teacher’s development. european union comenius multilateral project ... · teacher’s...
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Responding to diversity by engaging with students’ voices: a strategy for
teacher’s development.
European Union Comenius Multilateral Project, 2011 -2014
Draft case study account, July 2012, IES LAS DEHESILLAS
This text has been written by one researcher from the University Autónoma of Madrid
who has been involved working with this school. Its content is based on the written
and verbal accounts provided by the teachers who have been involved in project
activities so far. Indeed, the trio have read it and they have had enough time to
remark.
Description of the school context:
The school Dehesilla is a state school (No fees must be paid by parents) located in
the village of Cercedilla, in the northwest of Madrid region. The majority of students
are Spanish, but other nationalities (specially, Moroccan, Latin American, and
Rumanian) are also represented in the student population. Students from the age of
eleven to eighteen are admitted, regardless their social or economic background.
The students come from different small villages (in the area) and they get to school
by school bus or taken by their parents. This makes it difficult for students to stay for
extracurricular activities in the afternoon.
Process:
The school followed the seven steps of the initial action plan. Below is a brief
description of each of the steps:
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Step 1 – Forming a Working Group
A working group was formed which comprised of three teachers from different
subject areas: Art, Technology and Science. Also, the school counsellor who is the
current coordinator of the project has been very active in the working group. All
teachers taught Year 8 (1º ESO) (12 – 13 years old) and they showed especially
motivated by the opportunity to observe each other in the classroom. Also they are a
little bit exhausted and downhearted for current moments in that education in Spain
(cuts, increase time of teaching, etc.) They hadn´t enough time to join one hour, so
meetings were held in the playground time approximately one a week from January
to June.
Step 2 – Analyzing Diversity
After several meetings discussing the implementation of the project in the school and
analyzing the school students diversity, teachers thought it was better to focus on
one class not the whole school in order to analyze diversity.Teachers wanted to carry
out the project in a class of Year 1º ESO (12-13 years old) because this group was
especially challenging for them and the results of the first evaluation meeting were
very disappointing for all the subjects. Teachers thought that maybe this project could
help them to improve their academic achievement. Students showed low academic
achievement (of the 19 students, 9 have unfinished primary education, it means, they
had some subjects retaken, 3 students repeating this year, in fact, only 7 students
had passed all the subjects in the first term) and also coexistence between peers
was damaged.
In order to analyze this classroom’s diversity several different sources of
information have been used, including the following:
Individual interviews with the school counsellor, trio teachers and the group’s
tutor.
Assessment of the documentation relevant to the initial evaluation and the
evaluation for the first term.
Review of the documentation for each student with regard to their academic
expectations at the college and the study time they dedicated to each subject.
Sociogram.
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The accounts found were discussed with the school’s work group. Teachers
underlined the importance of group diversity, especially from three sources:
a- Diversity deriving from previous knowledge from school experience as well as
family and other cultural experience.
b- Diversity in the level of knowledge acquired at school, especially written and oral
competency levels in the Spanish language.
c- Diversity in the availability of assistance at home in completing homework tasks.
Step 3 – Collect the Views of Students
The Project was presented to the students by means of a flyer containing general
guidance by the deputy head teacher, the school counsellor and the university
researcher.
Figure 1. Flyer used for the Project presentation.
In order to gather students’ voices several measures were adopted. It is tried to link
these activities with the activities planned by the counselling department this
academic year.
The first activity consisted of an exercise involving unfinished sentences
(Appendix 1) for collecting general information about coexistence and learning
issues which was useful for design other activities, such as a photo-elicitation
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activity (Appendix 2). This activity was used in order to facilitate discussions with
the student about participation, fair and unfair issues, teaching methods.The photos
were selected by the university researcher and they reflected different lessons in
several state schools in Spain.
Subsequently, two discussion groups (4 students each group) were conducted by the
researcher. These students had showed passive attitude or had barely spoken in the
previous sessions. In the discussion groups had to answer in written briefly. The
researcher read the answers but they did not know who had given the answer. Thus,
anonymity was guaranteed for helping them feel more confident. The questions are
mainly related to class participation factors. The university research transcribed
interviews.
Moreover, an information collection sheet on every day activities was completed
after each lesson. Students were asked to state how many minutes of class-time
were lost, whether there had been any conflict situations or disrespectful behaviour
and if so, how these had been resolved and positive aspects to the classrooms.
