Through weekly tutoring sessions with individual students, understand and document the obstacles to learning class material, and useful techniques to overcome the obstacles and successfully complete class requirements. Utilizing a tutoring setting will immediately benefit the participating students as well as develop solutions which can be applied to a larger group of students. Data will be collected at the tutoring session as well as during case review processes. Although qualitative research needs to have flexibility in the design and structure of the research, below is our initial data collection plan.

Session Data

Session Data will be generated immediately following the tutoring session.

Biographical Information: This information will describe the student's current state during the tutoring session. Information such as appearance, talkativeness, and current issues will help to understand how outside influences effect learning.

Material Covered: Describe the material we covered in the tutoring session

Methodology Used: Describe the teaching methods used to help the student understand the material.

Effectiveness: Describe the effectiveness of the session as well as any thoughts on possible improvements that should be tried.

Other Comments: Discuss other pertinent issues not covered by the original categories.

Each case will be reviewed between sessions. The purpose of this is to gain a better understanding of each students progress, and to generate plans to improve the next sessions effectiveness as well as improving the performance of the student.

Review Summary: Summarize the review process.

Performance Review: Describe the progress of the student.

Successful Techniques: Describe teaching methods that are working.

Unsuccessful Techniques: Describe teaching methods that are not working.

Plan: Generate a plan for the next session.

Other Comments: Discuss other pertinent issues not covered by the original categories.

Periodically, the cases will be compared and contrasted with each other. This will help us to determine if methods work with most students or just some students, and help us create criteria for when a particular teaching method will be successful.

Review Summary: Summarize the review process.

Success Stories: Describe successful methodologies, their impact and learnings.

Failure Stories: Describe unsuccessful methodologies, their impact and learnings.

Hypotheses: Describe any hypotheses that are generated by the review.

Other Comments: The researcher can discuss other pertinent issues not covered by the original categories.

Other data will include literature reviews, discussion groups and interviews of appropriate people. This category will give the study the flexibility to add data that is pertinent to the research, but not necessarily generated directly from the tutoring sessions.

Work with local school system to perform case study research with 20 - 30 students who are not currently meeting grade level performance standards. These students will have a range of ages and demographic backgrounds, as well as be able to be grouped for their similarities. The case study research for this project will be conducted over a three year period. Data will be made available to fellow researchers. Semi-annual progress reports will be published electronically on the internet and submitted for publication to appropriate journals. A final project report will outline the learnings from this project and recommended next steps.

Year 1:

• Initiate case study research with 10 - 15 students.
• Conduct weekly tutoring sessions throughout the school year.
• Conduct weekly individual case reviews and monthly cross case reviews.
• Conduct literature reviews and discussion groups
• Publish initial findings electronically on the internet and submit report to appropriate journals for publication

Year 2:

• Expand case study research to include 20 - 30 students
• Continue research methods developed in year 1.
• Publish findings electronically on the internet and submit report to appropriate journals for publication.

Year 3:

• Complete case study research
• From the results of the research develop pilot programs with the goal of enabling similar children to obtain the tools necessary to succeed in school. The programs should be easy to implement and cost effective.
• Publish report electronically and submit to appropriate journals.
• Develop a program to test the effectiveness of the pilot programs developed.

Susan Levene has twelve years of industry experience in designing and optimizing manufacturing equipment and processes that efficiently produce consumer food products that are sold and distributed throughout the nation. She has volunteered her time to tutor and mentor disadvantaged youth for over 15 years in several school and community run programs. She has a M.S. from Yale University and B.S from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her industry experience, excellent academic qualifications, and dedications to our at-risk children, will enable this program to develop creative and successful methods to enable all of our students to succeed.

Salary and Benefits $100,000

Equipment and Supplies $ 5,000

Seminars and Conferences $ 3,000

Overhead Costs $ 10,000

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Revised: 17 Oct 1998 16:33:54 -0400.