Blog Post 3 STEMS2 2-24-16

Blog Post Reflection: How is your personal STEMSS research going?

It has been a challenge making time to make progress with my STEMSS research the past couple of weeks.  

Every year, as a Place-Based Inquiry Project (PBI), we take our students on a huaka'i that we feel will expand our students' learning experience.  Aunty U'i, my co-teacher and I usually bring our PBI Papa Hana No'eau to Camp Mokule'ia on the North Shore of O'ahu for our end of the year huaka'i during the week of March 7-12.  This year we decided we wanted to take our haumāna to Moku o Keawe (Hawai'i Island).  The planning for this huaka'i started from the beginning of the year and included a lot of fundraising since each project did not get any funding from the school.  Our huaka'i would only be funded by the fundraising done within the project.  As a result, Aunty U'i and I planned hana o'eau workshops, sold the products that we made in our project, etc. in order to pay for the lodging, transportation, food, and makana that we needed for our huaka'i to Hawai'i Island.

Now that we got most of the funding for the huaka'i, we are in the process of finalizing our agenda for each day we are on Hawai'i Island.  We are planning to arrive in Hilo Monday morning and drive to Kilauea for protocol.  We will stay in Kilauea Military Camp for the night.  Tuesday morning we plan to visit 'Imiloa in Hilo then drive to Kohala where we will spend the night.  We plan to take out students to different wahi pana, including Mauna a Wakea, and to gather lauhala that they will prepare and bring back to O'ahu.  

The process of fundraising, planning, communicating with makua, making our lesson with learning objectives for the huaka'i, etc. has been a challenge for me, but the process is all STEMSS and I feel I am following the mission and vision of a STEMSS education.  I definitely could not have done all this without Aunty U'i since she is the project lead and has allowed me to learn how to plan a huaka'i such as this one.  

In addition to preparing to leave for our huaka'i on Monday, March 7th, I have been co-planning an Ethnomathematics and STEM Institute PD workshop for the kumu that are a part of cohort 8 this year that will be all day on Saturday, February 27th.  It will be at Ke Kula Kaiapuni 'O Ānuenue in Palolo Valley.  Kaipo is my co-kumu that will be doing a PD workshop on Patters with Ulana Lauhala and I will be doing a PD workshop on Transformation in 'Ohe Kapala Design and Printing. 

With all of this going on on top of teaching, it has been a struggle to make time to sit down and just read articles for my literature review and progress in my Plan B report.  I feel that I have been able to focus my research question so that allows me to know what kind of articles and literature that I should be seeking.  My goal is to make time just to sit down for a few hours and read literature on place-, community-, and culture- based education and student engagement. 

As our semester is coming to a close, I feel the pressure and am determined to "GET ON IT."

Hope everyone is progressing.  Sending aloha to everyone :-)

Blog Post 2 STEMS2 Spring 2016

Blog post 2:

Utilizing your research question conduct a google scholar search to vet your research question. Is there research in this field that can drawn upon and/or has this research question already been answered?
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I was able to conduct a scholar search for some literature that I can draw upon for my research.  I would like to look at place-based instruction and assessment though different content areas and to compare/contrast my 10th grade place-based project with what is being discussed in the literature.  

Share your research/project question and explain how you have arrived at this specific question

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When I did my spotlight, I was able to get the following feedback from the following kumu:

Felicia: How does the project transform the students’ relationship with the ‘aina?

Joe: What did they get out of process.  Pre post of outlook and perspective of land and products/materials. Perspective on these and see how it changed. And maybe 5 years later?

Michelle: Linda Tutuvi Smith Indigenous Kowledge.  Na Mea Hawai’i. Focus on traditional knowledge to support HAWAIIAN traditional knowledge.  Borrow? Manu Myers

Ramsey: Success rate of classes/graduation? Anuenue/Immersion...look at success rate of HKM haumana and compare with other schools? Do they value this? A’o. What would they think is important to teach the next class? What is most important part of what they done>

Hayden: Measure student engagement.  How does exploring hana noeau affect student engagement? DOE seeing how engaged they are is awesome so maybe research their engagement.

Michelle: Teach younger kids as assessment for class. Peer mentors

Tara: How does something transform? Be mindful of my biases.  Find out instead of something I already know.  Humble approach...this is something i want to know...i dont know the answer...i want to see all the perspectives.

