will your dissertation goals fit in this context? If you were not going to do action-oriented research, how would you describe the research tradition you’re choosing? How might your dissertation contribute to social/ecological justice and diversity? How will your research make a unique contribution to the growing body of literature?
3. What is/are your research question(s)?
Here, please formulate your goal statements as questions. These are the questions you expect to answer through your research.
4. Who will be the participants in your study?
Here, please describe the participants who will inform your study. Actual names aren’t required, and pseudonyms are encouraged to protect anonymity. If you are also a participant, please describe your role in the research setting.
5 What procedures will you use for collecting data?
Here, please describe the best way you think you can collect data to answer your research question. What research method are you using? Why does this seem to be a good approach?
6 How will you analyze the data?
Here, please say how you will analyze the data you will collect. What step-by-step method(s) will you use for analyzing the data?
7. How are you envisioning you will present the material in a dissertation? Will you use a standard five-chapter dissertation format? Why? Will you do an “alternative dissertation” and if so describe it? (Examples of alternative dissertations, as described in Four Arrows’ text, The Authentic Write my thesis – Dissertation, include fictional narrative; multiple published articles with common themes; collages and other arts-based works; video documentaries, etc.
Expected DLCs
For this course, we will evaluate your progress on all seven of the Educational Leadership and Change DLCs, but for the purpose of this assignment, three DLCs will be especially relevant for you to demonstrate:
• DLC 8: Effective Communication and Scholarly Discourse other than through Scholarly Writing • DLC 6: Self-Directed Learning • DLC 5: Social Justice and Diversity
Assignment Competencies We expect you to answer the seven questions posed above with assistance from your mentor/chair. For each question, you are only required to pose a few sentences to offer an answer. We are not expecting full narrative prose for this assignment. Consider this as a think-tank stage in the development of your concept paper. You will develop the concept plan further in later milestones.
MILESTONE 2: ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPH
Description
Create an annotated bibliography. Each entry in the annotated bibliography should include a brief summary, usually no more than 2 pages, that summarizes the main ideas from an article or book, and explains how the source gives significance to your research question, and describes how the source will enable you to make a unique contribution to the field. For a general example of an annotated bibliography, see the example at Purdue’s Online Writing Lab. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/614/03/
Articles tend to be the most current source for research, and books tend to be excellent sources for information about theories. One convenient way to locate articles is to conduct an electronic library database search using variations of key terms that are associated with your topic. Books, as you know, can be located through many sources.
Deliverable 2
Submit an annotated bibliography that summarizes the main ideas that relate to your dissertation topic. Please choose about five sources that are drawn from articles or books that focus on theories and/or research that relates to your dissertation topic. In the annotations, please describe how the particular theory or study relates to your dissertation interests, supports its significance, and supports the uniqueness of your work. Each of these annotations should be no longer than two pages.
MILESTONE 3: REVIEW OF ACTION RESEARCH AND OTHER RESEARCH APPROACHES
Description
This assignment requires you to explore several action-oriented research traditions, including action research, grounded action, indigenous research methods, and appreciative inquiry. Please post to at least three of the discussion topics below to evaluate how the particular research approach serves to answer your research question, or not.
Deliverable 3
Please contribute to the discussion forums on Moodle. There is a forum topic for each of several action-oriented traditions, including: action research, participatory action research, appreciative inquiry, indigenous research methods, grounded action, teacher research, and auto ethnography. Forum topics are also available for other research traditions that aren’t necessarily action-oriented.
Choose at least three research approaches and offer a minimum of two paragraphs of analysis, evaluating how effectively the methodological tradition serves your research question. If none of the methods are suitable for your research question, please create your own discussion topic, using the name of the research tradition as the topic name.
MILESTONE 4: DRAFT OF INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD (IRB) APPLICATION
NOT APPLICABLE
Description
MILESTONE 5: FINAL DRAFT OF THE CONCEPT PLAN
Description
This course requirement builds from the early draft of the concept plan. It is a developmental step toward producing a full draft of the concept plan.
Deliverable 5
A 5-7 page, double-spaced, concept plan that meets the scholarly writing expectations for timely and appropriate references, grammar, logical, flow, clarity, and critical thinking. APA is recommended but NOT required. Please use the concept plan questions (above) to guide the development of your concept plan
Research/Write my thesis – Dissertation Interests??
Examine Human Resources Departments (HRIS) efficiency in developing countries in the Middle East-central region.
• Professional Growth Experience and job satisfaction of ESL/EFL teachers in the Middle East.
Write my thesis – Dissertation Topic:
Saudi مساعدة التعيين – خدمة كتابة المقالات من قبل كبار الكتاب العرب, Arabia New English Proficiency Requirement Policy: A Case Study of its Impact on the English Language Curriculum of Saudi مساعدة التعيين – خدمة كتابة المقالات من قبل كبار الكتاب العرب, Arabia preparatory Medical Universities and vocational workers in the oil industry.
About ME:
1. Research and manages day-to-day operations of major continuing education programs. Assists with developing program goals. Develops and evaluates, or assists with developing and evaluating, program curriculum, policies, and procedures. Assist with identifying and evaluating opportunities for strategic program growth and enhancement. Collaborates with internal and external professionals to create new programs and enhance existing ones. Oversees program marketing, including developing or overseeing development of publications and Web site. Gathers and analyzes data concerning program performance, and writes reports. Develops and monitors program budgets. Supervises program support staff. May supervise program instructors. May oversee admissions processes, including recruiting and screening applicants. May advise students on program requirements and monitor student performance.
