I recently read chapter five in Warren Berger's A More Beautiful Question and some ideas from Thomas Friedman about questioning and curiosity. Thomas Friedman believes that PQ (passion quotient) plus CQ (curiosity quotient) is greater than IQ (intelligence quotient), and I have to say I agree (Wang, 2016). Before considering these ideas I didn't realize how important it is to have the ability to formulate a good question; I also didn't have any idea how difficult it could be. I then thought, what is my beautiful question? After exploring this idea, I think I have come up with one: How can we help students learn how to manage their emotions in a healthy way? And how can we help them understand how important this is to functioning in society? Below is a short video I created that explains this question a bit more. I completed some research recently and sent out a survey that I created to help gather some more information about this question. I came up with the idea to implement student-teacher workshops to build empathy. I think this could help students and teachers understand each others perspectives. Now my question is, will this work? "...I'm going to venture forth in the world with my question and see what I find" (Berger, 2014, p. 211). References Berger, W. (2014). A More Beautiful Question. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Wang, A. (2016). Tom Friedman’s advice to millennials. Retrieved from http://blog.runnymede.com/tom-friedmans-advice-to-millennials
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Throughout the process of researching my chosen problem of self-regulation in the classroom, I have learned a lot. I have learned that wicked problems are actually very tricky, that good research takes a lot of time, and that creating surveys is very difficult! I also learned that it was all worth it! Researching a problem that directly affects my life almost daily and drafting a possible solution was extremely rewarding, and I am actually very excited to suggest it at my school for the coming year. As you can read in this blog post my wicked problem concerned teaching students how to self-regulate and accommodating students from different backgrounds. I did plenty of research and found two articles that provided a lot of great insight. Rayne A. Sperling, Crystal M. Ramsay, Philip M. Reeves, D. Jake Follmer & Aaron S. Richmond suggest that giving students, especially middle school students, assignments that foster elaborative processing, or assignments where students need to consider background knowledge and inquire, allowed them to practice self-regulation and motivation and this helped with their ability to do both overall. Regarding behavioral development, it is important for students to learn to self-motivate and self-explain, and elaborative processing allows students to do these things. (Wurster, M., & IIagan, D., 2017) The other article I found very informative suggested that self-regulation should be taught beginning at a young age, and that student-teacher relationships are immensely important to student development of self-regulation (Cadima, J., Verschueren, K., Leal, T., Guedes, C., 2015). Taking it even further, I created my own survey, which I detailed in this blog post, where I aimed to gather information that could provide more insight into a possible solution to my wicked problem. I did find that when asked if a teacher ever had a positive affect on their behavior in school, participants answered in ways that alluded to the fact they responded better to teachers who were calm, direct, and understanding when it came to behavior management. Picture produced by author I wasn’t very surprised by any of the research I found or by the results from my survey, but as I thought about it more deeply, I considered how teachers are usually directed to fix problems when they arise in the classroom. Then I thought, why can’t students be as well? It is beneficial for people of all ages to be self-reflective and improve where they can. (Smith, M., & Weinstein, Y., 2019) All of these things helped me come up with a possible solution. There are always professional developments offered for teachers, but not as many workshops are offered for students, and I think this could be indirectly contributing to some students lack of ability to self-regulate. Students also need to consider what they are doing and how they can improve. I decided that a student-teacher workshop could be beneficial to help fix this problem. I have detailed this workshop in a draft which you can find here. This is not a final draft by any means, but I think that it is a good start! Finally, I created a video that detailed my process throughout my journey to find a possible solution regarding self-regulation. You can find it below! If I have learned anything through my research and reading Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question, it’s that there is always room for improvement and there is always another question. I know that my potential solution can be iterated many more times and I am excited to see where it ends up. I would love to see anything like this take place in a school. Student-teacher workshops could be the next big thing! Please feel free to leave any comments or suggestions below! References
