Seminar - Doing More to Accomplish More

This week I was able to meet with the teacher I will be working with on my research project. It was a one hour meeting with the school psychologist, the teacher, and myself. It was difficult to get the project on focus since I knew very little about the program. I had asked the school psychologist for information about the program in the past and she had indicated that she would explain it to me in further detail at some time. It hadn't felt appropriate to ask during the meeting about what the ED program was about, so we mainly focused on the question.

Since I was not presented with the project and the school psychologist was, I let her handle running the questions for most of the meeting. Had I been running the meeting, I'm sure I would have done things differently, but it did not seem like it was my place to do so. The primary goal of the research project was to see whether students with ED were making long-term progress if they had been put in their program. The program had been adapted about 5 years ago and very little data (if any) had been collected about the success of the program. The teacher seemed interested in how their program compared with programs around the nation.

I attempted to redirect the research question towards a multi-level goal instead of one goal by asking the teacher whether what he was asking was "How effective is the program?" He agreed that it was essentially what they wanted to know. Without any knowledge about how the program originated, what their goals were, whether it was research-based, and more, it was difficult to provide input on what should happen next. This was very similar to how our class created the V-Diagram about this research question.

Since this was a preliminary meeting, I am certain that things will become clearer as we go along. The teacher is enthusiastic about having a practicum student to work out some of these questions into a researchable format. I hope that the school psychologist feels the same. I think that if I am given the opportunity to work on this, I will do a successful job. Basically, I am feeling a lack of opportunity and resources to do what I am required to do. When I asked the school psychologist for more information, she informed me that she would give it to me later (for the 2nd or 3rd week in a row). When I asked the teacher those questions, he said he could get them to me and was overrided by the school psychologist who said "I can get those to you," instead. I feel that perhaps there is an aura of "practicum students are not qualified to do or understand _____," or maybe she feels I should not ask basic questions. It's really difficult to determine at this point and I hope things get better. I like the school psychologist, I would just like to be doing more.