By the way, your proposal about evidence-based assessment, I think, is very interesting.  


What is the purpose of my research?

My purpose should be a big one not a small one.  Small purpose limit my thinking.  So my purpose is not to improve specfic performance or to teacher certain skills, but to help and support people to be more smart.  One of the purpose is critical thinking. 

See this link read more critical thinking. But a short citation is here first:

"Everyone thinks; it is our nature to do so. But much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed, or downright prejudiced. Yet the quality of our life and that of what we produce, make,or build depends precisely on the quality of our thought. Shoddy thinking is costly, both in money and in quality of life. Excellence in thought, however, must be systematically cultivated." 

http://www.criticalthinking.org/aboutCT/ourConceptCT.shtml

several citations from the link:

http://www.ncpublicschools.org/pbl/pblreflect.htm

Reflection is what allows us to learn from our experiences: it is an assessment of where we have been and where we want to go next.
~ Kenneth Wolf

Understanding why an activity or practice was productive or nonproductive in the classroom is a key element in the progression from novice to master teacher.

Becoming a reflective practitioner requires time, practice, and an environment supportive to the development and organization of the reflection process. This is a highly individualized process and the licensure candidate should find the structure and method of reflection that best suits him or her.

I write this journal helping me recall how many questions I have for Design-based Research so far.

1. (P15.) Design Experiments were developed as a way to carry out formative research to test and refine educational designs based on principles derived from prior research.

Questions:  What is the difference between DBR and formative research/evaluation?

2. (p15). In the 1990s there has been a movement to develop a new methodology for carrying out studies of educational interventions under the labels" Design Experiments" or "Design Research"...

Questions: What is the environment at that time?  Why the environment trigger the new development of Design Research?  What is context for the emerge of DBR?

3.(p18) The design is constantly revised based on experience, until all the bugs are worked out.

Questions: Amazing. Hope I still survive when all the bugs are worked out. Is it too ideal?

4.(p.19) Design research should always have the dual goals of refining both theory and practice

Questions:  It seems true that Design Research is so powerful, is the panacea. If DBR is the answer, then what is the question?

5. (p19) Design researchers try to optimize as much of the design as possible and to observe carefully how the different elements are working out.... when some aspect of the design is not working, the design team,.. should consider different options to improve the design practice, and institute design changes and frequently as necessary.

Questions: What is the methodology to optimize, and observe carefully? How to deal with pragmatic issue if frequent change?

6. (p21) Why Design Research? (p.21)

Design experiments bring together two critical pieces in order to guide us to better educational refinement: a design focus and assessment of critical design elements. Ethnography provides qualitative methods for looking carefully at how a design plays out in practice, and how social and contextual variables interact with cognitive variables. Large-scale studies provide quantitative methods for evaluating the effects of independent variables on the dependent variables. Design experiments are contextualized in educational settings, but with a focus on generalizing from those settings to guide the design process. They fill a niche in the array of experimental methods that is needed to improve educational practices.

Questions: It is clear to know what ethnography and large-scale studies bring to us. But I have much trouble to grasp the point what DBR will bring to us. One reason I guess is the paragraph is so short that it did not explain why design research in detail. I am still not sure why design research

7 (p33) Our approach to design research requires much more effort than any one human can carry out.

Questions:  Am I still a human?

My research interest is about self assessment and learning. I care about how self assessment can help people to develop themselves and be a successful lifelong learner.

Specially, I will start to examine self assessment using EBDS (developed by LPSL) in preserivce teachers. I am wondering how video technology can effectively help preservice teacher to self assess themselves and make progress step by step.

There are many evidence preservice teachers may use for assessing themselves. Some of them are student feedback, student score, artifacts, peer and mentor teacher feedback, self feeling. Video technology is good at capturing the whole live classroom teaching, but it can not cover all the evidences. In addition, video capture is good at providing rich data but it can not tell one what works or doesn't work in his practice. One needs to find evidence by himself. Technology can provide support at this point. Currently, the VAT system (developed by LPSL) is using Lens (Instruments for assessment) to guide preservice teacher to find right evidence to assess his own teaching. I am wondering how the lens work.

This semester, I am going to conduct an initial study on the influences of video in preservice teacher. Fortunately, I do not need to apply IRB approval since the project (directed by LPSL) just got the approval of IRB.

Here is my brief description of research procedure:

1. Pre-interview
2. Informal interview, observation
3. Self assess teaching practice, mentor teacher assess the same teaching practice both at the beginning and at the end of the program. And then compare the results to see if there is some change.
4. Post-interview.

Currently, the interview protocol is under developing. I should clarify my participants this week.

More information later...