Introduction
“The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness. If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.” This quote of philosopher and writer Khalil Gibran (1923) captures much of my personal philosophy as an educator. My omoi, or passion, in teaching springs from a desire to not simply pass on my own knowledge, but to guide students to an ever-deeper understanding of themselves as human persons, learners, and thinkers. My goal in this action research project, then, is founded on the notion that all students deserve an education of their whole person, one that helps them to observe the world intentionally, think about it rationally, and apply their knowledge wisely for the betterment of themselves and others.
If this research project were a movie, the opening scene would be a montage of shots: surfers elegantly gliding across dark blue waves, friendly-looking people selecting produce at a local farmers market, and children laughing as they ride their skateboards along a dusty, well-worn coastline path, all cut in with glittering gold sunsets and swaying palm trees. One can almost hear the gentle instrumental guitar music wafting on the ocean breeze.
Dreamy as they sound, these snapshots might be captured on just about any day of the week in the town where I completed my final semester of student teaching. I was fortunate enough to be placed in a small elementary school in one of the local beach communities. While part of a larger coastal city, the particular neighborhood immediately surrounding the school is located on a picturesque stretch of Southern California coastline and boasts of farmers markets, yoga studios, local art galleries, tree-lined streets with Greco-Roman names, and antique buildings renovated to hold surfboard shops and organic coffee houses. In short, the school lies in the heart of the quintessential modern surfer-hippy community.
It was in this environment that I began my journey to discover how I could bring a more authentic and personalized education experience to my students through action research.
Research Context
The school sits a short jaunt from the beach, and mirrors the endearing funkiness of the local neighborhood. There is a garden on-site, yoga and music programs for all students, and the students learn how composting and recycling contributes to a cleaner earth and more responsible citizenship. In addition to these non-traditional activities, the school also focuses heavily on academics. There is both an English-only program as well as a Dual Language Immersion program in Spanish and English. Each student from kindergarten through sixth grade has an iPad in the classroom to supplement their learning and support the development of 21st-century skills. Every student attends a morning seminar class to target reading at his or her individual level. Finally, the district and the school both have adopted a proactive attitude toward the new Common Core State Standards, which will be required in the 2014-2015 academic year, by using this 2013-2014 year as a transition for both students and teachers.
I taught in a second and third grade combination classroom, consisting of 24 students with 12 boys and 12 girls evenly divided between the grades. Like the rest of the school, my class participated in yoga twice per week, art once per week, and garden and music every two weeks as part of the regular curriculum. Along with library, computer lab, and the daily morning seminars, these activities made scheduling of core content areas a delicately choreographed dance. Adding to the time management juggle was the diversity of student levels: each grade level had a mix of students who were proficient, on-par, and struggling in core subjects such as math and language arts. But whatever their strengths or challenges, the students did an excellent job of respecting and helping one another in and out of the classroom.
Research Concern
Because this was my first experience working with younger elementary students on a full-time basis, and because of the mix of personalities and academic levels, I observed them closely at the beginning of the year to see how they thought and expressed their ideas. Within a few weeks, I began to notice a pattern that repeated itself in every subject area: students would be quick to answer multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions and would attempt math calculations, but they would freeze on questions that asked them to explain their thinking. For example, some math pages would include a question such as, “How do you know that the 3 in 375 is in the hundreds place?”, and instead of answering the question, students would write their own equation using 375, or simply skip the question altogether. Whenever similar questions arose in subject areas like language arts, social studies, or science (e.g., “Do you think Henry liked camping? Explain.”; “Do you think you would like to be an American Indian in early America? Why or why not?”) students would have similar reactions: they wrote an answer that did not give the information the question asked for, or left it blank. Some students would comment that these sort of open-ended questions were too difficult, or would say that they did not think they were required to even attempt those items. This recurring situation became a greater concern in my eyes when I noticed that, even with prompting and encouragement to try it and do their best, many students did not seem to give a response that was appropriate to the question. For example, when students were asked if they would like to be an American Indian and give reasons why or why not, they would answer “yes” or “no” followed by “I don’t know”.
