As a part of my Walden master study course, I reviewed May's action research from course website. I am surprised to see that my wondering question and her inquiry close to each other and share a common goal. Both May and I want to engage students to a science lesson. You may read my review below.
CHAPTER ONE
Setting the Context, Studying the Literature, and Developing the Wondering
Prompt #1 Questions: Why is it important for May to look at literature as a part of her inquiry journey? What insights did May gain about her inquiry topic through her readings? In what ways might May’s readings inform how she will collect data for her study?
Response:
May is a dedicated teacher, and she tried every possible strategy that she knew to engage students. However, she faced behavior problems and felt frustrated. Teacher inquiry idea inspired her, and she decided to do an inquiry about behavior problem, and created a wondering question. May's wondering question is: “How can I create the classroom conditions needed so that my students can be successful in supporting my instruction?" It was clear that her knowledge is not enough to answer this question. This fact lead May to review the literature at the beginning of her teacher inquiry. While reviewing the literature, May learned how to describe behaviors in a clear way from the prereferral intervention Resource Manual (as cited in (Laureate Education, Inc. 2010, pg. 5) and she understood how to diagnose behavior problems in class. Additionally, May joined positive behavior support conference (as cited in Laureate Education, Inc. 2010, pg. 5) and acknowledged new strategies about how to strategically respond behavior problems. May also read “Classroom Management Strategies for Difficult Students: Promoting Change Through Relationships" article (as cited in Laureate Education, Inc. 2010, pg. 6) and learned positive psychology theory. From this article, May understood the reason behind the behaviors of students. The last article that May reviewed was about the middle and high school teachers of Philadelphia. May learned the importance of teacher-student collaboration and decided to use this strategy in her inquiry. As a result, May decided to use students actively in data collection process, and literature review lead her to rewrite her wondering question.
CHAPTER TWO
Designing the Inquiry Through Collaboration With Colleagues
Prompt #2 Questions: May, Naomi, Margaret, Darby, and Mr. Brown formed a professional learning community that met regularly to plan May’s first inquiry and to support one another in their work as educators. What specific benefits did May receive as a result of collaborating with her colleagues? Why is collaboration an important component of the action research process?
Response:
First of all, May is so lucky to have such open minded, cooperative team members who are eager to help, ready to listen, willing to share ideas and capable to provide suggestions. According to the case study that I reviewed, May's team members helped her in every step of inquiry. For instance, her colleagues suggested May to use one class and helped her to figure out most effective student group for inquiry. A Turkish proverb says: "Two heads are better than one" Similarly, May and her colleagues reviewed literature, discussed and developed an action plan together. As a result, May and her friends formed a team and implemented strategies, monitored student progresses and assessed data altogether. This helped May to identify and group students, identify the key outcomes and conduct an accurate and effective teacher inquiry. As a general rule, teamwork is necessary to finish a job quickly and effectively, and May's collaboration within the learning community is a good example of benefits of collaboration and cooperation. Without cooperation, she would not be able to choose appropriate student group, and her results would not be accurate. More importantly, her inquiry would have a limited effect and would not create a school wide positive impact on teachers and students.
CHAPTER THREE
The Intervention and Data Collection Plan
Prompt #3 Questions: A critical component of the inquiry process is designing a plan for data collection that is doable! Explain the importance of developing a data collection plan that is meaningful but practical to the life of a classroom teacher. Address the following:
· What part of May’s data collection plan do you feel will be most meaningful? Why?
· What parts of May’s data collection plan do you believe to be the most practical? Why?
· What parts of May’s data collection plan do you believe to be impractical? Why?
· Pretend you are one of May’s colleagues. Suggest one additional form of data you think May might collect that could inform her research. Be sure you provide an explanation that describes why you think May should consider collecting this form of data.
Response:
First of all, I liked the collaboration between May and her peers. Each team member contributed to the inquiry process and figured out a data collection model altogether. She clearly identified problems that she faced in class and actions of each tier. For instance, May mentioned that students stop following the procedures, namely, writing down their agenda for the day after spring break, and she had to give constant verbal redirections. Following the suggestions of her peers, May decided to give a five-minute challenge to her tier 1 students to complete their agendas. Additionally, May wanted Tier 2 students to create a personal graph of their own successful attempts at writing the agenda. It is obvious that these interventions make data collection and data analyze manageable and easily doable. More importantly, I am surprised to see that May used data collection as part of a solution. May’s target is to run the fourth period smoothly at the end inquiry. As an example, May asked tier 3 student, namely, Sienna to record data to engage her to lesson. It is also interesting to see that May used her inquiry to improve graphing skills of students.
I think that focus group interview with the whole class strategy is a meaningful way of data collection. Students feel happy and motivated when teachers ask and value their ideas. Therefore, group interview will engage students and will increase the success of inquiry. Moreover, this will give May a chance to correlate the relation between ideas of students shared in class, and number of completing copying agenda at the beginning of the lesson. As a result, May might regroup students and figure out the problem behind not copying agenda.