Every day, a student was responsible for filling in the sheet and placing it in the
designated letter box in the hall of the school. The total of the students (19) filled in
this task. They were very responsible for doing it. Following, the tutor discussed their
accounts with the student and they reached some commitments as a group. The
agreements were hanging in the classroom’s wall.
This activity helped students to reflect personal factors and group factors relevant for
improving their attainments. So, they need to take responsibility of their own learning.
Finally, information was collected from written essays by students who were asked to
give advice to their teachers on certain specific aspects such as classroom’ layout,
homework tasks or evaluation criteria, among others.
After analysing all the data collected, a summary was drawn up and distributed to the
teachers as a reminder of students’ opinions regarding how to bring about
improvements in the classroom. It is decided to include direct quotations from the
students as they felt that these would be more powerful rather than just summarising
the themes that emerged.
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Table 1: Students’ views about improvements in teaching
Discipline
“Teachers don´t reinforce that we behave properly. Always
fixing what misbehave "( student).
Improved understanding
/explanation
“Sketching of each lesson”. ( student).
“When all messages are written on the board.” (student)
“When I could help to my classmates who don´t understand the
lesson”.( student).
“The teacher explains giving examples of some of the students
in real life” (student).
“When the teacher explains with familiar words.” (student)
“Sometimes teachers are expressed in a way we do not
understand " (student).
“We understand better when the teacher is not angry”. (student)
“That classes not just listen to the teacher . It’s difficult to pay
sustained attention.” ( student).
“When we do not copy all the time” ( student).
Assessment
“Take exams shorter.” (student)
“To evaluate students behavior .” (student)
Participation
“Teachers do not ask everyone “. (student)
“Teachers should be taken out to the blackboard more often”.
• “In class there is always a lot of noise in order to participate.” I
do not participate because I know nothing ( student).
“I know that if I speak up,my colleagues will laugh at me
(student).
Steps 4, 5 and 6 - Planning research lesson, -Teaching the Research Lesson –
Interviewing Students.
It is exposed next steps jointly because accounts have more sense:
a) Lesson planned bearing in mind the views of students and professional
discussions amongst the trio.
b) Lesson taught recorded and observers filled in a questionnaire.
c) Different academic achievement and cultural background students were
interviewed by the university researcher.
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It was no very easy for teachers to decide on the study lesson topic due to teaching
across different subject areas. Finally, it is chosen the earth’s structure topic. A
distribution of functions, background knowledge and theory-practice was made. The
three sessions were recorded on video.
The first session was a theory science lesson. Teachers decided to support this
theoretical part of the lesson with illustrations (art lesson) in which students had to
design an earth structure with different materials in groups of three people, in pairs or
on their own. The grouping was elected by students. In technology lesson, the
teacher explained briefly the activity and students worked in pairs.
The lessons were too different from each other depending on the subjects, the
teaching strategies, and the teaching style. Each observer should fill in a
questionnaire (appendix III) with 16 different criteria previously designed by the
school counsellor and the university researcher. Teachers knew the questionnaire
beforehand and they had time to make comments some weeks before recording. In
each of the three lessons planned, the teachers and the counsellor filled out a
questionnaire.
Nine interviews about the lessons content and methodology were conducted with
students with different levels of knowledge and participation. In general, students
thought lessons helped the motivation and appreciated teachers’ effort to work
together.
During the interviewing stage, students, at the science lesson, realised that the topic
was interesting because the teacher linked each new knowledge to the previous one,
but they thought the teacher’s explanation was too long to pay attention. Indeed,
teachers also admitted that the explanation was too long for them as well. Meanwhile
observers detected high levels of engagement and enjoyment in the computers.
Step 7- Identifying implications for practices
After concluding each lesson, a meeting was held with teachers (trio) to assess the
content and the main achievements and the difficulties encountered. They reflected
on some teaching routines which is not very common out of habit and lack of time.
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In the discussions, teachers identified some successful practices carried out by their
colleagues but, at the same time, they recognized that their teaching style was
completely different and, so, they wouldn’t be able to implement these practices.
Regarding to the observation questionnaire, teachers considered it was too long for
collecting all the information during one 50 minutes class. Also they considered
indicators would be more useful for a theoretical class than a practical one.
Therefore, indicators will be reviewed in the next course.
In light of the comments made after lessons by students, teachers agree with the
students about the following aspects:
a) Explanations
Teachers and students agreed about explanations, whenever possible are more
effective in small groups than a large group. In fact, the students insisted on
explanations to great group are long, they are often disconnected.
b) At the end of sessions
According to students, teachers often end lessons quickly. Students need time to
recap the contents and remember the homework tasks to do. Teachers fully agreed
with the students in the statement noted.