I thought this pattern of behavior was significant for two reasons. First, the students appeared to be missing some critical component of learning and, consequently, they either did not answer correctly or gave up on answering altogether. Second, the capacity of young people to evaluate what is being required of them and respond appropriately is becoming an increasingly important skill in academia and beyond. In fact, these abilities are so vital to children’s success in their academic and career lives that educational leaders across the country incorporated them into the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The CCSS, which will be implemented in California in the 2014-2015 school year, were designed to prepare students for success in college and in the workplace by promoting important metacognitive processes (e.g., critical thinking, communication, and creativity) in addition to content knowledge. In other words, they aim to foster higher-order thinking and conceptual understanding of the content to help the students retain the knowledge that they learn in school.
My concern arose because my students did not seem to be on track to meet the bar set by the CCSS in these skill areas. More importantly, if the difficulty my students appeared to have with higher-order thinking were real, this it would only bring more hardships later if left unaddressed. In light of my personal teaching philosophy, I believed that such a possibility was far too risky to ignore. If education is ultimately about helping young people gain the skills necessary to navigate adolescence and adulthood in the 21st century intentionally and responsibly, then they will be at a severe disadvantage without solid higher-order thinking skills to guide them.
Needs Assessments
Whole-group survey. As I considered how I might address this concern through an action research project in the classroom, I wanted to get a better grasp of how my students viewed my teaching as well as their learning. I decided to explore their thoughts on school and learning in general through a needs assessment. I realized very early on that attempting to include everyone in this combination classroom would create too large a span in academic experience and maturity. I decided to focus on the 11 third graders who were in the classroom full-time.
I developed a short iPad survey to learn about the students’ attitudes and perceptions of learning, writing, and problem-solving. By exploring this data, I hoped to get more clarity on whether the needs I observed in the classroom (i.e., students not responding to open-ended questions appropriately) were an issue of insufficient guidance and practice or an issue of negativity and low self-confidence. I also asked a couple of questions to see which content areas they enjoyed so that I could better determine the best subject to focus on in the rest of my research.
The survey included the following questions:
If this research project were a movie, the opening scene would be a montage of shots: surfers elegantly gliding across dark blue waves, friendly-looking people selecting produce at a local farmers market, and children laughing as they ride their skateboards along a dusty, well-worn coastline path, all cut in with glittering gold sunsets and swaying palm trees. One can almost hear the gentle instrumental guitar music wafting on the ocean breeze.
Dreamy as they sound, these snapshots might be captured on just about any day of the week in the town where I completed my final semester of student teaching. I was fortunate enough to be placed in a small elementary school in one of the local beach communities. While part of a larger coastal city, the particular neighborhood immediately surrounding the school is located on a picturesque stretch of Southern California coastline and boasts of farmers markets, yoga studios, local art galleries, tree-lined streets with Greco-Roman names, and antique buildings renovated to hold surfboard shops and organic coffee houses. In short, the school lies in the heart of the quintessential modern surfer-hippy community.
It was in this environment that I began my journey to discover how I could bring a more authentic and personalized education experience to my students through action research.
Research Context
The school sits a short jaunt from the beach, and mirrors the endearing funkiness of the local neighborhood. There is a garden on-site, yoga and music programs for all students, and the students learn how composting and recycling contributes to a cleaner earth and more responsible citizenship. In addition to these non-traditional activities, the school also focuses heavily on academics. There is both an English-only program as well as a Dual Language Immersion program in Spanish and English. Each student from kindergarten through sixth grade has an iPad in the classroom to supplement their learning and support the development of 21st-century skills. Every student attends a morning seminar class to target reading at his or her individual level. Finally, the district and the school both have adopted a proactive attitude toward the new Common Core State Standards, which will be required in the 2014-2015 academic year, by using this 2013-2014 year as a transition for both students and teachers.
I taught in a second and third grade combination classroom, consisting of 24 students with 12 boys and 12 girls evenly divided between the grades. Like the rest of the school, my class participated in yoga twice per week, art once per week, and garden and music every two weeks as part of the regular curriculum. Along with library, computer lab, and the daily morning seminars, these activities made scheduling of core content areas a delicately choreographed dance. Adding to the time management juggle was the diversity of student levels: each grade level had a mix of students who were proficient, on-par, and struggling in core subjects such as math and language arts. But whatever their strengths or challenges, the students did an excellent job of respecting and helping one another in and out of the classroom.
