A glimpse of NIE
What’s strugglingSCHOLAR?
It’s my blog as I begin my adventures in academic research. I’m new in this world, being a practitioner for most of my life. I just thought it might be helpful and even fun to document my struggles and woes as I work hard to evolve into some kind of scholar–or more appropriately in my case what Bentz calls a scholarly practitioner.
I’m submitting a research proposal this Monday–cramming as usual. I could whine about how difficult it is to juggle work and studies–or how late I got just the right supervisor, but I just don’t have time for that. Besides, the topic is really interesting: how teachers view knowing even unconsciously (in a word, epistemology) and how these beliefs impact on their teaching.
It’s actually amazing when I think about it. As a teacher educator, I’ve never paid much attention to the teachers’ epistemological beliefs. It was all about techniques and frameworks. Now they tell me that these neglected attributes make a difference in one’s teaching practice. To complicate things, since I work in a religious school, one intriguing question that has popped up is: Does religious belief impede epistemological development? Landmine alert!
These are preliminary, scattered thoughts. I hope that as I blog about my experiences, questions–and woes–as a novice researcher, these thoughts will take shape. Well, they had better! 🙂