EDUC 4206 Professional Experience 4: Teacher as Inquirer

Professional Inquiry Project Proposal

Pre-service Teacher: Alexsandra Merritt ID no.: 110144010

Context (approx. 100 words)

Description of placement context. Include here only those details which are necessary to provide the reader with an overview of your setting ie.
size of school/class; socio-economic factors in the community, nature of class(es), etc. Do not mention the name of your site.

_________ Primary school has approximately 330 students enrolled, and has large cultural diversity in each
classroom. Within my class, there are 32 students in years 4, 5 and one year 6 student. With the majority of the
students being in year 5, I will be focusing my curriculum areas around the year 5 achievement standard, with
consideration for year 4 standards and learning areas. The classroom contains EALD students, who are confident in
their English capabilities, and also one NEP student, who is a child of the state. The NEP student has their own
lessons and learning plan that is carried out throughout their SSO support within the classroom. The school has
access to a variety of facilities including laptops, computers and 3D printers, and specialised classrooms for Visual
Arts and Health and Physical Education.

Plan (approx. 1000 words)

Overall focus of your inquiry and related AITSL Standard.
Rationale: Why have you chosen the particular focus? This will be based on your “Pre-service self review” against the national standards &
knowledge of your context. Explain how you went about deciding your focus.
How does the literature support your focus? Include at least four references– include a balance of journal and book references if possible.

Focus: Can creative assessment tasks be positively affected by cross-age peer learning?
This focus relates with the AITSL Achievement standard 4.1: Support student participation.

Peer learning is a student centred method that develops knowledge achievement and aids in nurturing
collaboration, critical thinking, reflection, problem-solving, and teamwork skills. Students who engage in
collaborative learning and group study perform better academically (University of Queensland, 2018)

I observed students who do not feel that they do not feel that they have the capability to be creative, and even
state that they cannot start or feel confident in creative tasks, as they believe they are not “creative enough”. This
kind of mindset leaves students prone to setting lower standards, and putting less effort in creative tasks such as
designing a cubby house (see appendices for criteria of assignment). I also found that students feel negativity
towards Visual Arts subjects, and cross-curricular assignments that adds creative elements and Visual Arts
processes. My focus subject will centre on English and Humanities and Social Sciences, including History and
Geography, where students will collaborate in groups to create a visual representation of the journeys to Australia
of their chosen explorer, Captain James Cook and Dirk Hartog. I will be focusing my assignments enhancing creativity
within Visual Arts skills and abilities, another feature of this learning will be developing students’ abilities on
collaboration and independent thinking, which I will be observing and comparing how students will accomplish
independent and collaborative tasks within their assignments. Visual Arts skills demonstrate creative thinking, which
is a General Capability within Humanities and Social Sciences, “Creative thinking is important in developing creative
questions, speculation and interpretations during inquiry. Students are encouraged to be curious and imaginative
in investigations and fieldwork, and to explore relevant imaginative texts.” (Australian Curriculum, 2018)

Supporting student participation was something that I have often overlooked during my overall teaching practice. I
want to look deeper into the motivations behind the lack of participation and enthusiasm towards collaborative
skills and Visual Arts-based assignments. I have often observed that students find it difficult to collaborate with
peers that they usually do not associate with, and noticed that it can cause conflict between students within groups,
which results in the students preferring to work with their friends (see appendices). However, which is also included
within the anecdotal notes, students are often distracted when working with their friends, which slows their
learning and achievement within their tasks. Cross-age peer learning and group collaboration, students will be able
to collaborate between different year levels within their class. Peer teaching allows older students a sense of
responsibility over their younger peers, while the younger students have a similar responsibility to learn from their
peers. Burton states through studies and interviews that once the students became peer teachers, the teachers saw
the benefits by giving them responsibility, and that students who were classified as troublesome became effective
and motivated peer teachers (2012, pp. 16-17) I believe as older students continue to guide their peers in their
assignment, their confidence in their capabilities will increase as they assume the role of being a more
knowledgeable other to their peers.

I noticed that social learning encourages students who do not feel confident in their abilities to participate and
produce input in their learning, including cross-age peer learning will allow the older students feel a sense of
responsibility in their own learning, and their peer’s learning. Burton states that an outcome of peer-learning was
re-engagement in students’ education, and increased self-esteem, motivation and competence (2012, p. 2). As a
pre-service teacher, I want to find out how I can use my own enthusiasm in my teaching to encourage students’
development in self-esteem and confidence in their own capabilities. One way I can develop this is through positive
verbal feedback and to construct tasks that include students’ interests; such as Harry Potter.

