Katri Sarmavuori
University of Turku
Department of Teacher Education
Learning in Fairy Tale Workshop
This investigation looks into how classroom student teachers (N 90) experience a fairy tale workshop. They studied fairy tale theory and used different working methods in five groups (from A to E, 10 hours). The fairy tale was elaborated by using process drama after which the students wrote an analysis. Other tasks were analysis of the structure, writing a new ending and a story of their own. Two groups (A and E) received the fairy tale theory by e-mail and they discussed it in small groups (digital groups, web groups, on-line groups). The other groups (B—D) read the theory from the book (printed groups). They had no discussion by e-mail.
The aim of the research was to investigate, how the students experience the workshop, different working methods and tasks. One problem was how students learn by means of a printed medium (e.g. a book) and an electric medium (e.g. e-mail), and whether there are differences in learning. The students had a pre-test. The printed group B got the best mean and was performed best in the post-test.
According to the assessments by the students the most useful task was listening to the stories written by the student partners (mean 4,23), writing their own fairy tale (4,08) and process drama (4,00). Writing an alterantive ending was assessed with a mean 3,69, fairy tale theory lesson 3,65, fairy tale theory text 3,65.The least favorite tasks were e-mail discussion (2,64) and learning log (2,71).
Keywords: Fairy tale, book vs. e-mail learning, process drama, I wonder questions
Introduction
As basic courses in mother tongue and literature the future classroom teachers had seven credits (University of Turku). During that time they orientate to reading, writing, literature, drama, language and media, which are the contents of the instructional science of mother tongue. In the degree the courses are a part of a module of multidisciplinary studies (60 credits).
Finland got a new examination system, the so called Bologna process studies which began in 2005. Education in mother tongue and literature was increased two credits in obligatory studies and I had to plan new lessons. I wanted to be a teacher and a researcher, hence I arranged a research during a workshop. I was granted a scholarship by the Turku University Foundation to research the effectiveness of printed and electronic media. Therefore I organized a study where I applied blended learning comparing printed medium (i.e. a book) and an electronic medium sending (on-line learning and e-mail discussion). The student teachers had different tasks and they evaluated the effectiveness of the media in learning, too. Blended learning ”combine face-to-face instruction with computer-mediated instruction” (Graham 2006) and therefore it is possible to compare different ways of learning by measuring and asking it from the students.
Previous research
There is much research including comparisons between distance learning and traditional education. Researchers have asked, if distance education is better or worse than traditional face-to-face instruction. (Tucker 2001, Bernard et al. 2004, Zhu 2006, Luppicini 2007.) The results are contradictory. In computer-mediated communication participants can experience less normative pressure, produce more ideas, and engage more equally in discussion. They can have better possibilities for critical thinking, personal perspective sharing and task-focused interaction. (Luppicini 2007, 169.) Distance education and blended learning are not necessarily the same. The students in blendedlearning aren’t from very far away because they must also meet in person.There is a growing body of research on blended learning. It is sometimes also called hybrid learning.
My aim is to find a balance and to build possibilities for blended learning, in other words multiform instruction. Some students may prefer to reflect the learning content at home and discuss it with their peers. Some students prefer to learn by traditional contact learning. For many, finishing the course is the main objective and in-depth discussion on theory and material is not even wanted.
In mother tongue education one is interested in reading, writing, drama and child literature. Especially fairy tale and its theory are useful for classroom teachers. Previous research includes Bruno Bettelheim’s (1976) psychoanalytical work, but I found the works of a new Finnish researcher Hilkka Ylönen more useful. She emphasizes in her definition that in a fairy tale there must be at least one supernatural phenomenon (Ylönen 2000, 9). Not all stories are fairy tales, even if we lightly call them as a fairy tale. A fairy tale often has a problem in the begining, which can be a difficult task or an unexpected event. Sometimes the hero of the fairy tale goes to find adventures and meets dangerous situations and the hero also finds helpers (spernatural beings or normal people). During the the course of the events the main person learns from his own and others’ experiences. In the fairy tale there is a crisis after that the problems get lost. After the crisis there happens a change in the hero’s life. Badness is subject to a penalty and godness is awarded not until in the end. (Ylönen 2000, 12-13.)
From Mary Adler and Eija Rougle (2005) I took I wonder questions, because I wanted to try them. ”You ask students to write wonder questions on slips of paper. You collect them and put them in a hat or small basket. A student pulls a question from the hat and reads it. Or you choose to be the first reader. Once the first question is asked, you invite someone to respond. Once the responses are diminishing, someone pulls another question and reads it out, and the conversations begin again. This way all students have an equal opportunity to hear their questions asked and discussed.
This approach — passing the hat and having students’ wonder questions drive the conversation — is dramatically different from asking study guide questions, for you are actually shifting your focus on students’ ideas about the story. We’ll discuss how to facilitate there conversation, sustain it, and make it more productive in terms of literary thinking — —” (Adler & Rougle 2005, 49.)
The ideas about process drama are from Alan C. Purves et al’s work (1995). They write: ”Process drama can take place in the classroom, it is largely unrehearsed, students and the teacher usually role play real people, and it is not ’theater’; that is, it is informal and without actor/audience separation. It draws on students’ natural abilities to pretend, role-play, make believe.” This helps the student to get inside the story. (Purves et al. 1995, 105 – 106.)
Literary understanding can be explained by Judith A. Langer’s concept envisionment. It is a text-world in the mind. It is ”one’s relationship to the current experience, what one knows, how one feels, and what one is after.” Envisionments are dynamic ideas, images and questions in once’s mind. (Langer 1995, 9.) Envisionment building is active during reading, from acting and from process drama it activates the mind, you see the world more from the viewpoint of different persons.
