Writing, writing, writing...

Thank you so much to everyone who participated in the interviews! Our discussions yielded some very valuable insights and changes to the definitions and essential features that I had come up with in the technical use analysis. I was able to craft answers for all of the remaining questions that I had for each construct and come up with some future directions for research as follows:

1. investigate the connection between grade level and TCK/TPK. The hypothesis is that elementary teachers have more TPK/less TCK while secondary and especially post-secondary teachers have more TCK.

2. conduct case study research to get rich examples of practicing teachers' knowledge in each of these constructs. In my experience, I found that this worked particularly well with a subject who knew nothing about the constructs but a lot about teaching her content!

This past weekend, I was able to write the section on model cases. Thanks to the interviewees, particularly Dr. Rupper, for those. I also found several at Edutopia.org - a great resource for teachers who are interested in technology integration.

I also wrote the section on contrary and related cases where I compared the model cases across constructs. I'm waiting to hear back from my chair on that.

I also discovered what I hope are the borderline cases so that I can get those sent out to the other reviewers and get some consensus on those.

And I also came up with some of the invented cases. It was a busy weekend!

My next steps are to get the borderline cases finalized and sent out to everyone and finish the invented cases section. Then I've got to create the graphic organizer which I'm really struggling with because my brain just doesn't work that way. I may have to find a graphic artist to help me. One of the hardest parts is deciding how much to include - do I go all the way back to TK, CK, and PK - or do I just cover the constructs that I've been doing all my work on - TCK, TPK, and TPACK. Obviously, I'm inclined to do the latter because that's where I have the most to say. But how to organize it????

Anyway, then I need to write Chapter 5 - the conclusion. Haven't really thought about what to say on that yet. I know I need to put in those future directions for research. I should probably look at a few other people's to see what should go in that. I hate writing conclusions... I should probably write a Chapter 6 with at least one article for future publication, too. We'll see how the schedule is looking. I may have to do the articles after the defense. I'll have time then.

So, the schedule from here: finish up Chapter 4 this week and through the weekend. Write and review the first full draft next week, write the second full draft over the weekend, review with committee and editor the following week, then turn it in on June 16th! I'm getting giddy with excitement!!!!