Reflective Practice
The ability to demonstrate a disposition toward an inquiry on teaching, and an ability to apply educational theory to do research on teaching and learning in the classroom.
Enduring Understanding:
The professional educator incorporates pedagogical strategies and content knowledge learned through the MCE program into their teaching program.
1. WHAT, WHY, HOW.
Dr. Roberts' class (Chem. 501, summer 2007) was the first time I was introduced to POGILs (Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning). One of the concerns for this course was how chemistry was taught. Dr. Roberts introduced this basic pedagogical approach in the syllabus that was e-mailed to us before the first day of class. In this syllabus he described POGIL as a 'variation of collaborative learning.' It is an approach to learning in which small groups of students use a body of information and a set of structured questions to arrive at a concept. Dr. Roberts mentioned that POGIL was first used in this course in the summer of 2004 and encouraged us to consider using it in our classroom. We were further encouraged in this course to create our own POGILs. A few weeks into the course we were given a PowerPoint presentation on how to construct our own POGILs. At the beginning of the second year into the program I started constructing my own POGILs and was not completely successful in implementing the method in my classroom. This initiated the attempt to start research in my own classroom with great support and encouragement from Dr. Ealy.
2. Baseline Reflection
In October 2008, I started implementing the first POGIL in my own classroom. The POGIL was titled: The Dimensional Analysis. The process was not successful at all. For the baseline evidence I present a copy of discussion board from Chem. Ed. 536 November 27, 2007 where we were encouraged to discuss difficulties to help us reach a decision on what will be our research project for the year to implement in our classroom. My preliminary proposal was titled: Implementing POGIL Techniques to High School Students. My interest was to explore the dissemination of POGIL methods and material to high school level chemistry students.
In trying to investigate the complete failure in implementing my first POGIL, I realized the following:
1. For students taking chemistry for the first time, the POGIL approach needs to be explained well, and time should be spent to inform students about what is expected from them, what will be my roll, and how they can learn from each other.
2. Students will struggle with POGILs if there isn’t any background information. So here we go back to chalk and talk especially for 15-16 year old 9th-10th grade students.
3. POGILs need time. The material I would cover in 5-7 periods need at least double the time when using POGILs.
My other baseline evidence is part of the proposal to Dr. Ealy: “Implementing POGIL techniques to high school students” where it is suggested that perhaps “how” it was implemented should be different and maybe trying a different approach will be more successful. Please refer to November reflection third section for more suggestions from Dr. Ealy to attend conferences, presentations and write down all thoughts and observations as to how to introduce POGILs to my students.
3. Growth Reflection
This section includes two growth evidences:
1. Survey to see students' reactions after chemistry class
2. Interview section from my Action Research.
After a few months into the Chem. Ed. 536 course, my action research paper evolved to have the following title: How the Inclusion of POGIL Teaching Strategy Impacts Students Learning in the Area of Affective Learning from the Perspective of Students Enrolled in both Class Taught Using Traditional Method and same Class Using POGIL Method Technique. The action research I planned to work on the following year was introducing POGIL to my students as a new strategy and continuing with the combination of this method with traditional methods of teaching. This cooperative learning method (POGIL) is a student-centered learning environment, and I think it should go hand-in-hand with the faculty-centered environment which is the traditional method.
The participants for my action research are 10th and 11th grade chemistry students at Al Huda School. The sample consists of 18 students (15 female & 3 male) and the duration of the data collected was throughout the school year. This first evidence is a survey where I choose to see how students feel about each of the pedagogies. Questions in this survey are designed to get to know the opinion and reaction of each student after each lesson being taught alternatively between traditional approaches and the POGIL approach.
The interview format is another growth evidence of implementing this action research in my classroom. It contains four questions and I am looking for feelings towards NOT making POGILs the only pedagogy in my classroom. Students were interviewed individually.
Conclusion
What I learned from my research was NOT to make POGILs the only pedagogy used in my classroom throughout the year. It should go hand-in-hand with the traditional way of teaching. According to the research-based generalization, I should be aware that after traditional teaching there will be:
1. Lack in the connection among concepts, formal representation, and real world
2. Lack in overcoming certain conceptual difficulties and that may not help to increase the understanding of the basics of these concepts, because some students will not grasp the concept by telling them.
3. Lack in the growth in the reasoning ability.
Before constructing my POGIL, I should have in mind that previous knowledge is required, and to emphasize on requesting the outline of the concept to be done as homework before coming to class. After that I start with traditional chalk and talk method explaining, clarifying, and deriving the concept before handing out POGILs. POGILs direct students to specific information and lead them to constructing appropriate connections between concepts, therefore, constructing their conclusion. When reinforcing the instructions given using the traditional method by the new constructed conclusions, the students should be able to transfer the new constructed conclusions to what was unfamiliar at the beginning of the lesson. And from there, solving real world problems should be tackled through the combination of both the traditional and student centered pedagogies. So finally, after working on the POGIL I would relate it to what was instructed at the beginning of the period.
Educators should work on improving the traditional approach by combining it with POGIL method of teaching to increase teaching quality. It is not right to abandon the traditional teaching approaches. Traditional method of teaching can be adapted, modified, and improved. Teamwork learning methods require students to have more imagination, more planning and to accept more challenging tasks (Hanson & Wolffkill 1997). POGIL places more emphasis on active learning and extra skilled development. Active engagement promotes a thorough understanding of the concept described in lectures. The responsibility of the teacher is not only to deliver skills and provide conceptual map of the subject, but also to motivate students to be more active, adaptable, confident, creative, cooperative, and inductive in their thinking (Pintrich 2003). Help them move from dependent to independent. It is also the teachers' responsibility to help students make the transition from passive learners to active participants, changing from superficial to deep learners and developing the students' abilities and skills for life long learning. We should each them fishing not give them fish.
References
Hanson, D., & Wolffkill, T. (1997). Improving the teaching/learning method in general chemistry. A report on the Stony Brook general chemistry teaching workshop.Journal of Chemical Education.
Hass. (2000). Student Directed Learning. Journal of Chemical Education, 1035-1038.
Pintrich, P.R. (2003). A Motivational Science Perspective on the Role of Student Motivation in Learning and Teaching Contexts. Journal of Education Psychology, 95,667-678.