2.+Summary+of+Method

Summary of Method

A self-study methodology was selected for this project. I selected self-study as I wanted to examine and challenge my current practice in developing Managing Self with the students, with a view to making improvements to my practice and possibly developing a process that other teachers in my school may be able to adapt and use with their own class. “The aim of self-study research is to provoke, challenge, and illuminate rather than confirm and settle” (Bullough Jr. and Pinnegar, 2001, p. 20). I asked a former colleague who has experience in post-graduate study to assist me in analysing the data and looking for trends, themes and key issues in the findings. I am also hoping my EDUX 441 colleagues will be of assistance here!

Initial discussions with the class took place to determine the students’ current understanding about Managing Self. Children recorded their ideas on paper which I was then able to cluster together to find common themes. This enabled me to plan learning experiences within the class programme that aimed to develop children’s thinking further. Together, we unpacked the definition of the Managing Self competency from the New Zealand Curriculum. We selected the following key words and phrases from the definition for further exploration:
 * Self-motivation
 * “Can-do” attitude
 * Students seeing themselves as capable learners
 * Reliable
 * Resilient
 * Strategies for meeting challenges

Over the following two to three weeks, I took every opportunity available to make explicit to the children instances of these words and phrases, using their behaviours and classroom situations as examples. We read the story “Weslandia” by Paul Fleischman, and used this to discuss and develop further the children’s understanding of strategies for meeting challenges, being resilient and having self-motivation. Throughout this process I acted as a scribe, recording the children’s thoughts and comments. Some student reflection was recorded in their diaries.

Initially I had planned to develop a rubric with the students that gave explicit learning intentions and success criteria to work towards. However, due to time this was not realistic. Instead, we built on our current practice of using ‘learning challenges’ as goals for the day. This idea came from a Kath Murdoch seminar I attended (K. Murdoch, personal communcication, February 3, 2009). The children wrote and illustrated on cards, behaviours that contribute to learning. These were laminated and attached to the wall. Students select a card that challenges them each day and bring it to the carpet at roll time. When they are greeted, they return the greeting before telling the class what their ‘learning challenge’ is for the day. This is then velcroed to their desk as a reminder throughout the day. After examining our current learning challenges, the students recognised that many of these developed aspects of Managing Self. Examples were:

I am learning to:
 * Ignore distractions
 * Work quietly
 * Be in the right place at the right time
 * Keep my hands and feet still on the carpet

We used our developed understanding of “Managing Self’ to write new learning challenges to use in the classroom. We used the headings of ‘getting organised for learning’, ‘having a can-do attitude’, ‘being a capable learner’, and having ‘strategies for meeting challenges’, to place the new challenges under. Examples of the new learning challenges are:

I am learning to:
 * Try new things that might be hard (can-do attitude)
 * Learn from my mistakes (capable learner)
 * Talk myself through problems (strategies for meeting challenges)
 * Go back to my mistakes to work out where I went wrong (strategies for meeting challenges)
 * Pause early on and check I’m on the right track (strategies for meeting challenges)

Throughout the day when the opportunity arose, or at the end of the day, I asked the children to reflect on their progress towards their goal. This was mainly done orally but occasionally written by children. We used sentence starters such as “I felt proud when I…”, “I am good at…”, “Now I know…”, or the children rated themselves on a scale of one to three. One: “Oops, I forgot all about my learning challenge”. Two: “I made some progress towards my learning challenge because I…” (they needed to offer an example or ‘proof’) Three: “I’ve got this one sorted because I …” (two to three pieces of evidence towards this learning challenge).

If they rated themselves as a three, it was expected that they chose a different learning challenge the following day. I was conscious of providing the students feedback about their learning intention and as time went on, the students became better at giving each other feedback about their learning challenge also. “Specific constructive feedback about learning, as it is occurring, is one of the most powerful influences on student achievement.” (Ministry of Education, 2001, cited in Clarke et al, 2003, p. 57).

To analyse the gathered data, I have read widely and discussed with my critical friend the comments made by the children and the changes in both the classroom environment and the behaviours in the children and how these can be interpreted.