Moreover, it exposed some disagreements between teachers and students
indicating thus that teachers don´t consider to introduce the suggestions that
students have noted previously:
a) Materials.
Students found very useful that teachers gave them some written schemes
and found more crucial to learn by doing activities rather than by listening
long explanations.
Teachers partially agreed with students but also they felt that despite the way
how to work the contents, students didn´t study enough to learn and
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therefore, teachers perceived that sometimes their efforts for designing
materials were useless and many times they saw materials lying on the floor.
For some students, the sessions (art workshop and Technology) need clearer
guidelines. Students think that if they got a guideline in writing would be
easier to get to understand the steps. However, teachers consider that the
written materials requested not read, because what they want is that the
teacher is resolving doubts individually.
"They want me to write on the board because they see it as the
TV and when they want to copy is not copy them. I'm not
defensive but ... the daily practice of this course is that as
other" (teacher)
"Experience is not good, in the laboratory of the years my
experience tell us that is not achieved self-employment"
(teacher)
b) Evaluation. According to the students, teachers should evaluate to students more often.
"We are encouraged that the teacher asked us in class on a daily basis" (student)
However, teachers think when asking students about lesson more often, results are
similar when they ask lesson more infrequent, equally negative.
c) Activities.
Students value different levels of knowledge activities when they do. Teachers
believe that students prefer to do different activities in groups as they are often easier
for them.
Teachers were in a dilemma that explicitly or implicitly emerged in many occasions.
On one hand, they acknowledged the students’ efforts to be very positive because
they were doing small actions and making efforts, but, on the other hand, teachers
considered appropriate just to hold them because they did not consider their levels of
knowledge adequate to endorse or promote course.
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"I was looking some working sheets and I noticed that the current activities for students belong to special education needs students. I've noticed but I've gone down without noticing " (teacher).
"We are continuously evaluating many small efforts but they don´t know enough to pass. If students take an exam from 2003, it will be impossible for them to pass it.” (teacher).
Barriers and opportunities:
Teachers have recognized the importance of mutual observation and, in
particular, the wealth of benefit to be gained from reflecting jointly on teaching
methods, but they have not developed teaching materials jointly. The true
shift underlying the whole process is the relations and dynamics that have
arisen from sharing their teaching experience. From the joint discussion, it is
mobilized internal structures encouraging each participant's knowledge
changes in both procedural and attitudinal ways. Also, it is interesting how
teachers became more aware of their teaching style.
The group of students received with great interest the consultation process in
which they were given a voice, and have stated that the teachers forming the
trio always took an interest in them. However, it is felt that the data were
insufficiently contrasted with the students. It should be necessary watching
video all together and analyse with students in detail. So, it would be
convenient adding one step more in order to contrast information with students.
Another issue that emerged is related to teachers who are not sure of being
able to identify those teaching factors that better help students to learn more
significantly. One sums it very clearly:
"Although there are many teachers who do well or you don´t know
really know stuff if you have done contributes to success" (teacher)
Therefore, it is necessary to deepen into this topic and make an attempt to
find the relationship between diversity students’ sources and teaching
methods or designed activities.
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APPENDIX I- UNFINISHED SENTENCES
1. I feel good in class when ......................
2. I think the lessons are fun class when ..........
3. I understand the lessons better when .....................
4. The worst thing about this school is ..................
5. I would love it left me in this center ............................
6. The worst in my class is ...................
7. I feel insecure in class when ........................
8. I understand better what the teacher says when he / she ..........................
9. I wish my teachers ....................
10. It is unfair when the teacher / a .............................
APPENDIX II
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APPENDIX III OBSERVATION REGISTER CRITERIA
1.It includes any activity or to detect dynamic background and interests and relate
them to new activities.
2. The teacher explains clearly the objectives of the lesson
3. Connect the content with the current situation with previous issues, with events
experienced or known in everyday life.
4. The information offered to students is well organized.
5. It attempts to present the information visual aids
6. Clear instructions are given.
7. Comprehension checks are made.
8. You remember general rules and procedures (raise your hand, not getting up,
etc.).
9. Anticipation of disruptive behavior (X need anything?)
10. Proposed different ways of achieving activity or activities
11. The materials used are attractive to students.
12. Is made positive comments group or individual.
13. Ensures that is clear about homework tasks.
14. Is the written content offered to students fragmented so that it can be understood
by students in sequence?
15. Are there activities for reinforcement and expansion in the various subjects
taught?
16. Are there opportunities for students to participate?