Research Concern
Because this was my first experience working with younger elementary students on a full-time basis, and because of the mix of personalities and academic levels, I observed them closely at the beginning of the year to see how they thought and expressed their ideas. Within a few weeks, I began to notice a pattern that repeated itself in every subject area: students would be quick to answer multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions and would attempt math calculations, but they would freeze on questions that asked them to explain their thinking. For example, some math pages would include a question such as, “How do you know that the 3 in 375 is in the hundreds place?”, and instead of answering the question, students would write their own equation using 375, or simply skip the question altogether. Whenever similar questions arose in subject areas like language arts, social studies, or science (e.g., “Do you think Henry liked camping? Explain.”; “Do you think you would like to be an American Indian in early America? Why or why not?”) students would have similar reactions: they wrote an answer that did not give the information the question asked for, or left it blank. Some students would comment that these sort of open-ended questions were too difficult, or would say that they did not think they were required to even attempt those items. This recurring situation became a greater concern in my eyes when I noticed that, even with prompting and encouragement to try it and do their best, many students did not seem to give a response that was appropriate to the question. For example, when students were asked if they would like to be an American Indian and give reasons why or why not, they would answer “yes” or “no” followed by “I don’t know”.
I thought this pattern of behavior was significant for two reasons. First, the students appeared to be missing some critical component of learning and, consequently, they either did not answer correctly or gave up on answering altogether. Second, the capacity of young people to evaluate what is being required of them and respond appropriately is becoming an increasingly important skill in academia and beyond. In fact, these abilities are so vital to children’s success in their academic and career lives that educational leaders across the country incorporated them into the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The CCSS, which will be implemented in California in the 2014-2015 school year, were designed to prepare students for success in college and in the workplace by promoting important metacognitive processes (e.g., critical thinking, communication, and creativity) in addition to content knowledge. In other words, they aim to foster higher-order thinking and conceptual understanding of the content to help the students retain the knowledge that they learn in school.
My concern arose because my students did not seem to be on track to meet the bar set by the CCSS in these skill areas. More importantly, if the difficulty my students appeared to have with higher-order thinking were real, this it would only bring more hardships later if left unaddressed. In light of my personal teaching philosophy, I believed that such a possibility was far too risky to ignore. If education is ultimately about helping young people gain the skills necessary to navigate adolescence and adulthood in the 21st century intentionally and responsibly, then they will be at a severe disadvantage without solid higher-order thinking skills to guide them.
Needs Assessments
Whole-group survey. As I considered how I might address this concern through an action research project in the classroom, I wanted to get a better grasp of how my students viewed my teaching as well as their learning. I decided to explore their thoughts on school and learning in general through a needs assessment. I realized very early on that attempting to include everyone in this combination classroom would create too large a span in academic experience and maturity. I decided to focus on the 11 third graders who were in the classroom full-time.
I developed a short iPad survey to learn about the students’ attitudes and perceptions of learning, writing, and problem-solving. By exploring this data, I hoped to get more clarity on whether the needs I observed in the classroom (i.e., students not responding to open-ended questions appropriately) were an issue of insufficient guidance and practice or an issue of negativity and low self-confidence. I also asked a couple of questions to see which content areas they enjoyed so that I could better determine the best subject to focus on in the rest of my research.
The survey included the following questions:
- How are you feeling today? [Answer format: checkboxes]
- What is your FAVORITE subject or thing to learn about at school? Write as many as you would like! (Answer format: text box)
- What subject do you like the LEAST? (Answer format: text box)
- How do you feel about sharing your ideas in school? It could be sharing out loud or by writing. (Answer format: Scale, 1: “Really bad!!” to 5: “Really good!”)
