Measuring Motivation, Mood and not Metacognitive Abilities
Launching Student Engagement Data Collection
I tell my students that my strengths do not lie in my creative writing or in the arts. You see, my brain seems to be wired for numbers and data — perhaps that is why I am a science teacher today. I like analyzing and interpreting data. I enjoy testing my predictions and making conclusions. That is why I am extremely (and maybe oddly?) excited for the development stage in my action research project.
In the last couple of weeks since my previous post, I’ve been working with my wonderful SET Lab consultant, Allison Furton, to develop a plan for launching my action research project in effort to answer my official research question: “Does student ownership over classroom design affect engagement?” To check out my previous post on the ideation process, click here, and to find out more about the research stage of my action research project titled “Research, Research, Research…,” click here. My focus will be on measuring engagement, which took some creativity to develop ways to authentically measure it in my classroom.
As I continue to move forward in my SET Lab action research and delve into the “develop” stage of the design thinking process, I have been working on creating various methods for data collection. Upon much delegation, Allison and I have ultimately decided upon 4 different means of data collection that I will use in the upcoming months.
The first means of methodology is through student surveys with rating scales. Two times a week, my students will complete a short survey about their engagement when they hear the short “beep” go off during class. They will rate their concentration, enjoyment, and mood during the activity, as well as answer the question, “What were you thinking when the timer went off?”
Second, as the classroom teacher I will be periodically completing a checklist in which I will check on and off task behavior through my observation during various 5 minute intervals in class. Examples of on task behaviors could include,hand raising, complying with requests, communication with their partners or group members, etc. Off task behaviors, on the other hand, could include talking out of turn, getting out of their seat without permission, using their laptops incorrectly, etc.
As my third method of data collection, my SET Lab consultant will be coming in to take field notes and/or data retrieval charts in my classroom weekly. Allison and I went back on forth on what we believed would be the most beneficial for the purpose of my research, but ultimately decided we would try both and make a decision after both of the data collection methods have been taken. For the purpose of my study, however, I have an inkling that the data retrieval chart, which will record where things are occuring in the physical space of my classroom, may be more beneficial in my research.
Lastly, I will ask my students to complete a Student Ownership Survey in which students will be asked to evaluate their feelings and attitude on their increased ownership in the classroom.
While going through these methods of data collection, I thought about how I will be approaching the classroom design change with my students. In the next few weeks, I will be hosting a couple classes in which I show students various flexible seating arrangements and options and ask them to research and vote on types of seating through google forms. Additionally, they will be asked to rearrange my classroom in pairs and make a blueprint of their ideal science classroom and its furniture. I also further ran into a few more questions in the last two weeks. Questions such as, developmentally, will middle schoolers be able to explain with words their engagement in an activity? Most research in this area has been done in higher education, a much more developmentally appropriate task for that population. My students, however, developmentally do not have the metacognitive ability to accurately analyze their thought process in at this point in their life. If this is true, would it be more appropriate to focus on additional data collection methods that involve teacher or adult observations? And finally, will there be a difference in the data between the genders of my students? If I teach a predominantly male student population, will their data differ significantly from the females that I teach? As a numbers person, I am very intrigued as to what I will find in the data in the next couple of months!
As I continue through my study and head towards the “launch” phase of the design process, I will be posting my progress here on Medium as well as on Twitter. To follow my progress as well as the other SET Lab delegates in their action research, follow the hashtags #educationalscientist and #SETlab.