I think that using journal entry to collect data is very practical. While students are copying agenda from the board to their notebooks, she may walk around and note down the students who finished on time. Additionally, she can use collected data to draw graphs and clearly identify the improvement of students. This will both motivate students to complete their agenda, and provide a solid data to analyze and draw graphs. Additionally, I think that data collected by Sienna and Darby might be subjective, and the data collected by the inquirer is the most accurate data.
I feel that the most impractical data collection method is to ask Tier 3 student to record redirections. At first sight, it looks so practical. Like Margaret suggested, giving responsibility might improve Sienna. However, Sienna might collect data subjectively, and this might affect the result of the inquiry. For instance, Sienna might not record redirections pointed to her, or she might forget to record sometimes. Additionally, Sienna may not be able to pay attention to the lesson and collecting data at the same time, and this might affect her achievement in lesson.
I would suggest May to use student works as artifacts. Documents can provide extremely powerful data (Dana& Yendol-Hoppey, 2009, p.81). In May’s case, she might ask students to note down the minute they completed copying the agenda, and she might ask students to put a smiley that describe their feelings at different times. Moreover, May might ask students to put a plus once they receive a redirection. As a result, she might check if the students completely copied the agenda or not and she might draw different graphs such as completion time versus days graph for each student. Additionally, she might look for a correlation between emotion of student and redirections she received. As a result, she would be able to identify performance of each student and understand the emotional conditions that caused redirection from teacher. This collected data would be an alternative way to collect same data, and would help her to triangulate (Dana& Yendol-Hoppey, 2009, p.112) data.
CHAPTER FOUR
Coding May’s First Data—The Wish List for Great Classroom Learning Conditions
Prompt #4 Questions: Download May’s “Wish List” Student Response data.
Follow a modified version of how to conduct a data analysis as described in the course text, The Reflective Educator’s Guide to Classroom Research.
· Begin reading through the entire class’s wish list responses.
· Next, read through the data set a second time. Ask yourself, What am I noticing about the student responses? Do the responses seem to fall into different categories? How would I name the categories? Select your categories.
· Code each category with a different color.
· Finally, read through the data a third time, highlighting each response in a different color to correspond with the categories you created above.
In your journal responses, share the categories you named, as well as examples of responses that were included in each category. If you were May, what do you think your analysis of this initial data is telling you to do next?
Response:
Students’ wish list responses clearly show that there are different kinds of students in class. Some of them are motivated and want to learn, some of them are respectful, some of them are not interested in the lesson, and some of them try to be funny. I think respectful students can be motivated to note down agenda easily, and help May while collecting data, and motivate others. Motivated students would speedily note down the agenda. Unmotivated students and funny students need more attention. May might change the location of students, and let respectful and motivated students sit next to an unmotivated together on the same seat. This might force unmotivated students to pay attention to the lesson and respect for others. I categorized the wish list responses as below; Respectful, responsible students:
1. Give respect to our teacher and other classmates. Let’s be kind and not argue with one another.
2. Listen and be quiet.
3. My wish for the whole class is to respect our teacher.
4. Get ready for class all together would be good. Some do and some don’t.
5. I want to show my teacher my respect. I want to have an S (Satisfactory) for conduct.
6. Have our agenda done when the teacher comes into the classroom. We can have out our paper and pencil, be ready to learn, and have our homework out.
7. I wish people would stop being loud in this class. It is loud sometimes.
8. Come in and get ready and start on time. Maybe the Deputy could come to class from lunch. That might help us.
Motivated, hardworking students:
1. People need to come to class to learn! They need to focus. I wish they would focus.
2. My wish is to have us all on the same page when the bell rings.
3. I wish we could come to class, sit down and get started on our work!
4. Class would be good if it started on time every day.
5. I wish L and T wouldn’t bring in so much of their drama into class so we could get going on time.
Unmotivated students:
1. I wish everyone would get an A, and that we had more field trips.
2. I wish I could get us less homework.
3. My wish is to get more field trips out of town and to give us less homework. Homework Mon.–Thurs. and Fri. no homework.
4. I wish things would go in order the same way so I know what to do.
Funny (nonsense) students
1. We need to have more fun and more parties—and all A’s!
2. To give me an A for no reason and to just be kind to people. Having a little bit of fun and not having all this homework. To be Friday every day!
3. I wish I was the richest person in the world.
4. Saying there is no homework! Saying we don’t have to do nothing to pass!
According to the responses, most of the students are respectful and motivated. With a slight push, I am sure that May will be able to create a peaceful environment, and most of the students will copy the agenda. There are a few unmotivated and funny students who are not interested in the lesson. May should focus on these students and interview with them. Additionally, May might set certain goals and promise a party or extra points for achievements. This might motivate students who wanted field trips and parties.
References:
Dana, N. F., & Yendol-Hoppey, D. (2009). The reflective educator’s guide to classroom research: Learning to teach and teaching to learn through practitioner inquiry; (2nd ed.).
Laureate Education, Inc. (2010). A case study: Living the process of inquiry with a real teacher-
researcher. Retrieved 6 12, 2011 from Walden University Web site: http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/courses/59896/CRS-WUPSYC6205-5104436/Living_the_Process_of_Inquiry_CaseStudy_112210.pdf
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