Ann McLean – Biology/Science Teacher
In 2009, I completed my masters at Stirling University. Three years hard slog to obtain the status of Chartered Teacher but the benefits have been invaluable. The course introduced experienced teachers to ‘Action Enquiry’ and guided us towards being researchers in our own classrooms.
We carried out two research projects. The first was a classroom based enquiry and involved only one teacher as researcher. The second was a collaborative project, involving two or more teachers.
My first project was inspired by a ‘difficult’ second year science class I had inherited (2V). Most students were poorly motivated, badly behaved, had a fairly negative view of Science and failed to engage with and participate in lessons. A nightmare class you might say!
The class had a large number of less able students who were struggling and a couple had significant behaviour problems. The only way I could get them through any work was to resort to rigid ‘ lock step’, teacher led lessons. I couldn’t trust them to do practical work so I demonstrated it and any notes they had to make were copied from the board. I became increasing unhappy with this ‘reception’ style teaching where my passive learners were receiving facts from me and expected to learn them. Although I tried to encourage and motivate my students, I didn’t see much improvement. They continued to be reluctant Scientists with very low self esteem. They performed poorly in assessments which triggered the whole cycle again.
Research tells us that real learning is more likely to happen when the students actively build knowledge through discussion with others and in particular when there is dialogue between the learners themselves.
I decided to move away from my authoritarian ‘lecture style’ lessons and allow the students to have a more active role in their learning. I was interested in Black and Wiliam’s trawl of published research which confirmed that formative assessment could improve standards of attainment especially in so called low attainers. I decided to use formative assessment techniques particularly peer and open discussion to actively encourage the students to discuss their work.
We started a new topic and I explained to the students that they were going to work in pairs. I wanted them to discuss their work, help each other and agree on the answers before writing them down. I also changed my style of questioning to encourage the participation of more students and to stimulate deeper thinking as opposed to simple recall.
Evidence was gathered before and after the intervention using a variety of data collection tools i.e., questionnaires, field notes, observations, video, pupil learning logs, jotter work and test scores.
I also looked at the test scores of my other S2 section (2R) who was of higher ability but with whom I was not using these approaches. I also looked at test scores from the S2 section I had taught the previous year (2R).
The project lasted six weeks and although there were highs and lows, comparison of the baseline evidence with the evidence collected after the six weeks suggested that there had been some small but significant improvements.
Some samples of evidence from the classroom enquiry can be found here:
This led on the collaborative enquiry which involved the whole biology department and four S4 classes.
We were concerned that many of our S4 cohort had very little confidence in their ability and this was impacting on their enthusiasm for Biology, their motivation to apply themselves and ultimately their attainment.
Our six week intervention involved giving the pupils packs of past paper questions, relevant to the topic, to complete during lessons. As before, the pupils were asked to discuss the questions in pairs or small groups and agree on the answers together rather than working individually. The teacher circulated, listening to the talk and if necessary helping to steer and extend the discussion or helping students make connections with existing knowledge.
The classes had previously been used to working through booklets individually with a plenary session lead by the class teacher. There had been little opportunity for peer discussion.
Several different data collection tools were used to evaluate our intervention. These included questionnaires, field notes, learning journals, group discussions, ‘post it note’ comments, test scores, homework records and progress with the past paper questions themselves.
In summary, our data indicated that,
- our students felt happier in class and more confident in their ability
- there had been a positive impact on their motivation
- attainment (particularly of ‘lower ability’ students) had improved
It was enlightening to read comments from the students about how much more confident and reassured they felt about their work when they could listen to the ideas of others and how stressed they felt when working individually in case they ‘got the wrong answer’
Samples of pre and post intervention data from the collaborative enquiry can be found here:
As teachers, what we learned from the enquiry was important. We learned about the power of dialogue in the classroom how it can be used to promote effective learning for all students. We also learned that there is a wealth of educational research out there offering suggestions and possible solutions to our every day ‘classroom’ concerns.
Personally, completing my masters has made me a better teacher and one who’s not afraid to ‘take risks’ and try new approaches!
If you are interested in finding out more, please feel free to get in touch for a chat!
This is really interesting Ann.