Timeline for my research

The timeline for my research is starting to pan out. My goal for this year is to complete the following in order:

Build community of practitioners – language teachers who are using drama techniques in their adult language learning classrooms. This will be done by inviting practitioners to a professional development night hosted at the Centre for English Teaching. This will be to present a 45 minute workshop on drama methodologies in language learning in preparation for my presentation at the CamTESOL conference end of February. The tentative date will be Wednesday 10 Feb at 6pm. I hope to determine who is interested in participating in research next year, but also to discover what people are actually doing in their classrooms. Ideally I need three to five practitioners who will be able to help develop the toolkit, apply it during their classes and then work with me on re-developing it.

CamTESOL conference 2011 – I will present a workshop on drama techniques in the language learning classroom. This will explore specifically the open end of the continuum of drama activities – specifically exploring drama process. This needs more work, as I only have 45 minutes here and need to combine both theory and practice in the workshop. I hope to connect with people using drama throughout Australasia and look forward to attending workshops and research about the area of applied drama process.

Thesis Proposal and Ethics Approval – the last half of 2011 will be finalising my proposal (15,000 words) and getting ethics approval.

Data Collection – for a concentrated period somewhere in 2012. I was advised that this period should be short and intense and also be a time I take off at work. Ideally this could be an extended workshop, video and analysis, then extended workshop and redesign, then video and analysis.

Data Analysis and Thesis writing – most of the end of 2012 and then 2013. It was also recommended that I take time off for final writing of the thesis – 70,000 words.

Given these parameters, my schedule is starting to look like this:

Thesis Proposal Development

9 Feb 2011 – professional development workshop to build community

27 Feb 2011 – CamTESOL

30 June 2011 – Draft Proposal (requires 600 words per week from 1 March 2011).

30 Sep 2011 – Final Proposal + Ethics Approval

Data Collection

15 – 30 January 2012 – Extended workshop to drama teachers

February – March 2012 – Observation of classes and test phase to video and identify both physicality of aesthetic moment and discourse of student teacher interaction.

Phase one observation goals

·         Student and teacher interviews and surveys to determine when heightened moments actually occurred (by collective agreement on these moments – self analysis of video)

·         Video analysis of moments to document first recognition of physicality of moment, analyse discourse during the moment, and determine triggers or lead up to moment.

Easter 2012 – Extended workshop and redesign

This would be design based research and involve feedback to teachers about the observation of phase one and involvement in redesigning the toolkit to include specific activities conducive to creating the aesthetic moment.

April – May 2012 – Observation of classes and application phase. Use of videos to record same teachers with different sets of students using redesigned toolkit but same drama process to create the aesthetic moments.

Phase two observation goals

·         Record moments and confirm first phase analysis of triggers and indicators of aesthetic experience.

·         Use of student and teacher surveys to analyse connectedness.

June 2012 – Final workshop

Workshop with teacher participants to redesign toolkit and plan for future developments.