Conclusion and Final Reflection
The effects of phase 1 encouragement on participation
This action research started because students seemed uncomfortable during a Socratic Seminar, and I wanted to help them feel less uncomfortable around their peers. I wanted to encourage them so that they would know that their opinion mattered, and that others benefit from hearing their voice. In my phase 1 implementation, I realized that I gave positive feedback as the means of encouragement because the feedback seemed to give credibility to my encouraging words. The positive feedback allowed me to follow Carol Dweck's idea of the growth mindset teacher in that I provided encouragement while still setting high expectations (Dweck, 2006). Even though I did not see the immediate effects of encouragement/positive feedback on small group participation in phase 1, I did see students voice their opinions in other forms of participation, and I did see my relationship with the students improve. Also, I saw the effects of students encouraging/giving positive feedback to each other on the classroom environment. As a result of these observations, I want to continue to try to create opportunities for students to share authentic encouragement and feedback with each other.
Improving the facilitation of student-to-student feedback
In the student feedback forms I received from my phase 2, students who did not meet with their groups provided insight into why they sought other ways to prepare for their TPOL. One student shared that he felt uncomfortable presenting and receiving feedback with students who weren't his friends. Another student shared that she did not understand the expectations for her group members. In order to improve students' experiences in their feedback groups for next year, I want to share my observations of what students did who had a positive experience in meeting with their critical friends group. I noticed that one group had a student who facilitated each of the discussions. She asked for feedback from other peers while also offering her own. She also chose when students shared. In addition to strong leadership, I saw students holding high expectations for each other. As I shared before in my phase 2 implementation, I saw two students not accepting their peer's lack of preparedness. Instead, they asked him to share his current presentation, and asked questions to get at a deeper understanding of the claims he wanted to present. A final strategy I saw students using was positivity. The groups who seemed most successful to me were the ones who were laughing and smiling with each other. As one student pointed out, it can be uncomfortable presenting to students who aren't friends. If I were to continue this action research in conducting a third phase, I might examine the effects that these three aspects, leadership, holding high expectations and reminding students to stay positive, have on students' perceptions of the quality of feedback they receive. By examining these areas, I hope to better understand what good feedback looks like and how it can be taught to students.
In addition to these strategies, my teaching partner and I observed and discussed how including students as audience members in the actual TPOLs seemed to unexpectedly improve students' TPOLs and their confidence levels. After the first day, my teaching partner and I had anticipated the following days to have worse performances than the first due to lower achieving students scheduled for those days and observations of students' progress on their TPOLs during the previous school days. However, we found that the presentations actually seemed to improve. My teaching partner and I both attributed this to the fact that students were audience members on days other than their presentations. After Day 3 of watching TPOLs, my teaching partner said that for students whom he expected to not take the TPOL as seriously, he thought being an audience member really helped them see how difficult TPOLs were and would bet that they went home and worked on it more. I asked one student informally what she thought of the TPOLs after being an audience member, and she said, "It's pretty straightforward. Before watching I didn't really know what to expect, but now I feel better...I think I know what I have to do."
In addition to seeing presentations improve as a result of being audience members, I saw growth in the quality of the audience as well. The audience members for the last days of the TPOL offered the best questions for their groups and the best feedback (except for the last hour of the last day, which I attribute to exhaustion). There are many reasons that could explain why feedback had improved, but my teaching partner and I both seemed to think that one reason was because they had heard the questions we asked them during their own presentation, and asked those same questions when they were audience members. I distinctly remember two particular students doing this. One of the students asked the question, "Did you take any other steps than the ones you listed?" I remember my teaching partner asked him this question during his TPOL. The other student asked, "What was the most important thing you learned from this project?" I remember asking him that question during his TPOL.