Cadima, J., Verschueren, K., Leal, T., Guedes, C. (2015). Classroom Interactions, Dyadic Teacher–Child Relationships, and Self–Regulation in Socially Disadvantaged Young Children. Retrieved http://web.a.ebscohost.com.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=6&sid=9e668ab5-3c6d-4837-9d3e-1099453c71f4%40sdc-v-sessmgr01 Rayne A. Sperling, Crystal M. Ramsay, Philip M. Reeves, D. Jake Follmer & Aaron S. Richmond (2016) Supporting students’ knowledge construction and self-regulation through the use of elaborative processing strategies, Middle School Journal, 47:3, 25-32, DOI: 10.1080/00940771.2015.1135099 Smith, M., & Weinstein, Y. (2019). Learning how to study using…elaboration: For students, for researchers, for teachers, learning scientists posts. Retrieved from http://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2016/7/7-1 Wurster, M., & IIagan, D. (2017). Make it about YOU: Learning with the self-reference effect. Retrieved from https://onlyhuman2.swanpsych.com/2017/05/01/make-it-about-you-learning-with-the-self-reference-effect/ This past week I collected some preliminary data using a survey I created to provide more insight to the question: how can we teach students of different backgrounds to self-regulate in the classroom? I sent the survey out to 13 of my coworkers and colleagues in my graduate program. So far, I have had 6 responses. Some of the data surprised me, but most of it was what I expected; especially because of the participants I chose. Most people who participated in my survey were teachers or students, so I imagined that they would value education and learning. The data from one question was particularly surprising to me. The question was, “did your parent(s) or guardian(s) communicate to you that school and learning were important?”. I expected that I would have close to 100% yes for responses, but 33.3% of participants responded “somewhat”. Now, 33.3% is not a high percentage by any means, but since most of the participants where either employed in education or students, I was expecting that education was something that would have been addressed often in all of their personal lives, because in my experience students who do well in school are reminded at home that succeeding in school and learning are important. However, they could have been told this at home and just had a different opinion. Below is a pie chart to give you a visual of this data! Picture produced by author. Most of the data I have collected so far did not surprise me, and there was one question in particular that stood out to me. The question where I expected the responses I received was, “if applicable, please provide an example of an experience you had with a teacher that was positive and beneficial to your learning in school”. The responses were as follows: As you can see, almost all the responses had to do with how engaging and excited their teachers were to teach their subject matter, or just to be teaching in general. I expected this as my students have even told me they are more interested when their teacher seems to be. Further, I am more excited when I feel that my teachers are passionate about what they are teaching! In these responses it is also apparent that these teachers made students feel comfortable and supported, which is something that also will lead to students questioning more, which according to Berger (2014), is something that leads to a deeper understanding. One thing that I gathered that I don’t think helps much with understanding self-regulation as it relates to diversity of backgrounds/cultures, which really is the main aspect of my question, is that 100% of my participants identified as white/Caucasian when asked what their ethnicity was. As I mentioned, the question I have is how can we teach students of different backgrounds/cultures to self-regulate; having 100% the same race/ethnicity participating doesn’t provide much insight to this question. I hope as I get more responses there will be more diversity in this area! Finally, how will this data help me come up with a solution to my problem/question? To be honest, I do wish that I had some participants that did have to be disciplined in school so that they could detail an experience and explain how they were disciplined or what they thought could have been a better method of discipline. However, there was one response to a question pictured below that helped me to think of a potential solution: Picture produced by author. This participant detailed an experience where he was misbehaving/being rude to his fellow classmates, and to address this his teacher pulled him aside to help him think about his behavior in a less confrontational way. This is something I do regularly and I was excited to see this response. I think to combat my question, a professional development could be arranged where different scenarios of misbehavior are acted out and the teacher must respond. I also think it would be interesting for students to attend this workshop so they can see that teachers are really just trying to help, and we are life-long learners as well! References Berger, W. (2014). A More Beautiful Question. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. |
AuthorMy name is Mallory Williams and I am just trying to better my teaching practice! Most of my posts will be about learning and understanding. Enjoy! Archives |