Peer-learning will be able to aid students gain confidence and inspiration from their peers and teachers. “The
interchange between peer-learners has proven to foster deeper reflection because it introduces contrasting
perspectives, sometimes even generating arguments, about interpretation, meaning and application of the ancient
teachings. Furthermore, a sense of reciprocity and dual accountability is created when both people are engaged in
learning at once.” (Eisen, 2001) Students will be able to support each other in their own development within creative
thinking, where both students will adopt both roles of being the helper and the learner, and will be able to work
together to achieve success in their own assignments and tasks, as well as achieving communication and
collaborative skills. Some of the teaching pedagogies I will use are:

Role cards (see appendices), these role cards were successful in my previous placement, and I am confident that
students will be able to feel a sense of responsibility within their group and act out their roles successfully. I will
need to be aware of which students have taken on previous roles, and change those roles to avoid conflict and
having students feel that they are in a role they do not enjoy doing.

Confidence in creativity needs to be built up in progression, with this in mind, I will be using formative assessment
to help students form their creative thinking skills, then using summative assessment to observe how students
formed that creativity in their tasks. I will be using formative assessment to observe students’ behaviour towards a
task, and how successful they achieved the task. Formative assessment is a powerful tool for teachers and students
as it encourages rich questioning, peer and self-assessment, and sharing criteria with their peers (Wyatt-Smith et
al, 2010, p. 321) As a future educator with a Visual Arts specialisation, I want students to believe that they can create
artwork with a variety of different methods and mediums, and expand their idea on what their definition on Art will
be.

Action (approx. 100 words)

An exact description of what you are going to change in your practice/behaviour throughout your placement.
An exact description of when you are going to collect data each week during your normal teaching (identify times & a subject area)

I will be reflecting on my current pedagogies and adjusting or changing them to cater for my students’ learning
needs. For example, if the role cards do not work, and students feel like they need consistency within their group
tasks, then I will allow the students to negotiate their own roles within their tasks. Students will then feel that they
have more control over their own learning. This will occur firstly after my first lesson with the students within the
first week of placement, and continuously throughout every Geography and History lesson every week.

If students feel that the age diversity within their peer-learning is overwhelming, then I will re-arrange the groups
for students to be working within their own year level. I will also then adjust their tasks according to their year level.
I will be collecting anecdotal notes on the students starting from the first week of placement, and will be recording
after every formative assessment (which is between once to three times per week), this will allow me to observe
how students are learning, and whether there are any issues I need to address for future assignments and tasks.

Observation (approx. 400 words)

How will you collect data? Choose techniques most suited to your strategy and situation. Explain your monitoring techniques. Why have you
chosen the particular techniques? Include at least one reference to action research literature.
How will you record your data? Your monitoring process should aim to include at least three observation techniques to ensure triangulation. (ie.
Questionnaire, Supervising Teacher feedback, frequency chart etc). Include data collection proformas as an appendix.
I will begin collecting data from the first week by brainstorming with the students on what their definition of
creativity is. Students will begin to write what they believe creativity includes and what it is, and share with the class
their ideas to make a class brainstorm on creativity. This will be written on the smart board, and saved onto the
computer to review at the end of my placement to observe any changes within the class’ definition of creativity,
and will include how the students feel when they hear the word “creativity”. We will then discuss the changes, how
and why they think their view on creativity has changed throughout the four weeks.

From that brainstorm, we will create terminology for students to use when giving verbal feedback throughout their
tasks during my placement. Students will use this terminology to fill their peer-learning using “Two stars and a wish”,
a feedback strategy which allows students to provide feedback within peer and self-assessment. Of course, this
feedback will remain anonymous, and can and will be delivered in different ways, such as; reviewing as a whole
class on an anonymous work piece, having students assess their own work, and breaking the class down into small
groups and having the groups assess each other’s work. Dyer states that “Two Stars and a Wish helps activate
students and empower them as owners of their learning… and that self-regulation of learning leads to student
performance improvement.” (2012) At the end of my placement, I will have the students to re-write their definitions
on creativity and discuss with the students; did your definition change? Why/why didn’t it change? I will record
these definitions and the students’ reflections, and use this information to reflect on my own teaching.

Another strategy that I would include is students own self-reflection as they progress their assignment each lesson.
They will reflect on their learning intentions of the lesson, and elaborate on what they were learning, then reflecting
on their success criteria, and whether they achieved their goal – that will be explained at the beginning of each
lesson – and discuss with their peers what challenges they faced during the lesson, this may include challenges they
faced with their peers, or challenges they found in the task. Allowing students reflect on their own learning allows
students to be aware of their learning and achievements.