I looked at these suggestions and formulated the following research questions that I feel I want to learn from my 'ōpio:

How do haumana perceive STESMS2 content when experienced through a place-based project in the context of traditional knowledge in hana no’eaua?

Blog 1 STEMS2 Spring 2016

As a kumu at Hālau Kū Māna Public Charter School,  I am a co-teacher of Papa Hana No'eau (10th grade Hawaiian Arts Project) where we teach our 'ōpio the following:

• Malama 'aina

• 'Ohe kapala

• I'e kuku/hohoa

• Ka hana kapa

• Protocol

• Ulana lauhala

• Natural dyes

I have had a difficult time trying to decide what my research should be.  I initially wanted to research how students develop kuelana and find empowerment through a class project that they develop as a result of some of the concepts of extinction due to human activity that were explored in The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert.  Every Wednesday I am with my students all day in our Place-Based Inquiry (PBI) project.  The more we have our PBI project, the more I became interested in how our papa hana no'eau project affects my haumāna.  I want to know if "ma ka hana ka 'ike," Hawaiian proverb that says one only knows through doing and experience.  Do my haumāna value the 'ike that they are learning?  Are they developing a sense of kuleana to themselves, their 'ohana, and to the lāhui?  Are their attitudes toward their science and math education changing through the context of a place- and Hawaiian culture-based education?

As a result, I want to change the focus of my Plan B action research project.  The Selection of a Research Design discussed three types of designs; qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods. I would like my project to be a qualitative action research study that analyzes how a place-based education, in the context of hana no'eau, affect how my 10th grade students view their role as a kanaka and the changes in perception and attitude toward STEM content.  I will incorporate open-ended questions (qualitative interview questions) that "...honors an inductive style, a focus on individual meaning, and the importance of rendering the complexity of a situation" (p. 4). 

I will incorporate Ethnography in my research, which according to The Selection of a Research Design, is a "...strategy of inquiry in which the researcher studies an intact cultural group in a natural setting over a prolonged period of time by collecting, primarily, observational and interview data" (p. 13). 

I may want to include a quantitative strategy of a survey research that "...provides a quantitative or numeric description of trends, attitudes, or opinions of a population by studying a sample of that population."  The population sample would be my seventeen tenth grade students where I will utilize "...questionnaires or structured intervenes for data collection, with the intent of generalizing from a sample to a population" (p. 11).  The population that my students are being a sample of is a Native Hawaiian population in a Hawaiian-focused and place-based learning environment. 

According to Review of the Literature, the literature review will share with reader "...the results of other studies that are closely related to the one being undertaken" and it "...relates a study to the larger, ongoing dialogue in the literature, filling in gaps and extending prior studies" (p. 25).  Since my focus of my research has changed, I will need to find more resources that I can use to be part of my literature review.  I will need to find resources on place- and culture-based education and hana no'eau.  Some potential resources will be the following:

• Lā'au Hawai'i: Traditional Hawaiian Uses of Plants by Isabella Aiona Abbbott.
• Kahuna La'au Lapa'au: The Practice of Hawaiian Herbal Medicine by June Gutmanis
• Ka Hana Kapa: The Making of Bark-Cloth in Hawai'i by William T. Brigham
• Ethnomathematics: Link Between Traditions and Modernity by Ubiratan D'Ambrosio
• "Ethnomathematics is imbedded in ethics, focused on the recovery of the cultural dignity of the human being." (D'Ambrosio, p. 1). 

As a result of changing my research focus, there will be a few adjustments to my unit plan.  The unit plan will have my students learning science and mathematics content in the context of hana no'eau.  Their authentic performance task will be their completed hana (i'e kuku, 'ohe kapala, kapa, dyes, lauhala).  They will also need to them plan and implement a hana no'eau workshop where they will visit Lunalilo Home and teach kupuna how to ulana lauhala apolima and/or ka hana kapa.  I will have my haumāna create a reference book/binder that will have a narrative on their experience of their various hana in their perspective, words, and pictures.  I feel that these authentic assessments will show if they have learned their hana and if they can teach others the hana that they learned in order to pass on this 'ike.

I feel it is important to gather data on the effects that PBI instruction has on students in Hawai'i, specifically Native Hawaiian students, because many of these students have not been successful in their previous public school, socially and/or academically.  I would like to research when 'ōpio come to Hālau Kū Māna and come to papa hana no'eau, does their experiences in their PBI projects develop a sense of empowerment and kuleana and does this change their perspectives of their math and/or science contents.