2. Self-Assessment of Doctoral Level Competency
1. The two doctoral level competencies in which I consider myself to be strong.
Appling models, methods, and/or tools to facilitate access and inclusion/blending that involves different voices, beliefs, modalities, and traditions in personal, professional, and/or community activity.
Demonstrating understanding of theory and characteristics of cultural proficiency and use these for self-assessment and continuing development as an individual and within institutions and areas of practice.
For example, as a Human Resource Coordinator, I monitor teachers’ performances in job development and provide resources to enable them to reflect the department positively.
2. The two doctoral level competencies in which I feel that I need and/or want to increase my skills/knowledge.
I want to improve my skill on providing evidence of reflection on one’s own identity development and critique of biases, stereotypes, and assumptions in relationship to other individuals and groups, with affective and cognitive awareness.
I want to improve my skill to shows evidence of interacting and working in a manner that respects and includes different beliefs, attitudes, behaviors and customs representing multiple dimensions of difference as found locally, nationally, and globally (gender, sexual orientation, ability, language, class, race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, age, and other differences).
For example, I work in the Middle East with مساعدة التعيين – خدمة كتابة المقالات من قبل كبار الكتاب العرب, Arabia students that are taught English by westerners. Learning how research and report finding presented to Board Members can advance my educational leadership career in Asia.
CV
1. Personal, Academic, and Professional Goals
This learning plan will introduce me; describe why I want to be in a leadership role in the education field and my personal philosophy of teaching education.
For the past 5 years I have been an educational consultant for the State of Delaware. The classrooms and audiences I serve are students, parents, school administration and government agencies.
Since 1993, I have been active in the Philadelphia School district in the area of an educational consultant. Grand Hank Production incorporated developed a motivational program to increase the interest of learning science, math and English. The most popular program was a music CD that taught the student the eight parts of speech and the CD reached over 500,000 students 5-12 grades. My past experience of helping faculty, students and teachers at risk, or even of training in a realistic manner to be ready to give this help, tends to change the balance of power in the overall learning process in the educational system.
The reasons I want a doctoral in education and leadership is to improve and implement my leadership skills. The reward of motivating adults and youth’s inner life with the result that is compassion can become the master motive. There are three ways of trying to win commitment to learning from adults and youths. There is persuasion. There is compulsion and there is attraction. I had preached at them; that was a hook without a worm. Now I say “you must be a performing leader to manage others and willing to volunteer your ability to motivate others.
Most motivation theorists assume that motivation is involved in the performance of all learned responses; that is, a learned behavior will not occur unless it is energized. The major question among psychologists, in general, is whether motivation is a primary or secondary influence on behavior. That is, are changes in behavior better explained by principles of environmental/ecological influences, perception, memory, cognitive development, emotion, explanatory style, or personality or are concepts unique to motivation more pertinent.
For example, we know that people respond to increasingly complex or novel events (or stimuli) in the environment up to a point and then responses decrease. This inverted-U-shaped curve of behavior is well known and widely acknowledged. However, the major issue is one of explaining this phenomenon. Is this a conditioning (is the individual behaving because of past classical or operant conditioning), a motivational process (from an internal state of arousal), or is there some better explanation?
I regard it as the foremost task of education to insure the survival of these qualities: an enterprising curiosity, an undefeatable spirit, tenacity in pursuit, readiness for sensible self- denial, and above all, compassion. Without self-discovery, a person may still have self -confidence, but it is a self -confidence built on ignorance and it melts in the face of heavy burdens. Self discovery is the end product of a great challenge mastered, when the mind commands the body to do the seemingly impossible, when courage and strength are summoned to extraordinary limits for the sake of something outside the self–a principle, an onerous task, another human life.
Education must enable young people to effect what they have recognized to be right, despite hardships, despite dangers, despite inner skepticism, despite boredom, and despite mockery from the world.
Related Skills
ESL Teacher/HR Coordinator, Middle East Region June 2012 to Present
• Solid working experience with Adult Education
• Profound knowledge of the structure and content of the English language
• Ability to teach English and civics to ESL learners of all levels
• Ability to use data to inform instruction for decision-making related to student achievement
• Ability to monitor attendance and keep records of student progress
Career History
Instructor/Substitute Teacher, State of Delaware 2009 June to Present
Caesar Rodney School District
• Ensured adult students were engaged through activities and technology.
• Develop and teach and lesson plans for English, Science and Math classrooms, Presented academic content through a variety of instructional strategies. Implemented classroom procedures.
Attended staff development opportunities in the area of ESL.
Trainer Instructor, Department of Defense June 2006 to June 2009 Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania
• Instructed enlisted on automated logistic operations in the Middle East and North Africa regions.
• Organized workshops, seminars, cross-institutional networks, and training programs.
• Coordinated, planned and prepared staff in Business and Technical English
Education Consultant, Grand Hank ESL/ERL Program September 2000 to June 2006
Philadelphia School District
• Created interactive educational activities in the classroom for ESL adults.
• Instructed GED courses for ESL Adults to improve English, Math and Science skills.
• Taught college prep courses in writing
2. Self-Assessment of Doctoral Level Competencies (DLCs) –
• Clear understanding of the research process acquired through both practical and academic experience.
• Demonstrated quantitative/qualitative analysis skills
• Strong knowledge of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS)
• Excellent writing skills
• Excellent attention to detail
• Strong ability to work independently
• Ability to develop and maintain positive relationships with colleagues and clients both internal and external
• Ability to effectively utilize Microsoft Office software
