Field School Learning Outcomes
Participants in a field school will…
- …develop and practice fundamental underlying skills and competencies in doing research, including “yes, and”, generative writing, collaboration skills, and other topics as related to specific workshops
- …develop and make significant progress in planning their own research projects
- …increase their self-efficacy in doing education research (and communicating research in English, as appropriate).
Field School Structure and Coverage
A typical PEER field school takes participants through a development arc. We start with developing research questions and workshop norms and progress through modules on research process and research ethics. By midweek, participants have done substantial writing and development on their own projects, and we delve into methodological issues of collecting, reducing, and analyzing data from the perspective of noticing ideas (e.g. in classroom video, student free responses, or interviews) and regularizing them (e.g. through generative coding). Near the end of the field school, we give deep collaborative feedback to participants through generative presentations of their own projects, and help them plan explicitly for the next six months of research and development work.
PEER field schools are responsive to the needs of participants. In addition to the typical coverage outlined above, we also have developed additional modules to enrich their learning and meet their professional development needs. Additional modules include
- Research communication: talking to skeptical colleagues about your research; making beautiful posters; conducting literature reviews and situating your work in a scholarly conversation; how, when, and where to publish your work.
- Research methods: autoethnography; conducting interviews; analyzing classroom data; fundamentals of descriptive statistics; getting started in developing a survey; design-based research projects
- Research collaboration: building robust collaborations; advising undergraduates in research projects
- Research life: personal stories around becoming a researcher, balancing research and other professional activities, and balancing professional activities with parenting and being a full human.
Some field schools are longer or shorter. Each field school is tuned to the needs of the participants, who also receive materials related to each module such as slides, handouts, exercises, and readings.
I want to host a field school.
Fabulous! Contact the directors to learn about how.
I want to join a field school.
Exciting! Check out upcoming field schools.