FIN Commons

SUMMARY

Laney College’s Inquiry focuses on a bilingual Wood Technology/ESL program called Carpentería Fina, which uses contextualized learning to accelerate the skill development of Hispanic students that want to move into more skilled positions in cabinet and furniture making. Five ESL and Wood Technology faculty, one counselor, and two students will use Lesson Study to investigate the effectiveness of contextualized learning. The group will work on one lesson a month, planning, discussing and analyzing the lesson to improve student learning and success. The team has a hunch that contextual learning is a critical factor in moving students at the developmental level or English Language learners to a higher level of occupational readiness and proficiency.

Team Leader: Sonja Franeta / ESL Department Chair
510-986-6967
sfraneta@yahoo.com

Team Members: Rosendo Del Toro / Wood Technology, Myron Franklin / Wood Technology, Daniel De Young / ESL, Loretta Hernandez / Counselor and two students or more in each semester.

Plans for Data Collection and Analysis

A. Zoom-Lens Inquiry: Focusing on Students

We plan to gather student work, self-reflections, interviews, and videotaped think alouds and other activities for analysis. These primarily non-traditional, qualitative methods of gathering data will help us access the feedback and learning processes of the non-traditional students we teach. They are non-traditional because they are not academic and they learn kinesthetically for the most part. Also, we are very interested in having them gather data from each other and maybe even from those who left the program. This method will help bring students and teachers closer together as well, which always allows for more learning.

We would like to collect this data during class time and in the wood tech shop. We will also be filming some of our meetings so we can bring that data into the picture as well. To analyze the data and discuss our research questions and possibly plan a specific lesson based on the data we collect, we would like to have a daylong retreat possibly in April. Then we will have another lesson study lesson at the end of the semester which we can analyze.

We would like to use Polya’s method of problem solving (which is very similar to lesson study: Understand the problem which is that we are trying to see what effect contextualizing has on students; devise a plan–find the connection between the data and the unknown; look for patterns, relate to previously known work on this method, or to previous groups of students; carry out the plan or lesson; look back and examine the data obtained. We would review the problem and method of solution so that you will be able to more easily recognize
 what can be done in the future to further contextualize and affect students positively.

My Inquiry Coach can help by being aware of the situation that we are in, namely CTE and ESL trying to work together and answer questions about how we are analyzing data as well as technical question of how to upload data onto the website.

B. Mid-Range Shots: Focusing on the Classroom

One specific lesson is: students are asked to detail the process of making a cabinet; in groups they can write down the steps and add them to photos and/or video on the computer or make a podcast to keep or show to other students.

The lesson study would help first by getting all instructors involved and sharing our technical and pedagogical expertise. The of course the analysis of how the whole thing worked and the end products would be benefitted by students and teachers collaborating on the analysis.

The team has already started this process and we hope to document it with the camera and through observation and interviews. This is an ongoing project with both the advanced group of students and the first group. We will do the analysis by mid-March.

Besides videotaping he groups and process of class work, we will collect student writings, i.e. the steps of the process and their finished products.

One question we would have is: are the students able to handle this assignment at the various levels? Others: Since the students work in groups, are the students who don’t seem to be participating much also learning? Can the students verbalize what they are learning? Do they remember the steps? Can they say them in nearly correct English?

As far as feedback from the students, we would like to ask if they felt it was a positive and effective learning experience from their point of view.

The Inquiry Coach can help by suggesting alternative ways of looking at how effective the contextualizing teaching/learning is.

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

In general the tracking of CTE programs is poor at Laney College. We can get data from individual departments and some departments do keep data on what happens to students. Laney also does not assess vocational students but we hope to be starting this with the fall semester.

In The Carpinteria Fina program we are now in our 3^rd semester. The first semester we had only one group with 26 beginning and 24 students ending the semester. The second semester we had continuing students (11) and an new group of about 11. We believe one reason for only 11 students returning was that there was a gap of 33 months of a summer between the semesters. The third semester we now have approximately 24 new students and 12 second semester students (including 3 taking the class again after last semester). These retention rates show the attraction and usefulness of our program to students.

We could do some interviews with former and current students to ask them about why they did or didn’t come back. We have one student who has matriculated so we could interview him to find out why it’s important to him. We could ask him about his experience in the rest of the class. Did these classes help him in any way after he matriculated?

The other data of grades could also be used—how do grades affect the retention of students. We would like to find out where the problems are? Are there life problems that affect student retention; is the teaching giving the students enough to retain them?

D. Video Footage

We would like to include videotaping of classes, student interviews, faculty interviews, faculty and student lesson study meetings and work in the shop. We may also include interviews with people outside the FIN Grant especially with Ron Mackrodt who is the head of the program and with former students.

Since our inquiry is about the effectiveness of contextualized learning, all of these interviews would help us learn more about our effectiveness.

My only concern is do we have to get permission from everyone we tape if there is a possibility they may be on the web. Is there a standard form for this and what should be included in such a permission form.

E. Student Voices

From the start Carpinteria Fina has been focused on student voices. Our film that shows on the Career Ladders website was all student voices. We thought about including two students in the inquiry group from the beginning of writing the grant. We would like to use student voices in the footage as well as the analysis of the data. Students will take video and analyze it. We look forward to this experience.