Literature Review
One of the most important and dynamic aspects of my AR project was in working on this literature review section. From the start, I understood that we new teachers would be learning in many different directions, and in many ways, while we worked towards creating this project. What I hadn't immediately realized was that the review work itself was not only a task to complete within our teaching and learning process. It was also time of exploration, where I spent time assessing my students and getting to know their strengths, weaknesses, quirks and personalities, a guide that encouraged me to continually think about how my students and I as a group could best move forward, while searching through others' theories, ideas, and experiences. I certainly read about and learned about a lot more than in formation about my AR's focus questions. To be sure, it was dynamic in that, as I learned and progressed in the process, I continually kept coming up with more and more questions while growing my interests in many different directions.
I have included some of the larger ideas that helped me plot a course through my classes implementations below.
Going beyond the traditional role of direct instruction to facilitative methods can be powerful for students.
Constructivist theory holds that the classroom is akin to "...a mini-society, a community of learners engaged in activity discussion and reflection" (Cobb, 1995). In the traditional role, a teacher was the top of the hierarchy, so that information and knowledge would be disseminated from the teacher to the students. We taught and they learned. The transmission of knowledge with the goal of replicating the exact knowledge and understanding that the teacher had, was the main goal (Cobb, 1995). Keeping the classroom as a setting where students are merely members of an audience that were required to describe the knowledge that was given to them virtually eliminates any impetus for moving towards higher levels of thinking and interaction with the material.
Throughout my undergraduate degree I took class after class where I would sit down listen and take notes before leaving two hours later. Often, the same process for every class. Listen to lecture, write a report mid quarter, take a midterm and then a final. Fortunately many of my graduate education classes were done in a way that allowed us to be active participants in our learning. We worked in groups, had discussions, gave presentations and often chose our own major topics. We were learning in classes that included the use of Facilitative or Constructivist methods and here is where I first became interested in learning about the different roles a teacher could take on to successfully engage with students more.
One of our texts, Understanding By Design, by G. Wiggins and Jay Mctighe, highlights some of those possible types of teacher roles, explicitly. Reaching back to ideas put forth by Mortimer Adler (1984) from his work, The Paideial Propsal, they describe three major roles in types of teaching. Those include "...didactic (or direct) instruction, constructivist facilitation, and the coaching of performance. (Wiggins and Mctighe, 2005). What they note, and I am seeing through my own interactions, is that an inclusion of each, at different times, and in different amounts, is very powerful. The largest benefits, however, seems to come from situations where facilitative or constructivist methods are the majority (Wiggins and Mctighe, 2005, Pg. 241).
It has been interesting to read and learn more about the different 'roles' a teacher can take on. While student teaching I was cautioned to avoid direct instruction when possible. The maximum amount of time it was suggested I lecture or give direction for assignments was usually roughly five minutes, each. I actually didn't have that much of a problem with this, despite being in social studies, because I always felt that the action and learning took place when students were interacting with the facts, ideas, and concepts in hands on. I have tended to try to put a great deal of work into assignments that require the students to work individually, or in groups, to locate information, generate ideas, and worked on skills. In the last year, the DBQ has been a constant as assessments change and I believe that students grappling with primary and secondary source texts is a great way for them to learn both skill and content. As Wiggins and Mctighe point out, a class usually must have some amount of direct instruction and "coaching" (Wiggins and Mctighe, 2005). But I wondered how much?
Social construction, from Piaget to Vygotsky, involves learning through experiences. It is natural that teachers should try to create situations where we are helping students attain their own understanding through interaction with the material. While a teacher may lecture about a topic, a facilitator questions, encourages discussion, and offers guided inquiry. A facilitator directs from the back by providing the circumstances where students can reach their own conclusions (Rhodes and Belamy, 1999).
When I contemplated my AR I was also thinking about the type of teacher I would like to be. I wanted my implementations to reflect directed thinking and action to try and make my classroom one where students would enjoy learning and leave with those take-aways in content and skill that they remember years later. Group work seemed a natural progression of this. The AR seemed to follow this line of research well for me. As Holt and WIllard-Holt, point out, both the students and the teacher are actively learning from each other when facilitation is occurring (Holt & Willard-Holt, 2000). The next logical step for both my literature research and AR seemed to search out for strategies that would work well in this environment. To me, it seemed logical to look at collaborative and group work.
Cooperative learning can be very effective in increasing student motivation and quality of effort.
The idea that cooperative learning can be extremely in learning powerful in learning is not new. Vygotsky viewed interaction with peers as essential in developing and increasing skill and strategies (Dixon -Krauss, 1996). One of the main aspects I wanted to look at in my own AR was the potential to use cooperative learning as a means of creating a forward group movement in skill and content learning for students of varied abilities. Vygotsky believed that teachers could use collaborative learning to increase the skills of lower ability students by help from peers who were more skilled (Vygotsky, 1978). Students in both areas would benefit as the students who were not squarely in Vygotsky's zone of proximal development would get a "lift up", and those who were, would be able to work on and solidify their knowledge and skills by helping other students. Though Vygotsky never actually used the term scaffolding, today we employ the generality of that idea of increasing a student's ability through the use of various teaching methods in order to engage the students in gaining competency in some task. Gaining skill in those elements of the task that are initially beyond the learner's capacity, thus permitting him to concentrate upon and complete only those elements that are within his range of competence" (Wood et al., 1976). I felt that collaboration would be a natural environment for this movement.
Further research seems to bear this out. Studies indicate that cooperative learning leads to an improvement of acadmic performance (Slavin, 1987), increases the amount of time students keep on task (Cohen & Benton, 1988), leads to an increase in positive social behaviors (Johnson & Johnson 1989), and increases overall motivation towards the task and learning (Garibaldi, 1979).
Interestingly another study, in 2004, conducted with 70, 7th graders, found that collaboration is more effective than traditional teaching methods and claimed that not all group work is collaborative (Ozsoy & Yildiz, 2004). They maintained that a group working together only engages n collaborative learning when individual within that group can not be successful unless all members are successful. This was a concept I had not thought of and gave rise to my own motivation to create to some changes I made in phase two. One of many important studies by D.W. Johnson and T.T. Johnson, helped me include five basic principles they felt were needed in order construct a successful cooperative lesson (Johnson & Johson, 1991).
1. Positive interdependence.
2. Fact to face interaction
3. Individual accountability
4. The appropriate use of social skills,
5. Processing how well the group in functioning.
I then, specifically used a list of required options for what they termed "Learning Together Technique" when transitioning from my phase one two my phase two. Those options were that the instruction needed to:
1. Determine the instructional objectives
2. Decide the group size,
3. Dived the students into groups,
4. Arranging the class,
5. Plan educational material,
6. Giving roles the group members,
7. Directly explain the academic work,
8. Include individual evaluation,
9. Provide cooperation among groups,
10. Explain the criterion necessary for achievement,
11. Determining the required behaviors for success,
12. Guiding student behavior,
13. Help in the group work,
14. Teaching group cooperation,
15. Quantitave and qualitative evaluation of student work,
16. Evaluating the performance of the group
17. Forming academic contracts.
As mentioned in my introduction, and is widely known, Common Core is becoming more and more important in California. There is a real movement away from the traditional classroom and towards finding new methods of increasing math and literary skills by taking fresh looks as such exciting strategies as Project Based Learning, Community Learning and interaction, reciprocal teaching, socratic seminars, and primary source work. My students themselves are of varied skill sets and we often struggled to find a pace that would have everyone moving forward productively. They are the first students in this school that move forward towards a new type of schooling. I hope, and believe that, my attempts at learning how to teach from the back and what can be accomplished with careful collaborative work planning, will assist my students with attaining those skills while learning some history.