In 2012 I had the opportunity to reteach the course again, making some changes to what I was doing. The standards alignment was not implemented until 2013, so time was still a significant issue, but more time was spent on the Ethics Thinking Tool and Ethical Thinking Frameworks, particularly around trying to get students to use the activity as part of their own planning process. Rationale
2012 was my first opportunity to repeat this process. It was the first chance I had to make some change, so was interesting to reflect upon how much change was made and the constraints that stopped me from doing what I wanted to.
Reflection and Evidence
It is amazing how easily we forget things. Thank goodness for a journal to provider reminders. I had forgotten some of the changes I made to the way I taught this unit of work in 2012. I suppose that is why a research journal is so useful, but I find myself being slightly troubled. Do I simply reinvent the wheel often because I have forgotten ideas?
I still think I can shorten the task information a bit more. The task itself has changed a bit, because the standard has changed. Ignoring that, I think I can further simplify the referencing information so that it is pithier for the students. They did seem less daunted by the task in 2011, and also seemed to have less difficulty locating the question for their essay. This is in the hand-out that they get at the beginning of the unit, but is sometimes lost in the midst of all of the information. Reducing it to essentials seemed to help.
102
Doing the formative task in 2012 seemed considerably different to 2011. In 2012 it was not going to be part of a research data set, and the absence of this changed how I dealt with it. We did it slightly later in the unit, and it 'fitted' much better here. I felt like I was teaching it in a context. Even more than that, it felt like it was part of my teaching, not something engineered. In 2011 I was worried about telling students too much and influencing the data I collected. By 2012 that pressure was off, and the task was simply another teaching and learning activity. Because I think it was more in context, students could see more what I was trying to achieve and why. I explicitly told them that I wanted them to be able to see progress in their ability to make and justify decisions. I explained why we were using a context other than their research. It felt a lot more honest and real. I will continue to use this task again the way I did in 2012.
Yesterday I gave out the task for AS3.2. I have made changes based on the feedback from students. The task itself is shorter - I have left out all of the referencing information. Feedback from students last year suggested that the task hand-out was long and therefore seemed really daunting...I have still given them the information on referencing, just as separate documents. (Journal B, p. 9, 26 May 2012).
I decided not to do the formative task that I used last year just yet [at the beginning of the unit]. I will do it in the next week or so, but I really just want to get them researching first. This year I am trying to focus more on the timely delivery of skill teaching. That task is about opinion formation and I don't feel like they are anywhere near that yet. (Journal B, p. 12, 1 June 2012)
Last week (Wed) after the long weekend, we spent a lesson on the 2011 1080 formative task. My feeling is that they wrote more than
103
last year's group and they certainly complained less. (Journal B, p. 26, 13 June 2012)
Students again seemed to really value the time taken to understand and complete a dot jot. It seems like such a simply task, but actually it takes them so long. We started by looking at how to read the article then dot jotting. I really like doing this task together, as it makes it much easier to work collectively. I have tried in the past using something simple from ‘New Scientist’, but again it was from an entirely different context (not even a socioscientific issue), and the students struggle to see the relevance. Interestingly, the 2012 year group had done an unfamiliar text question in English that was to do with pests, so they were not so fearful of the context.
A whole hour of time in class to dot jot an article that is not related to their research seems indulgent. However, in the interviews they expressed that learning how to dot jot was useful. (Journal B, p. 13, 1 June 2012)
Using the Ethics Thinking Tool online was a great idea, but was stifled slightly by some of the technology on the website. The students appeared to be on task - there was less off task chatter, but there was less chatter generally as well. I know from the interviews that some students really valued the
opportunity to discuss with others as they worked on this task, but by each being at their own computer this seemed to stop. I gave them more freedom to explore a range of issues, and I had hoped it would be easy to observe their progress on line, unfortunately the website was not as user friendly as I hoped. RH suggested getting in touch with University of Waikato, who run the site, and feeding this back to them. I had hoped that some of them would use this site, think about their opinion, print out the pages and add it to their portfolio, but again, no one did. Even though the Ethical Thinking Frameworks were not explicitly present, I felt that in 2012 I got some really well justified opinions.
104
This year I have decided to have a crack at working it [Ethical Thinking Frameworks] on line. I have created a profile for each student so that they can individually log in and access it online, saving their responses. I think that this will allow them to work on this at home if they see the value of it, and in theory I will be able to monitor what they are doing. (Journal B, p. 59, 2 August 2011)