- How easy is it for you to answer a question using complete sentences? (Answer format: four multiple choice options ranging from “It’s super easy” to “It’s super hard”)
- When you are solving a problem at home or in school, do you try to understand the other person's point of view? (Answer format: three multiple choice options: “Yes, always”, “sometimes”, and “No, never”)
- How much do you agree with this statement? “Failure is a chance for me to learn and grow.” (Answer format: Scale, 1: “I don’t agree at all” to 5: “I totally agree with this”)
By comparing their answers to the questions about their favorite and least favorite subjects, I found that all but one of the students liked language arts or writing as a subject, at least to some degree (Figure 1).
Yet, only 37% of students (4 out of the 11) responded that they felt comfortable answering questions with complete sentences – something required by all of the open-ended prompts they appeared to struggle with. This meant that the majority of the students (63%) indicated that they did not feel entirely comfortable answering questions with complete sentences (Figure 2).
Also, in response to Question 4 regarding sharing ideas in school, 10 of the 11 students polled marked a 3 or a 4, with one student marking a 5 (high). None of the students marked a 2 or 1 (low) (Figure 3).
This suggested to me that the students probably did not have negative opinions or low self-confidence when it came to contributing their thoughts in the classroom.
Although this was a very general survey, I gained some insight that helped me to move forward in addressing the needs of my students. Based on their responses, the students did not appear to struggle with confidence in their ideas themselves. This suggested that their difficulty with giving appropriate responses to open-ended questions might have arisen from insufficient guidance and practice with those types of prompts. Also, in reflecting on the answers to the questions on content areas, it appeared that the students enjoyed language arts to some degree, making it a possible area of focus later.
Focus group. To follow up with the whole-group survey, I decided to talk to a small focus group in order to delve more deeply into the students’ responses and get at the heart of their challenges in writing and thought expression. The focus group was made up of two boys and two girls. I selected these particular students because they each had different academic levels in reading and writing, as well as different personalities and dispositions. However, I knew each one would be willing to be honest and open in our focus group conversation. These four students agreed to participate and were eager to help me in my research.
To help the focus group feel at ease, I gave them the choice of staying in the classroom or sitting outside on the grass in the sun, and they enthusiastically chose to be outside. Once we were settled in a quiet spot on the lawn, I opened our conversation by letting them know that I valued whatever they had to say and that I wanted to hear from everyone. I reminded them of a couple of basic rules: only one person should speak at a time, and listen respectfully to others when they are talking. Then, I told them that I wanted to learn more about what they thought of higher-order thinking questions and what they felt was difficult about them (e.g., “You know those types of questions that ask you to explain your thinking? What do you think of them? Do you like them? What is easy/hard about them? Are they a challenge in every subject area?”). I also asked them what they thought of writing, both in general and when it came to answering questions that required longer answers. Later on in the conversation, I prompted them to share their opinions of the usefulness of classroom discussions, whether they liked talking in large or small peer groups, and what their reactions are to questions asking for explanations and/or reasons for their conclusions. I added these in because, in the middle of the focus group, I wondered if the students might find it helpful to talk to each other about possible answers to higher-order thinking questions before attempting to answer them individually.
The students told me in no uncertain terms that they disliked questions that required explanations and evidence for their answers. When asked, they said that they did not have any kind of method of going about answering these types of questions. Instead, they might read over the question a few times, but even then they sometimes do not really understand what it is asking them to do. When that happened, they said they got “very confused”, “overwhelmed”, and “bored”.
On a positive note, all of them said that they liked writing, even if they found it difficult sometimes. One student commented that he did not mind putting down long answers as long as he had enough room to write what he wanted to say. When I asked them what they thought of classroom discussions, they said they usually enjoyed them and thought they were helpful. The two girls pointed out that the only times they did not like them are when they are not given the chance to speak, or when someone else interrupted them. I suggested the idea of giving them time to have a discussion about the higher-order thinking questions they struggled with, and they responded with positive comments like, “I would love that,” “That’d give me a better idea of what [the questions] want”, and “Yeah! That would be less confusing.” The focus group agreed that they would like these discussions to be included, provided:
Overall, the students appeared to be struggling with higher-order thinking processes, such as analyzing what a question is asking for and evaluating which information would be relevant in a response. However, with their interests in writing and willingness to try small-group discussions, I began to see some possible ways of addressing this apparent area of need.
