Independent Learners, Independent Thinkers

1

Independent Learners, Independent Thinkers: Creating a Student-Centered Learning Project II

Thomas Richards

Bell Multicultural High School

District of Columbia Public Schools

Submitted June 2003

Introduction

For the last two years, I have been teaching at Bell Multicultural High School in the District of Columbia. Bell Multicultural High School has a total school population of 650 students, 80% of whom are English Language Learners. I have taught 9th grade ESL for both of my years at Bell.

This year I had three intermediate ESL, 9th grade English classes. The classes are a year long, but for the last nine weeks, my classes changed into world geography. Though technically all three classes are the same level, the variation between the classes in ability is quite great. Though for geography, I used the same curriculum and project for all three classes.

Purpose of Study

The ESL classroom faces many challenges not present in a traditional educational classroom. Many students have interrupted schooling or are completely illiterate in their native language. Also the students have the combined angst of being behind in school, facing culture shock, and other issues that coincide with changing cultures, countries, and continents. One of the common outcomes of all of these challenges is students do not wish to take chances.

Risking failure is a key factor in growing as a learner. My students often enjoy wrote learning such as fill in the blanks, worksheets, and other very discrete tasks. While those tactics can be useful for review or for reinforcing, knowledge, I wanted more from. I wanted my students to be able to risk failure and learn critical thinking skills through trial and error.

I often found myself either not scaffolding information enough for my students, resulting in students shutting down, or scaffolding too much and effectively doing the work for the student. Due to this dilemma I created a long-term project jointly with Tyler Patrick, an educator at my school who also teaches geography to ESL students. The goal of this project was to provide enough support that our students felt they had the knowledge to complete the project, without making it a mere fill-in-the-blanks assignment.

Explanation of the Student Project

The world geography curriculum was centered around the five themes of geography: Location, place, region, human / environment interaction, and movement. The first week of the course, was basic map skills and other fundamentals of geography, the second week explained the five themes and some other larger overarching issues, and the next seven weeks moved through the major regions of the world, applying the fundamental skills and the five themes to each region.

After the second week, the major project was introduced. The project asked the student to pick a country that he or she had an interest in. No class could have duplicate countries and no student could pick his or her native country. I made sure each class had a complete range of world regions (Asia, Africa, Europe, Southwest Asia, etc.) represented.

The goal of the research, to have ESL students take educational risks and grow as independent learners was supported by the interwoven nature of the project and curriculum. By reinforcing the five themes with every region we studied as a class, the students were meant to feel familiar enough with them to be able to apply them to their country. The information would be different, but the skill set to obtain the information would be reviewed for seven weeks. Thus the strong interconnectedness of curriculum and project should strike the right balance of scaffolding information without doing the real work for the student.

Due to my student’s abilities, many alternative skill sets were taught outside the scope of geography. Basic research skills, and even the acquisition of library materials were taught during the nine weeks. Also, many reading strategies, note taking, and paraphrasing were taught to make sure the student’s could effectively acquire information outside the classroom.

Connection to Literature

The needs of the Bell’s ESL Population necessitate a Constructivist approach. With a significant number of students 16 years o older when they arrive, many won’t complete their 4-5 year high school education. There it is paramount for the ESL teachers to impart a sense of independent learning in the little time we have. Many studies point to paradigm shift away from the teacher as imparting knowledge and thus forcing learning, to a model of facilitating learning.

The teachers play the role of a “midwife in the birth of understanding” as opposed to being “mechanics of knowledge transfer.” Their role is not to dispense knowledge but to provide learners as “sense makers.”

In this model, teachers aid the learning process, thus empowering students to continue to learn, even outside of school, since they are not reliant on the authoritative teacher dispensing information.

While our students potential future drives us to create an independent learning classroom; it’s our student’s history that makes this model so hard to execute. With interrupted schooling, illiteracy in their native language, and a general lack of confidence that comes from being in a new culture our students tend to fear taking the risks that are necessary to becoming an independent learner.

To combat these difficulties we had to set up a project and a class that walked a fine line between giving the students enough information to get started with, and doing the work for them. To accomplish this Mr. Patrick and I relied on modeling the project, but with a different country.

Modeling can serve the functions of inhibition and disinhibition, response facilitation, and observational learning (Schunk, 1987). […] disinhibition occurs when a model strengthens or weakens an observer’s behavioral inhibitions. Observing a model performing a feared activity without negative consequences […] may lead observers to believe there is little to fear and to perform the task themselves (p.37, Guthrie & Wigfield).

One purpose of independent learning is to get students invested in their own education. This leads to intrinsic motivation. Guthrie and Wigfield define intrinsic learning as “total involvement in an activity.” A teacher-centered classroom can “focus too much on learning in school and note enough on promoting children’s continuing motivation to learn outside the school setting (p.21, Guthrie & Wigfield).” By setting up an independent learning project we hoped to get our students invested enough to be intrinsically motivated, and thus continue learning outside the classroom not only for our project but also for life.

