The Next Step

My EdD program sends out the course materials for each class. So, even though I just finished up the first course on Sunday, the next set of stuff was waiting for me yesterday. I have nine interesting looking books:

• Awakening the Sleeping Giant: Helping Teachers Develop as Leaders "The classic on teacher leadership, updated and enriched for the new century!" How can I resist with a tag like that associated with it? Catchy title, too.
• Action Research: A Guide for the Teacher Researcher Unfortunately, the only blurb on the back is a plug for the associated website, but it looks like this could be a good source for planning and data collection.
• Research Methods in Educational Leadership and Management This book claims it's "core reading" and is "accessible for the beginning researcher while at the same time providing appropriate reading for students and practitioners with some research experience."
• The Reflective Educator's Guide to Classroom Research "Authentic and practical, this book demystifies classroom research without making inquiry overly simplistic. Loaded with examples from actual inquiries and drawn from experience working with hundreds of teacher researchers, the authors' advice is refreshingly jargon free and clearly explained."
• The Keys to Effective Schools I'm already prejudiced against this one as it's published by the NEA. Doesn't the union always think it has all of the answers?
• Teacher Research for Better Schools "In these authors' hands we have, at last, a book that goes byond teacher research as a professional development tool and shows us how teachers can both produce knowledge as well as consume it." Tasty.
• Learning to Question, Questioning to Learn There's a big medallion on the back cover with "Construct Meaningful Learning Experiences!" printed on it. Gosh, I hadn't realized such a thing might be possible. Not to mention that this one is written by the Dean of the program. Guess I'd better pay attention as long as she's getting her kickback.
• Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches This one won't be light reading. The first page I opened to had a text box entitled "Transformative-Emancipatory Questions for Mixed Methods Researchers Throughout the Research Process." Don't drink and read, kids.
• What Works in Schools: Translating Research into Action I do like Marzano's stuff and have read this one.

I'm looking forward to delving into this stack and thinking about how to apply it to elementary science in my district. I'm glad that I'll have time this summer to read and think about things and am hopeful that this next course will provide a lot of good background knowledge.

Time to get crackin' the books...