More in Focus
I think I’ve settled at last, found the fruit of my study. After days of flip-flopping again, soul searching about what I really care about spending the next three years understanding, I’ve made a decision to focus on specific programs that target integration for newcomers to Spanish schools, and drop the citizenship education focus. This is the opposite of where I thought I’d end up, but I think it makes sense. It allows me to study the broad questions that have been driving my work since I started graduate school. And it avoids the problem of veering too far from issues of immigration, cultural integration, and school interactions. As much as the citizenship education part would be interesting, it takes me too far away from the questions I care the most about. Questions like:
- How do educators, integration programs define integration in Catalonia and Madrid?
- What is taught in these programs?
- What interactions are there between teachers of newcomer programs and mainstream classes?
- How about interactions between students in these programs and the rest of the school?
The next steps are to re-write my study design, tweak the theoretical framing, and start making calls for data collection. (That is, if I don’t flip-flop once again. Hmmm, I hope not!)
October 13th, 2009 at 10:21 am
That sounds right. It seems to me like integration issues have been a consistent area of interest for you. Integration also seems like the best lens through which to view questions of immigration, classroom content, and student/student and student/teacher interaction. Know you’re not the only one still struggling to settle in mid-semester 🙂 Hope to talk to you guys soon.
xo