As audience members, their roles were very similar to that of their critical friends groups with the difference being that my teaching partner and I were also in the room facilitating. Because of these similarities, I still see these effects as a result of student feedback even though it was not the student feedback I was originally examining. One reason for the success of having students as audience members might be the teacher presence and the formal setting of the TPOL. In their critical friends group, they were generally left alone and through my brief observations of these interactions, saw less serious attitude and less structure. Although this worked for some groups, in the future I might want to assign students roles within their critical friends groups or to run through a mock presentation again in the quiet room for students who still seem confused on the expectations or structure of the presentation.
The impact of teacher expectations and follow-through
Based on my observations and the data I collected on student performance in phase 2, I found a difference in student response between when teacher expectations were not consistently upheld and when they were. During my phase 1, I wasn't as rigid as I feel I should have been in upholding the expectations for participation that our class created. I did not repeat those expectations nor did I correct students who were not upholding our classroom guidelines. In my phase 2, my teaching partner and I set very rigorous expectations for students giving feedback, and for the most part, I think we upheld them by repeating those expectations and by not accepting presentations that did not meet the criteria. When we modeled the presentation in front of the whole class with four student panelists, we told the student panelists that everyone was expected to ask questions and offer feedback. When the conversation lulled, we told students to have a question ready for the next section, and we called out students' names to share those questions. When we walked around during the TPOL scripts, we reiterated the importance of offering and receiving feedback, and sat down with groups who did not seem to be giving the quality and amount of feedback we expected. By emphasizing high expectations for both the criteria for the TPOL and in student-to-student feedback, and by following through on those expectations, students seemed to take their TPOLs more seriously.
Helping my quiet students
This action research started because I wanted the more quiet students to feel confident voicing their opinions. In their presentations, all three of the students shared their ideas in a very thoughtful, articulate manner. The two students who sought feedback, either from the teacher or from other students, seemed more confident and their presentations were more clearly organized than the student who had not sought feedback. This could be a result of individual differences such as preparedness or the ability to organize thoughts clearly rather than the result of not seeking feedback. Although these might have been contributing factors, from my observations, he still seemed uncomfortable sharing his opinion rather than unwilling. The difference to me is that the students who are unwilling, or don't consider it the most effective method still have the skill and confidence to voice their opinion, while the students who are uncomfortable might not have that skill, and might therefore not have the option to voice their opinions or ask for help. To me, that means they might not have the means to find answers to questions they have, or to further their learning and the skills they need for their future. Therefore, I want to continue to build the confidence and skills of asking for feedback and voicing their thoughts so that they can use other people as resources.
In order to better support students who don't share their ideas, one strategy I'd like to explore next year is paying close attention to class participation at the beginning of the year, identify students who seem uncomfortable or unwilling to participate, and meet with those students immediately. That way, the student and I could set goals early in the school year for areas we'd like to see growth, and we would have more time to discover strategies that work and don't work for the student. The limited time I had to implement phase 2 was a great limitation to the findings of this research, because I did not have the opportunity to see the long term effects of student-to-student feedback. In the future, I hope to start implementing these strategies early on so that I have the whole year to see the effects.
Long after I close this action research, I hope I will still be on my quest to help quiet students become less quiet. Although there is nothing wrong with being quiet, in TPOL after TPOL, students' faces lit up as they shared how they came out of their shell since freshman year. Many said that this accomplishment is the one in which they are most proud. Even students who still seemed incredibly quiet in my class shared this sentiment. There are probably many reasons why students repeatedly shared this idea in their TPOL. One of those reasons might be that the students are proud when they push themselves in such a difficult skill area as voicing their ideas with their peers. A possibility is they may have said what the teacher wanted to hear, or heard what their peers said and repeated it. However from their faces, their words seemed authentic, and therefore I don't think this was the case. Another reason is best summarized with the words of Lucius Anneaus Seneca: "One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood" (Seton, 2004). It is nice to be understood by another human being. This explanation seems to correspond best with my observations. Whatever the reason, I hope my teaching practice develops so that I can help students move towards feeling confident and comfortable voicing their ideas.
