FIN Commons

ANSWERS TO FIN QUESTIONS:

A. Zoom-Lens Inquiry: Focusing on Students

The team will gather student data in four ways: one-on-one interviews (on camera and informally); student writing assignments that demonstrate both autobiographical narratives and metacognitive reflection; video taping classroom discussions; and a small focus group, which will provide us feedback on our inquiry questions, process, and analysis. We hope to better understand the confidence with which students develop their own narratives around educational success and failure, develop metacognitive reflection and planning skills, and shift their identities in relationship to their own learning.

In order to frame this inquiry, the team will develop a rubric that will be used to evaluate student narratives and metacognition in their writing and spoken communication to understand if a focus on student identity, autobiographical writing, and metacognition changes their ability to transfer skills and confidence to other classrooms and into their lives.

The timing of analysis will be ongoing. At each stage of the inquiry, the team will make adjustments to the collection schedule and instruments. For instance, after video taping our lesson plan, we have been working on making sure our classroom surveys measure three things: metacognition, locus of control (self-efficacy/self-confidence), and other measures of classroom engagement. At the end the of the semester, we will have a retreat with our student inquiry team to evaluate the information that we’ve collected to make a schedule for the following semester and evaluate what we’ve learned.

Questions: We’ve set up a data collection schedule that we hope to fulfill. Whether or not we’re able to analyze and understand it might be much more difficult. Any thoughts?

B. Mid-Range Shots: Focusing on the Classroom

The lesson study will focus on the presentation and discussion of Joseph Campbell’s the Hero’s and Heroine’s Journey. After a lecture and discussion of this framework, students will take a look at their own writing to see how it matches up to the Hero’s Journey. Hopefully, as we tape these discussions, we’ll have a chance to see if this framework helps students see a link between their own journey and story with a broader story of overcoming obstacles. In addition, the lesson teacher will develop a rubric with those students to determine the quality of their story. We’ve already taped the planning of that lesson and the first class for this lesson study. While taping the class, we found that students did not want to share in front of the camera, and we are worried that it might feel invasive and cause students to feel vulnerable. Even though we had scheduled a second classroom shoot, we missed that day, but will try to return after students complete the assignment.

Ideally, we would like to pull students aside and have them narrate their thoughts on connecting their narratives to the Hero’s Journey, sharing their own stories, and thinking about how to develop authentic autobiographical narratives that help them examine their lives more closely. With such sensitive and personal information, it seems that it might be difficult to videotape students in the midst of this process, but we might be able to conduct pre and post discussions with them. Once we finish taping the video and look at the student work to develop a rubric, then we’ll sit down to analyze the data.

C. Wide-Angle Lens: Focusing on Larger Trends in Institutional Data

We will gather institutional data on grades, writing assessments, persistence, and possibly administer the survey to students taking transfer-level classes. We would like to track down students who started in English 269 and have moved past English 1A to understand what helped them successfully move through the required classes.

D. Video Footage

In addition to the footage taken in class, we will conduct at least one focus group this semester with about 10 students (3 students from 3 classes) to help us better frame the questions for our inquiries and to test our assumptions. The focus group will be videotaped, and hopefully these students will agree to be interviewed in one-on-one on tape for more discussion on the project. Also, we hope to tape our day of reflection or retreat where we will analyze the data gathered and begin planning for next semester.

E. Inclusion of Student Voices

We will use students to help videotape each section of our inquiry, work with them to edit our tapes, and use our team to shape our inquiry. In addition, the focus groups will provide students in our class a chance to shape the focus of our inquiry; the focus group will also help us recruit students who would like to participate in our project for the long haul. We hope to work with our student team to develop a plan for the fall semester, especially to develop our inquiry questions and methods for capturing authentic video footage.

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