Conference opens conversation about teaching qualitative research methodology

The College of Education welcomed qualitative research scholars and students from near and far to Carmichael Hall in October. The “Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies to Critique and Reimagine Teaching Qualitative Research” conference took place Oct. 5-7 and opened a professional dialogue about qualitative methodology and allowed attendants to share effective pedagogical research strategies with one another.

The three-day event was organized by Dr. Stephanie Anne Shelton and Dr. Kelly Guyotte, principal investigators of the grant behind the conference and associate professors of qualitative research, with assistance from Carlson Coogler and April Jones, both doctoral students in the UA Qualitative Research program.

“Relative to social justice, (Dr. Guyotte) and I talked about how there is very little explicit discussion of how to teach people to do research,” Dr. Shelton said. “… This lack of attention to pedagogy exacerbates inequity, because if you’re not equipping people to know how to teach research then you are not equipping students to learn how to do research well.”

The Spencer Foundation, known for supporting and investing in research that contribute to the improvement of education and help transform lives, provided funding for the grant, which focuses exclusively on qualitative research.

The foundation’s small research grants are highly competitive, and though this area of research is crucial, it is not often that grants solely devoted to it receive funding, Shelton said. So, when someone from the Spencer Foundation called to inform her of the good news, she and Guyotte were thrilled.

“This was an opportunity to bring our methodological passions into a conversation with our teaching passions and to start a discussion across the two,” Dr. Guyotte said.

Twelve qualitative research professors were invited to the conference, along with their students of choice, and UA graduate students studying educational research with a concentration in qualitative research were in attendance as well. Participants engaged in “a meeting of the minds” and were able to walk away with new insight as to how research methodology should be taught.

The conference included a panel that allowed qualitative research students to express the ways in which they have experienced culturally sustaining pedagogy and informing the attending professors as to where they believe there may be gaps or shortcomings.

“Research is a huge part of a higher education, especially if you decide that you are going into academia or into organization or nonprofit agency work. The coin of the realm is research, and the way you do research is based on how you are taught to do research,” Shelton said. “So, that is part of what this grant lets us do – to really spotlight and examine what teaching research looks like and what the implications are for that.”

Guyotte stressed the importance of having these pedagogical discussions that don’t often occur in the field of qualitative research and in higher education.

“Just being able to have those conversations, to share practices, ideas, and struggles – that is such a generative space that we are creating,” she said. “We’re creating opportunities for collaborations and to learn from one another, to become better at what we do. All of that is such an exciting aspect of this project.”

To learn more about the College of Education's Qualitative Research Certificate Program, please visit qualresearch.ua.edu.

Grad teaching, research assistant analyzing influence of physical activity on recovery of clinical populations and older adults

Through his work, Israel Adandom aims to promote and improve the health of clinical populations and older adults. With nine years of experience as a clinical physical therapist, he is passionate about using physical activity to positively influence individuals in health and disease.

Adandom is a doctoral student as well as graduate teaching and research assistant in the UA Department of Kinesiology, and his background fuels an interest in analyzing how physical activity and exercise can affect patient recovery, particularly in sedentary and inactive individuals across life course following clinical intervention.

“People tend to think that what we do during early and mid-adult life course is the most important,” he said, “however we now have an increase in the population of older adults because of medical advances.”

Physical inactivity can lead to additional health problems for post-surgery patients, he said. For example, once a patient is out of surgery, be it a hip arthroscopy or another procedure, has completed physical therapy, and been discharged from the hospital, they might fall back into pre-intervention old habits instead of following instructions to be more active.

This raises concern, Adandom said, because the four leading causes of global deaths can be affected by physical activity, and 72% of global deaths can be caused by these four factors.

“The practice has been getting a patient to undergo the surgery, subsequently getting them through physical therapy to recover, but clinicians are not trying to track (patients’ activity post-recovery). We know that following surgery, physical activity levels decrease. But has anything been done about it? That part hasn’t really been looked at until more recently.”

When a doctor advises someone to exercise, their first thought will typically be going to be the gym or related activities, which could be inaccessible or intimidating for some.

Adandom described an interaction with a patient where he advised the man to be more active but recommended, he take walks with his wife. Research has proven this can be crucial since social and emotional factors often can affect consistency with physical activity. The man perked up at the suggestion, and once the couple started walking together, not only did their health improve, but so did their relationship.

“It makes me happy when information works. Then people are going to live better lives and be happier,” he said.

New advances in technology make it easier to measure a person’s physical activity throughout the day, even while doing activities they may not consider exercise, like moving around their house or walking through a grocery store. Wearable fitness devices, such as a Fitbit or an Apple Watch, can provide a more precise record of activity and how often a person engages in that activity. This data may allow healthcare professionals to better track a patient’s health and well-being with, Adandom said.

“Most people walk 110-115 steps per minute, so we can say, ‘Maintain 120+ steps per minute for 30 minutes, and then you can move around the way you want throughout the day,’” he said. “Most people would meet this recommendation since walking captures what you prefer to do and what you must do for you to get around throughout the day in most cases.”

