Inquiry Ideas

Inquiry Ideas

I have a few ideas at this point: conferencing, I-Search essays, and classroom climate. I feel like I could easily research I-Search without spending three weeks on this, and I think classroom climate is something that I will work on for my gender studies course.  I think that conferencing will be the focus of my three week long inquiry.

Where does my idea come from?
When I was a teacher at Eastern, I can confidently say that the majority of instructors conferenced with students 3-4 times per semester.  We would cancel class and host conferences for two weeks.  Each teacher would meet individually with each student and provide feedback on a particular essay.  Teacher evaluations would generally cite these conferences as the most beneficial element of the course.

Two years ago, now at Uni, I tried to incorporate conferences into my curriculum.  Because of time, space, and student work, I feel like these conferences were an utter fail.  They were time consuming and just plain difficult to accomplish.

What questions do I have?
Given time constraints, do I have to read the essays before hand in order to give constructive feedback?  Sort the students based off these needs?  Do I even read the essays for the conferences?  Do I conference with multiple students?  How does that affect the feedback that I give?  Will it make students uncomfortable because it could potentially show weaknesses?  Will it be just as useful?  Do I have them prepare questions ahead of time?

What is your goal?
My goal is to develop a conferencing method that is equitable, conscientious, efficient, and useful.