Feb. 15, 2019

Education faculty, alumnus collaborate on study of instructional plans

By Tara Garcia, communication assistant

Dr. Victoria Seeger

Dr. Sue Wood

Two faculty members and an alumnus of Northwest Missouri State University’s School of Education collaborated on a recently published article, “Questioning for Meaning: Enhancing Questioning Strategies of Teacher Candidates through the Understanding by Design Approach.”

The article, authored by Associate Professor of Education Dr. Victoria Seeger, Assistant Professor of Education Dr. Sue Wood and Dustin Romans, discusses ways to improve the questioning abilities of teacher candidates in alignment with their research and observations.

“What we noticed is that students were struggling with asking the essential questions for the instructional plans,” Seeger said. “There is an overarching question that they are expected to craft. That question is supposed to be something that a student can carry out with them throughout their education and life. Those questions are hard to generate and our students were struggling.”

Seeger and Wood took four students in 2014 to the Iowa Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Conference in Des Moines with the support of a Northwest Teaching and Learning Grant.

“We got to see what it was like to take students to a conference and see them interact with the presenter,” Seeger said. “Watching them revise their unit plans and seeing them learn was really powerful.”

Wood said, “Dr. Seeger and I have worked together on several projects and we always seem to complement each other’s thinking, so it was fun to work together on this project as well. It was also very gratifying to gather input from the students that were featured in the article.”

Romans contributed to the publication as a researcher and as part of an independent study with Wood and Seeger, learning to search and review educational literature.

“I learned how to refine my search to find specific articles and relevant elements I could bring to Dr. Seeger and Dr. Wood’s attention,” Romans said. “We met weekly and reviewed what I found. I was also able to collect notes from my professors about what else they were looking for. I took those notes into consideration with my next search. This was my first time collaborating with professionals to benefit other professionals in the education field.”

Romans, who was a Northwest student at the time of the project, enjoyed the challenge of researching and was excited when he learned the article was published.

“Dustin brings a lot of exuberance to whatever he does,” Seeger said. “He is a problem-solver and he had to dig deep around search terms in order to find articles.”

Seeger joined the Northwest faculty in 2011. She was a literacy and instructional coach, a classroom teacher for 3–6 grade, mentor teacher, clinical supervisor and a field instructor. She earned her Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction from Kansas State University; she earned her master’s degree in curriculum and instruction and bachelor’s degrees in education and vocational home economics education, all from Washburn University. She is a certified National Board Teacher in literacy and reading-language arts in early and middle childhood education.

Wood joined the Northwest faculty in 2013, and her academic interests include project-based learning and the implication for student achievement. She has worked in the P-12 field for many years, serving as a teacher, principal and as director of curriculum, instruction and assessment in a mid-sized P-12 district. She earned her Ph.D. and specialist degree in educational administration from the University of South Dakota, and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in family and consumer science from the University of Nebraska-Kearney.

Romans graduated from Northwest in 2015 with a bachelor’s in education. He is a fifth grade teacher in the Belton (Missouri) 124 School District.