Through their research at the Cardiovascular Health and Physical Activity Lab (CHAPAL), Adandom and his supervisor Dr. Elroy Aguiar are analyzing trends and investigating ways in which apparently healthy and post-surgery patients can easily meet physical activity expectations from their healthcare professionals. This data will show how best to prescribe physical activity to affect specific health domains.

In addition to studying how wearable technology data on physical activity and exercise can interact with apparently healthy and post-surgery individuals, Adandom's most recent research collaborations include: a psychometric measurement and cross-cultural validation of an outcome measure for physical literacy among older adults in his home country of Nigeria; exploring the effects of interventions for fatigue among people with upper and/or lower limb osteoarthritis; exploring ways physical literacy can be assessed among older adults in Nigeria with the Emerging Researchers and Professionals on Ageing, African Network (ERPAAN); and soon, he will be involved in another project that has successfully been registered in the international systematic review database PROSPERO. His latest collaborative publication investigated how healthcare professionals in Nigeria perceive the use of electronic payment systems, and another collaboration is being considered for publication in the journal Evaluation & the Health Professions.

Adandom said he is also an avid reader of research, which motivated him to want to return to academia.

“If you read the studies and don’t understand them, you won’t be able to apply them. … If I don’t understand research methodologies, if I don’t understand literature or how this data was analyzed and these details were captured, I will find it difficult deciding which interventions to use,” he said. “So, I became interested in applied research and how we go about bringing research to clinical contexts.

“It takes years to adopt recent research findings into clinical practice guidelines, therefore, to ensure that you remain updated with new insights, understanding research as a clinician is paramount.’’

As a graduate teaching assistant, Adandom also enjoys exploring how his students learn and seeing how their lives are changed by what they’re learning.

“Wherever I can produce knowledge that can change things, make things more productive, make people happier with themselves by engaging in things that have been proven from research, I dive in,” he said.

Adandom’s research has been influential in his home country. His master’s thesis explored how healthcare professionals in Nigeria assess psychosocial and cognitive factors among older patients undergoing surgery for knee and hip fractures and was published in the Nigerian Health Practice Journal. He realized that many patients were not screened for these psychosocial and cognitive factors due to there not being a standardized biopsychosocial approach among healthcare professionals in Nigeria. For instance, he said, infection among cognitively impaired older adults who were undergoing recovery was a notable challenge.

According to the report from one of the surgeons, because these patients were cognitively impaired, they did not remember having had surgery and would scratch their wounds. Yet, cognitive impairment was not a major thing to be assessed in these clinical populations. Adandom’s findings recommended that hospitals in the area explore adopting a biopsychosocial approach – it was interesting to see some of the hospitals employ medical social workers and geriatricians, he said.

“Whenever I see the outcome of research, when I see the implementation of research in society or people using research to influence policies, it makes me very happy,” Adandom said. “Then I am more encouraged to say, ‘What can I improve on? What ways can I do better? How can I make these people happier?’ That is my motivation.”

SEC faculty members meet at summit, discuss ways to increase number of new math teachers

Mathematics educators from the SEC, along with some other universities by special invitation, held a summit Oct. 14-15 at the University of Florida where they discussed how their institutions can increase their production of new mathematics teachers.

The SEC⁺ Mathematics Education Community (MEC) group has been meeting virtually on a monthly basis for over two years. It previously met in-person at the University of Kentucky in October 2022. Prior to this year's summit, the group expanded to include the new SEC members by invitation as well as incoming members The University of Oklahoma and Texas.

There is a serious shortage of math teachers across the nation, particularly in the Southeast, and universities have experienced a significant drop in the number of students entering math teacher preparation programs over the past five or more years. This shortage means students risk not having the mathematical preparation to be successful in STEM and other fields or to be good citizens. Members of the SEC⁺ MEC are committed to addressing this issue. 

Associate Professor of Secondary Mathematics Dr. Jeremy Zelkowski represented The University of Alabama at the summit this year.

“By having lengthy discussions across similar institutions with a wide variety of how mathematics teacher preparation is accomplished, we have had two major learning outcomes that includes improving recruitment mechanisms and peer-mentoring across institutions,” Zelkowski said.

Topics of discussion over the last two years have included new program organizations that might appeal to non-traditional audiences, how to strengthen lower-division introductory education courses to increase interest in the profession, and opportunities for grant writing.

Dr. Zelkowski’s Alabama’s Practitioner Leaders for Underserved School in Mathematics (APLUS in Math) program provides the strongest master teachers in Tuscaloosa schools to mentor students on pathway to becoming a mathematics teacher. Funded by the National Science Foundation, APLUS in Math provides five years of professional development and teacher leadership opportunities to those teachers while they serve as the field experience mentor teachers of UA students.

The SEC⁺ MEC also set goals for areas of continued exploration and collaboration. For example, the group plans to hold an SEC-wide virtual summit for students who are enrolled in or have graduated from a mathematics education program at an SEC university. The group will continue to meet throughout the rest of the academic year and is already beginning to make plans for the third conference at another SEC university in fall 2024.

"It is our hope that working together as a group, we will begin to make headway on this issue," said Lisa Amick, leader of the community from the University of Kentucky.

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