I got ideas from these earlier studies and used them when I planned
a new workshop. In the following chapters I will explain how the workshop succeeded and what the students thougt and learned.
The Proceeding of the Workshop
I gave ten lessons per every group of firts year classroom student teachers in spring 2006. I had to choose a unit for ten hours, and I chose fairy tale theory and practice. I planned a workshop, that included one theory (definition, what is a fairy tale as its genre, different types, meaning, analysis etc.) lesson (two hours), and leaving the students to read 25 pages from a book. The book was also required reading for the exam (Sarmavuori, 2003, The first steps to mother tongue and literature). After the theory we read a fairy tale written by Kaarina Helakisa (a famous fairy tale writer in Finland but not translated into English). The fairy tale Little Et was about an undisciplined being who was punished and ordered to sit as an ortographic sign.
After reading the story we used a process drama in which students played roles
(little Et, its mother, its friend, Great Angry Man) and two other students had to make interview questions (Purves et al. 1995). With process drama it was easy to get a deeper envisionment (Langer 1995, 2005) of the text. The students carried out different tasks (story analysis, wrote a new ending to the story and wrote their own fairy tale).
The student teachers were divided into five groups (A — E), so I could compare them. I wanted to study, if there is difference in learning, when you get the information via a book or via a digital medium. The digital groups got the text via e-mail and they were to discuss it in small e-mail groups.
Table 1. Group setting in the experiment
A-group (digital group, e-mail group, on-line learning group) 18 students
B-group (printed medium, book group) 17
C-group (printed medium, book group) 19
D-group (printed medium, book group) 17
E-group (digital group, e-mail group, on-line learning group) 19
N 90
Table 2. Experimental setting
Questions about fairy tale Assesment of learning effectiveness
Book group Pre-test Post-test Fairy tale text E-mail discussion
B x x x
C x x
D x x x
Digital group
A x x x
E x x x
The pre-test was given on the first lesson before the fairy tale theory lecture. Assesment of learning effectiveness was made in the end of the workshop.
Research questions
I wanted to compare learning in different groups, if it is more effective to learn by e-mail or by a printed medium. The aim of the study was to compare, if it is more effective to learn by using on-line learning or by using traditional book and printed medium learning.
1. What do student teachers learn and what are their experiences during the fairy tale workshop? How high is the learning effectiveness in different media?
2. What is the students’ starting degree?
3. What is the effectiveness of the printed medium and of the electric medium? Are there differences between them?
4. How does the e-mail discussion work?
5. How do student teachers evaluate the effectiveness of different tasks and working methods?
I investigated the questions with a pre-test and a post-test. The students wrote a lot of learning logs. They had to evaluate their learning at the end of the workshop.
Learning is measured here by pre-test and post-test answers. The tests included questions about fairy tale theory (definition and examples). This was what they were supposed to discuss with each other in person and online. Learning was also measured by student’s subjective assesment about what (s)he had learnt and what was effective for learning. From a printed medium, a book, we can learn by reading the pages, underlining what is important and revising. On-line learning forces you to read the text from a computer. You can copy the text and you can quote it easily, when discussing. On-line learning in this case includes reading, learning from digital text and discussion with other students by e-mail.
During the workshop the students had to carry out different tasks (structure of the fairy tale Little Et, writing a new ending to the same fairy tale, analyse and interprete it and write their own story. The last lesson was spent reading and listening to the stories written by the students.
Results
The pre-test consisted of three questions about fairy tales. They were asked 1) What is a fairy tale (give a definition)? 2) What types or fairy tales do you know? 3) How do the fairy tales create a positive attitude towards life? The pre-test scores varied between 2 and 17 points. The mean values varied 6,32 and 10,53. B-group got the best scores and E-group the worst.
There are significant differences between groups, but the means between a book group and a digital group do not differ so much.
Table 3. Means of groups in pre-test, post-test and in assesments
Questions about fairy tale Assesments of learning effectiveness 1—5
Pre-test Post-test Fairy tale theory text E-mail discussion
Bookgroups
B-group 10,53 27,81 3,29
C-group 9,37 3,56
D-group 6,53 9,73 4,07
M 8,81 19,06 3,64
Digigroups
A-group 10,39 3,53 2,71
E-group 6,32 3,80 2,56
M 8,36 3,67 2,64
M (all groups) 8,61
Table 4. ANOVA-test of pre-test and post-test scores
Sum of Squares df Mean Square F p
Pre-test
Between Groups 304,114 4 76,029 8,602 .000
Within Groups 751,275 85 8,839
Total 1055,389 89
Post-test
Between Groups 2530,500 1 2530,500 26,346 .000
Within Groups 2785,371 29 96,047
Total 5315,871 30
The students filled a questionnaire that included assesments about the effectiveness of different working methods and tasks. They evaluated them with Likert-type scale 1 (least effective) — 5 (most effective). One assesment was focused on the fairy tale theory text and one on the effectiveness of the e-mail disussion. Here it is possible to compare the book group and the digital group, and especially their means. In the assessment of the effectiveness of the fairy tale theory text the groups, book group and digital group, do not differ, when we compare their means (book groups 3,64 and digital groups 3,67).
The post-test was problematic, because I had no possibility to arrange it to all students at the same time. I had mentioned it in the beginning of the course, but group A refused it. The group D demanded it, because there was one student who had signed its datum. I the end the groups B and D had a post-test.