This action research started because students seemed uncomfortable during a Socratic Seminar, and I wanted to help them feel less uncomfortable around their peers. I wanted to encourage them so that they would know that their opinion mattered, and that others benefit from hearing their voice. In my phase 1 implementation, I realized that I gave positive feedback as the means of encouragement because the feedback seemed to give credibility to my encouraging words. The positive feedback allowed me to follow Carol Dweck's idea of the growth mindset teacher in that I provided encouragement while still setting high expectations (Dweck, 2006). Even though I did not see the immediate effects of encouragement/positive feedback on small group participation in phase 1, I did see students voice their opinions in other forms of participation, and I did see my relationship with the students improve. Also, I saw the effects of students encouraging/giving positive feedback to each other on the classroom environment. As a result of these observations, I want to continue to try to create opportunities for students to share authentic encouragement and feedback with each other.
Improving the facilitation of student-to-student feedback
In the student feedback forms I received from my phase 2, students who did not meet with their groups provided insight into why they sought other ways to prepare for their TPOL. One student shared that he felt uncomfortable presenting and receiving feedback with students who weren't his friends. Another student shared that she did not understand the expectations for her group members. In order to improve students' experiences in their feedback groups for next year, I want to share my observations of what students did who had a positive experience in meeting with their critical friends group. I noticed that one group had a student who facilitated each of the discussions. She asked for feedback from other peers while also offering her own. She also chose when students shared. In addition to strong leadership, I saw students holding high expectations for each other. As I shared before in my phase 2 implementation, I saw two students not accepting their peer's lack of preparedness. Instead, they asked him to share his current presentation, and asked questions to get at a deeper understanding of the claims he wanted to present. A final strategy I saw students using was positivity. The groups who seemed most successful to me were the ones who were laughing and smiling with each other. As one student pointed out, it can be uncomfortable presenting to students who aren't friends. If I were to continue this action research in conducting a third phase, I might examine the effects that these three aspects, leadership, holding high expectations and reminding students to stay positive, have on students' perceptions of the quality of feedback they receive. By examining these areas, I hope to better understand what good feedback looks like and how it can be taught to students.
In addition to these strategies, my teaching partner and I observed and discussed how including students as audience members in the actual TPOLs seemed to unexpectedly improve students' TPOLs and their confidence levels. After the first day, my teaching partner and I had anticipated the following days to have worse performances than the first due to lower achieving students scheduled for those days and observations of students' progress on their TPOLs during the previous school days. However, we found that the presentations actually seemed to improve. My teaching partner and I both attributed this to the fact that students were audience members on days other than their presentations. After Day 3 of watching TPOLs, my teaching partner said that for students whom he expected to not take the TPOL as seriously, he thought being an audience member really helped them see how difficult TPOLs were and would bet that they went home and worked on it more. I asked one student informally what she thought of the TPOLs after being an audience member, and she said, "It's pretty straightforward. Before watching I didn't really know what to expect, but now I feel better...I think I know what I have to do."
In addition to seeing presentations improve as a result of being audience members, I saw growth in the quality of the audience as well. The audience members for the last days of the TPOL offered the best questions for their groups and the best feedback (except for the last hour of the last day, which I attribute to exhaustion). There are many reasons that could explain why feedback had improved, but my teaching partner and I both seemed to think that one reason was because they had heard the questions we asked them during their own presentation, and asked those same questions when they were audience members. I distinctly remember two particular students doing this. One of the students asked the question, "Did you take any other steps than the ones you listed?" I remember my teaching partner asked him this question during his TPOL. The other student asked, "What was the most important thing you learned from this project?" I remember asking him that question during his TPOL.
As audience members, their roles were very similar to that of their critical friends groups with the difference being that my teaching partner and I were also in the room facilitating. Because of these similarities, I still see these effects as a result of student feedback even though it was not the student feedback I was originally examining. One reason for the success of having students as audience members might be the teacher presence and the formal setting of the TPOL. In their critical friends group, they were generally left alone and through my brief observations of these interactions, saw less serious attitude and less structure. Although this worked for some groups, in the future I might want to assign students roles within their critical friends groups or to run through a mock presentation again in the quiet room for students who still seem confused on the expectations or structure of the presentation.
The impact of teacher expectations and follow-through
Based on my observations and the data I collected on student performance in phase 2, I found a difference in student response between when teacher expectations were not consistently upheld and when they were. During my phase 1, I wasn't as rigid as I feel I should have been in upholding the expectations for participation that our class created. I did not repeat those expectations nor did I correct students who were not upholding our classroom guidelines. In my phase 2, my teaching partner and I set very rigorous expectations for students giving feedback, and for the most part, I think we upheld them by repeating those expectations and by not accepting presentations that did not meet the criteria. When we modeled the presentation in front of the whole class with four student panelists, we told the student panelists that everyone was expected to ask questions and offer feedback. When the conversation lulled, we told students to have a question ready for the next section, and we called out students' names to share those questions. When we walked around during the TPOL scripts, we reiterated the importance of offering and receiving feedback, and sat down with groups who did not seem to be giving the quality and amount of feedback we expected. By emphasizing high expectations for both the criteria for the TPOL and in student-to-student feedback, and by following through on those expectations, students seemed to take their TPOLs more seriously.
Helping my quiet students
This action research started because I wanted the more quiet students to feel confident voicing their opinions. In their presentations, all three of the students shared their ideas in a very thoughtful, articulate manner. The two students who sought feedback, either from the teacher or from other students, seemed more confident and their presentations were more clearly organized than the student who had not sought feedback. This could be a result of individual differences such as preparedness or the ability to organize thoughts clearly rather than the result of not seeking feedback. Although these might have been contributing factors, from my observations, he still seemed uncomfortable sharing his opinion rather than unwilling. The difference to me is that the students who are unwilling, or don't consider it the most effective method still have the skill and confidence to voice their opinion, while the students who are uncomfortable might not have that skill, and might therefore not have the option to voice their opinions or ask for help. To me, that means they might not have the means to find answers to questions they have, or to further their learning and the skills they need for their future. Therefore, I want to continue to build the confidence and skills of asking for feedback and voicing their thoughts so that they can use other people as resources.
In order to better support students who don't share their ideas, one strategy I'd like to explore next year is paying close attention to class participation at the beginning of the year, identify students who seem uncomfortable or unwilling to participate, and meet with those students immediately. That way, the student and I could set goals early in the school year for areas we'd like to see growth, and we would have more time to discover strategies that work and don't work for the student. The limited time I had to implement phase 2 was a great limitation to the findings of this research, because I did not have the opportunity to see the long term effects of student-to-student feedback. In the future, I hope to start implementing these strategies early on so that I have the whole year to see the effects.
Long after I close this action research, I hope I will still be on my quest to help quiet students become less quiet. Although there is nothing wrong with being quiet, in TPOL after TPOL, students' faces lit up as they shared how they came out of their shell since freshman year. Many said that this accomplishment is the one in which they are most proud. Even students who still seemed incredibly quiet in my class shared this sentiment. There are probably many reasons why students repeatedly shared this idea in their TPOL. One of those reasons might be that the students are proud when they push themselves in such a difficult skill area as voicing their ideas with their peers. A possibility is they may have said what the teacher wanted to hear, or heard what their peers said and repeated it. However from their faces, their words seemed authentic, and therefore I don't think this was the case. Another reason is best summarized with the words of Lucius Anneaus Seneca: "One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood" (Seton, 2004). It is nice to be understood by another human being. This explanation seems to correspond best with my observations. Whatever the reason, I hope my teaching practice develops so that I can help students move towards feeling confident and comfortable voicing their ideas.