My mentor will also provide feedback as she observes my teaching pedagogy in the lessons I will teach. I have asked
that she would provide written feedback throughout my placement, as I can reflect on the feedback continuously
and remind myself on things that could be improved on, what worked, and what strategies I can imply for the next
lesson that I will teach. This written feedback will be documented in my teaching folio and in my mentor’s folio for
her own reference.

I will be collecting the data throughout my teaching experience by asking the students for feedback on the tasks
that will be given to them through the “Two Stars and a Wish” method. I will collect this feedback throughout
placement and reflect on my own teaching strategy. I will ask myself questions like; What am I noticing about my
students and their willingness to embrace challenge and feedback to move their learning forward? What strategy
worked well? What will I keep doing? What will I change? How did critical and creative thinking ass impact? I will be
reflecting on these questions each lesson and write down my own reflection and document it for future reference.

Reflection (approx. 400 words)

What will you be looking for when you analyse your data?
How will you interpret your data (ie make sense of the patterns)?
Who else might be involved? How? Name your critical friend as at least one of the people who will be involved
Explain how you will use your analysis to inform your practice in the following action stage (ie. next data collection time).
Include at least one relevant reference about the importance of reflection.

As I analyse my data, I will be looking within written and verbal feedback that show the most common factors that
had students feeling positive and negative towards their tasks and assignments. I will look upon the feedback which
shows how the students feel what needs to be improved on, and compare the feedback on how they completed
the assignments. If the students did well in their assignment, and their feedback is mostly positive, then I will
perceive that my current teaching strategy works for their learning needs, whereas the students who did not do
well – or felt that they did not do well – and their feedback suggests that there needs to be improvement, then I
will reflect on their feedback. I will then consider the students’ suggestions and merge the new strategies with the
current ones that are already successful.

Another part of my reflection is to request feedback from my mentor, and reflect on any ideas and suggestions she
may have for my future teaching strategies. As part of this, I have a feedback template that my mentor can follow
and record for both of us to keep for future reference (see appendices), I also have a self-reflection template that I
can follow myself to analyse my own teaching pedagogies, and use these templates as written records throughout
the placement to reflect on my improvements as a teacher.

I will be reflecting my own units of Geography and History with my pre-service teacher peer, Tiffany, as we both
specialise within Visual Arts, and will be able to collaborate ideas in different subjects within a Visual Arts
perspective. We will meet during the second and fourth week of placement, as well as communicating constantly
via Facebook messenger, Tiffany also lives close to where I work part-time, which is convenient for times where we
need to meet up spontaneously. Comparing each other’s reflections, as well as our own, will improve on our
teaching practice and reflect on what needs to be improved on and how. “For both teachers and students, both
types of reflection acted to improve their knowledge, awareness, and control of themselves and their classroom
practice.” (Baird et al, 1991) Self-reflection will not only improve on our teaching experience, it will also improve on
our students’ learning efficacy and creative thinking within History and Geography for future lessons.

References
Include all references (min. of 6) using the Harvard referencing system.

Australiancurriculum.edu.au, (2018). Critical and Creative thinking - The Australian Curriculum v8.3. [online]
Available at: https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/general-capabilities/critical-and-creative-
thinking/ [Accessed 1st August 2018].

Burton, B, 2012, Peer teaching as a strategy for conflict management and student re-engagement in schools, The
Australian Educational Researcher, pp. 16-17

Dyer, K, 2012, Classroom Techniques: Formative Assessment idea number Six [Online] Available at:
https://www.nwea.org/blog/2012/classroom-techniques-formative-assessment-idea-number-six/ [Accessed 12th
August, 2018]

John R. Baird Peter J. Fensham Richard F. Gunstone Richard T. White, 1991, The importance of reflection in
improving science teaching and learning, accessed online via:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/tea.3660280207 [1st August 2018]

Dowden, T 2010, ‘Curriculum’, in CM Wyatt-Smith, JJ Cumming, J Elkins, P Colbert (eds), Teaching Middle Years:
Rethinking curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, p. 321

Eisen, M 2001, Peer-Based Learning: A New-Old Alternative to Professional Development, Vol. 12, Adult Learning
[online] Accessed at: https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-95105774/peer-based-learning-a-new-old-
alternative-to-professional [4th August 2018]

Kohn, A 2006, The nature of children, Beyond discipline: From compliance to community, Alexandria, VA: Association
for Supervision and Curriculum Development, p. 7

University of Queensland (2018). Active learning Strategies [online] Available at:

http://www.uq.edu.au/teach/flipped-classroom/peer-learning.html [Accessed 20th August, 2018]

APPENDICES:
Role Cards:
Weekly Timetable:
Lesson Feedback – Students: