Revised Research Interests

I’m really enjoying my doctorate program. It still will take me awhile to get to post-dissertation, but I am grateful for the program I chose. All of the classes are one-on-one, and each is more preparation for the dissertation. I had been focussing on music and literacy, and I don’t think that focus will change.

Today after attending a 3-day NAfME Northwest conference, I began to think a bit more about my interest. Early childhood education is important to me, but I think it would be a better idea to look at children on the upper level of early childhood education. Standardized testing for reading is done to identify dyslexic students in 3rd grade, and 3rd grade is when children “stop learning to read and start reading to learn” The music portion is one I will have to put some more research in. I discovered the one tool I wanted to use in my dissertation – Interactive Metronome – is not one that was familiar to the music teachers at this conference. Instead I heard about Playbook and Quaver as well as some administrative tools.

So, my next steps are to verify that students are tested for dyslexia at 3rd grade AND discover which music programs are using different music curricula. I also need to start researching these two software sources and verify their reliability/validity for younger students.

I’m still very hopeful about my research!