Measures of Success

I viewed the measure of success as having 80% of my students be within “passing range.” I define “passing range” as some one who had three or less “Does Not Meet the Standard” categories circled on his or her rubric. This may seem generous, but it is the school policy of Bell Multicultural to allow students as many revisions as needed before a final grade is recorded. While in theory, this means that if a student turns in a project and does not mean any standard, that student could redo the assignment over and over and eventually receive an A. In reality, though this rarely happens. While a student may turn in a project over and over, the class moves on, and now a student who obviously did not understand the project to begin with, must balance the new course load and then independently motivate to complete the outstanding assignment.

In my experience, students need to have a strong understanding of the assignment and be reasonably close to passing, if they are going to be able to independently revise the work. Usually this means no more than three areas can be marked as needs in improvement. Also, with only three areas marked for revision, most students have put in enough time to do well on the other areas that they are motivated to do the extra work necessary to achieve a passing grade. Therefore, even though a student may not technically pass on the first try, with only three areas that need improvement, the student has a good chance of passing the project over the next few months.

Findings

The numbers were not at all as I expected. Far less people completed the project, 65%, but of all the ones that completed, 87%, met the measure of success. I was definitely surprised at the low number of completions. Conversely, though, of the ones who had turned in the project, a high percentage had passed. The goal of this project was not to turn it in to a pass/fail litmus test of my class, but it seemed to take that course. People either did it well, or didn’t complete it at all.

About halfway through the nine weeks, I felt I needed a way to informally assess how the students were doing with their projects. I had two separate “project work days” in my class. One was at about the four and a half week mark, and another around the seven-week mark. I asked the students to bring in their projects and work on particular aspects of them during the class. This allowed me to see who was on track, who was behind and who had not started at all.

The individual check-ins were consistent with my final findings. About 65% of the students had a good understanding of the project and were within an acceptable range of progress considering the time limitations. I think what I had expected was more late-night, last-minute efforts to turn something in on the day the project was due, regardless of previous weeks efforts. It might have been the large nature of the project that discouraged last-ditch efforts. Surprisingly the students who I conferred with that were not on track had a decent grasp of the assignment. They may have been physically behind, but their basic understanding of the project, their country and what they needed to do to complete the project was sufficient.

Reflections

I was amazed at the high quality of the projects that I did receive. This may have come from trying to create an independent learning project, but the project also pushed my best teaching practices of collaboration, long term planning, tight homework and project integration and routinely checking for student understanding to a new level. Working with Tyler Patrick was a big help, because he filled in holes in my content and pedagogical understanding, and I think our lessons were the better for it.

For the student’s that participated fully in the course - coming everyday, doing the homework and seeking out help when they needed it – their projects were more than I had ever expected. Many came in with PowerPoint presentations, color pictures and other tables, facts and presentation methods that went above and beyond what the project called for. It was a major success for those students.

During presentations, I was also impressed with everyone’s interest. There were engaging questions asked in round tables after presentations, and I used only a modicum amount of discipline during speaker’s presentations. This was a stark contrast over past project presentations.

I would definitely use this model for any other content areas that had ESL learners in it. I think overtime, I could perfect to raise the completion percentage over all my classes, and then in turn, begin raising the standard for independent learning, as I became a better master of the curriculum.

References

Bereiter, C. (1994). Constructivism, socioculturalism, and Popper’s World 3. Educational Researcher, 23 (7), 21-23.

Guthrie, J.T., & Wigfield, A. (1997). Reading engagement: A rationale for theory and teaching. From J.T. Guthrie & A. Wigfield, Reading Engagement: Motivating Readers Through Integrated Instruction.

Phillips, D. C. (1995). The good, bad, and the ugly: The many faces of constructivism. Educational Researcher, 24 (7), 5-12.

von Glaserfeld, E. (1996). Footnote to "The many faces of constructivism." Educational Researcher, 25 (6), 19.

Appendix A: Project guide and rubric

World Geography

Extended Work Project

For this project, you will be responsible for reporting on a country of your choice. Your project will explain certain facts and details about the selected country based on the following five themes:

1.  Location

2.  Place

3.  Human-Environment Interaction

4.  Regions

5.  Movement

LOCATION:

On this page, you will explain your country’s location in the world. You will need to tell me four major pieces of information for this page:

a.  On what continent is your country located?

b.  What is the latitude and longitude of your country?

c.  In what hemispheres is your country located?

d.  On what bodies of water is your country located?

PLACE:

On this page, you will discuss both the physical and cultural aspects of your country that make it different from other places on earth. You will need to tell me four pieces of information for this page:

a.  What landforms are present in your country (mountains, plateaus, etc.)?

b.  To which biome or vegetation region does your country belong?

c.  What are the major languages spoken in your country?

d.  What are the major religions practiced in your country?

HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT INTERACTION:

On this page, you will discuss how people use and work with the place. How have people changed the place? You will need to tell me the following pieces of information: