What Do You Inquire About? : Action Research

This past semester I have had the opportunity to conduct an action research project. This is a research project that allows teachers to evaluate problems in their classrooms and try to fix them through active research. Teachers may test different strategies in their classrooms to analyze if any changes occur or if the problem has been fixed. It's a chance for teachers see what works and doesn't work in the classroom. Teachers are then encouraged to share their results with others in order to share these successful or unsuccessful solutions to problems that other teachers may also encounter. Collectively teachers may begin implementing strategies that help learning process of all of their students.

During my student teaching experience I had the chance to also implement an action research project. I first had to evaluate a problem in my class. I chose my Animal Science class. At the beginning of my student teaching I had to the chance to observe my cooperating teacher teach this class. In this class I noticed that most students were unmotivated to complete work in class. When taking on this class, I wanted to create a goal for myself to boost motivation in the classroom. I developed labs and activities that i felt the students would enjoy and therefore be motivated to complete work. This however was not the case. Students did not enjoy the work. I realized that these labs and activities required students to apply information. Students were not use to or conditioned to the application portion of this learning process for hands on learning. These activities were student centered and they pressured students to build their cognitive skills. The fact that students were unmotivated to complete such tasks raised a concern for me as their teacher. I did not feel that students were being challenged enough to develop these cognitive learning skills.

Therefore my new challenge was to implement inquiry based learning labs and activities in such a way that conditioned students towards student centered learning rather than teacher centered learning. Their classroom structure previously mostly consisted of lecture and worksheets. I was a very much teacher centered classroom environment. When I started teaching this class I had implemented mostly student centered learning strategies. Students were very confused and reluctant to want to engaged in these activities. I knew that if I wanted this project to be effective I would have to start with teacher centered approach and slowly condition my students to a student centered mentality.

I decided to implement 3 total inquiry labs in this class. I did one at the beginning, middle and end of my student teaching experience. All of the labs were very different but were inquiry based with a student centered approach. The first lab went terrible. Students had to create the digestive system of a pig and explain their functions with given tangible materials. Sounds fun right? Students complained up and down about this project. Some didn't even try to help their groups. It was new to them and students don't like changes. However I stuck with it because I knew that this project would be a process.

Throughout the quarter I also implement a few activities that encouraged more student centered learning. I had a few lectures and short video clips. This helped with slowly conditioning students. One project that really helped realize that students were catching on an becoming engaged was an activity that I called "what are you curious about?" The project asked student to think of a question that they have about sheep and goats. They then had to research that question and find the answer to it. Students then had to create a mini poster of their findings. They had to include the resources that they used and the answer to their questions. I was so impressed with the outcome. Every student had completed this task independently and were eager to share their answers with the class. This was a turning point that helped me realize that students were becoming more motivated and engaged in student centered learning.

The other 2 labs went fairly well. The second lab asked students to design and build a sheep or goat facility. For this lab students were still a bit unfocused, however they completed their projects will little to no complaints about the task. The third lab was by far the most impressive. Students had to investigate a crime scene and determine which wool fibers matched the suspect. Through a series of events students looked at the different wool fibers under a microscope. Students enjoyed this and were engaged in the activity.

For each lab I had students complete a lab packet. At the end of each lab packet student had to answer 2-3 reflective questions about the lab. They also had to rank the lab which emphasized how much they enjoyed the lab. After reviewing results from these three labs I found that by the third lab students enjoyed inquiry based learning. They were motivated and completed the tasks that were asked of them. There was a huge difference from the first lab to the last. There was a definite increase in student engagement and likability of these labs.

I enjoyed this opportunity to evaluate my classroom and make effective changes that benefited my students as a whole. Sometimes days, weeks and months fly by and you don't get to accomplish that one activity that you wanted to get to. This however was most certainly worth the time and effort to conduct and organize. By the time I left student teaching I could see a positive difference in my students. These are the kinds of differences that we should strive for in all of our classes.