After considering the information I collected through ongoing informal observations, the whole-group survey, and the focus group, it seemed that my students could benefit from more intentional development of higher-order thinking skills and conceptual comprehension. Not only would improving their abilities in this are help them perform better in school, I believe it would inspire them to be real lifelong learners and lovers of wisdom. In order to set a more definite course to follow, I decided I needed to educate myself by exploring previous literature and research that might be relevant to my students’ needs.
Although this was a very general survey, I gained some insight that helped me to move forward in addressing the needs of my students. Based on their responses, the students did not appear to struggle with confidence in their ideas themselves. This suggested that their difficulty with giving appropriate responses to open-ended questions might have arisen from insufficient guidance and practice with those types of prompts. Also, in reflecting on the answers to the questions on content areas, it appeared that the students enjoyed language arts to some degree, making it a possible area of focus later.
Focus group. To follow up with the whole-group survey, I decided to talk to a small focus group in order to delve more deeply into the students’ responses and get at the heart of their challenges in writing and thought expression. The focus group was made up of two boys and two girls. I selected these particular students because they each had different academic levels in reading and writing, as well as different personalities and dispositions. However, I knew each one would be willing to be honest and open in our focus group conversation. These four students agreed to participate and were eager to help me in my research.
To help the focus group feel at ease, I gave them the choice of staying in the classroom or sitting outside on the grass in the sun, and they enthusiastically chose to be outside. Once we were settled in a quiet spot on the lawn, I opened our conversation by letting them know that I valued whatever they had to say and that I wanted to hear from everyone. I reminded them of a couple of basic rules: only one person should speak at a time, and listen respectfully to others when they are talking. Then, I told them that I wanted to learn more about what they thought of higher-order thinking questions and what they felt was difficult about them (e.g., “You know those types of questions that ask you to explain your thinking? What do you think of them? Do you like them? What is easy/hard about them? Are they a challenge in every subject area?”). I also asked them what they thought of writing, both in general and when it came to answering questions that required longer answers. Later on in the conversation, I prompted them to share their opinions of the usefulness of classroom discussions, whether they liked talking in large or small peer groups, and what their reactions are to questions asking for explanations and/or reasons for their conclusions. I added these in because, in the middle of the focus group, I wondered if the students might find it helpful to talk to each other about possible answers to higher-order thinking questions before attempting to answer them individually.
The students told me in no uncertain terms that they disliked questions that required explanations and evidence for their answers. When asked, they said that they did not have any kind of method of going about answering these types of questions. Instead, they might read over the question a few times, but even then they sometimes do not really understand what it is asking them to do. When that happened, they said they got “very confused”, “overwhelmed”, and “bored”.
On a positive note, all of them said that they liked writing, even if they found it difficult sometimes. One student commented that he did not mind putting down long answers as long as he had enough room to write what he wanted to say. When I asked them what they thought of classroom discussions, they said they usually enjoyed them and thought they were helpful. The two girls pointed out that the only times they did not like them are when they are not given the chance to speak, or when someone else interrupted them. I suggested the idea of giving them time to have a discussion about the higher-order thinking questions they struggled with, and they responded with positive comments like, “I would love that,” “That’d give me a better idea of what [the questions] want”, and “Yeah! That would be less confusing.” The focus group agreed that they would like these discussions to be included, provided:
- they work in small groups (“no more than two or three students”);
- they are able to select who is in the group (“so no one gets ignored”); and
- each student respects the others so that everyone gets a chance to speak (“no one interrupts”).
Overall, the students appeared to be struggling with higher-order thinking processes, such as analyzing what a question is asking for and evaluating which information would be relevant in a response. However, with their interests in writing and willingness to try small-group discussions, I began to see some possible ways of addressing this apparent area of need.
After considering the information I collected through ongoing informal observations, the whole-group survey, and the focus group, it seemed that my students could benefit from more intentional development of higher-order thinking skills and conceptual comprehension. Not only would improving their abilities in this are help them perform better in school, I believe it would inspire them to be real lifelong learners and lovers of wisdom. In order to set a more definite course to follow, I decided I needed to educate myself by exploring previous literature and research that might be relevant to my students’ needs.