Analytic Essay
Forming a Community of Learners through Peer Teaching and the Co-Construction and Sharing of Knowledge
One of my ultimate goals for all my students as well as a personal goal I have is to be a lifelong learner. Lifelong learning is best described not as a specific type of education, but as "a mindset and a habit for people to acquire" (Fischer and Sugimoto, 2006). As a result of that goal, at the beginning of my graduate study I was very interested in how I could encourage young students to be more meta-cognitive in order to become capable, self-directed learners. Throughout my field experiences it quickly became clear that before my students could become independent learners in this way, they needed to understand the different sources of knowledge and the value of learning through collaboration. "Although society often thinks of creative individuals as working in isolation, learning and creativity result in large part from interaction and collaboration with other individuals. Much human creativity is social and learning communities are needed to cope with the challenges of making learning part of life" (Fischer and Sugimoto, 2006). To become true lifelong learners, my students would need to understand that their teachers and textbooks are not the only source of knowledge and that they could learn a great deal from really listening to one another and co-constructing their knowledge base together. This type of learning "de-emphasizes teaching as a process in which a teacher tells something to a passive learner. Rather, it focuses on mutual dialogs and joint knowledge construction, enhanced by the creation, discussion, and evolution of artifacts" (Fishcher and Sugimoto, 2006). Similarly, other research states, "Unless children are actively and socially constructing learning themselves, they are merely recipients of a teacher's perceptions of knowledge that she or he deems is relevant for children to learn. Thus, the hierarchy of teacher over students is maintained, where the former is the all-knowing person of authority, and the expectation for the latter is to be passively receptive" (Mester, 2008). Additionally, some of the research I read about mathematics education insists on active learning in order to facilitate real understanding. "They cannot merely perceive their knowledge simply as something someone else has told them or explained to them. They need to adopt a stance that knowledge is evolving and provisional" (Carpenter and Lehrer, 1999). I was beginning to realize that this idea of students being active and learning from more than just listening to the teacher was going to be the new focus of my inquiry in the classroom.
I soon discovered there was a specific term in the world of education practice and pedagogy for what I wanted to create. My inquiry around students learning from each other could be focused on how to create what is called a "Community of Learners". There are a variety of definitions for a "Community of Learners". One teacher-researcher, Julie Mester, describes it as an environment where "students and teachers have daily opportunities to develop positive learning attitudes by engaging in areas of interest that become intrinsically motivating to them" (Mester, 2008). Another group of educators states, "It is a socio-cultural system mutually and actively created by teacher and students. In a community of learners all participants are active; no one has all the responsibility and none are passive. Children and teacher together are active in structuring what is explored and how, though with asymmetry of roles" (Luster, Varelas, and Wenzel, 1999). I have come to feel that it is my responsibility as a teacher to create an environment that develops and supports a community of learners.
I soon discovered there was a specific term in the world of education practice and pedagogy for what I wanted to create. My inquiry around students learning from each other could be focused on how to create what is called a "Community of Learners". There are a variety of definitions for a "Community of Learners". One teacher-researcher, Julie Mester, describes it as an environment where "students and teachers have daily opportunities to develop positive learning attitudes by engaging in areas of interest that become intrinsically motivating to them" (Mester, 2008). Another group of educators states, "It is a socio-cultural system mutually and actively created by teacher and students. In a community of learners all participants are active; no one has all the responsibility and none are passive. Children and teacher together are active in structuring what is explored and how, though with asymmetry of roles" (Luster, Varelas, and Wenzel, 1999). I have come to feel that it is my responsibility as a teacher to create an environment that develops and supports a community of learners.
So after much reflection and research, my new inquiry question became:
How can I encourage my students to value learning from each other and support them in doing so to foster an effective community of learners?
How can I encourage my students to value learning from each other and support them in doing so to foster an effective community of learners?
Initial Survey of Students
Before diving in to my new inquiry, I had select students complete a brief survey related to non-cognitive skills, needs and meta-cognition. I wanted to establish a baseline or obtain an initial sense of what attitudes these new students had towards thinking and learning. I chose to survey my three first grade classes and three second grade classes. I felt this was important in order to look at how this new group of students' attitudes compared with those I had witnessed and experienced at my previous teaching placement with students of a similar age. I also was able to survey two fifth grade classes with a different, more open-ended survey. This was important to me because I knew that the attitudes of young children shouldn't be representative of the student body as a whole. I also thought it would be interesting to look at how student attitudes compare and contrast between the youngest and oldest students that I was working with. I distributed the paper surveys to each student at the beginning of the class period and allowed twenty minutes to complete them. Please use the buttons below to see a copy of the survey as taken by the students.
In order to aggregate the responses and get a good look at them as a collection of data, I used the online tool Survey Monkey. For the open-ended responses (5th grade was all open-ended), I determined trends in their responses or made note of repeated language and coded them to collate the data. The following documents are the results from those surveys and the coding exercise.
First and Second Grade Survey (Artifact 6)
Analysis of the first and second grade survey led me to appreciate some of the challenges of surveying younger children. The survey questions were simple, "check yes or no", type of questions. Yet, I hadn't thought about the fact that many younger students may be tempted to just check yes for everything and I'm not sure about the validity of my results because of that tendency in some students. I am interested in looking into more effective means to survey young students for future practice. That being said, I was slightly surprised that so many students checked that they wanted quiet/alone time to think before working, particularly because they seemed like such a social, chatty bunch of students. Then when I looked at whether or not they think their classmates help them and it was 78%, more consensus than most of the other responses, it seemed that these children did value the time that they got to share ideas and talk to one other. Other student teachers in these classrooms had previously revealed to me how much their classroom mentors facilitate sharing and working together and that social skills are highly emphasized and practiced. This may be why the results show a high level of interest in talking to and getting help from each other.
Fifth Grade Survey (Artifact 7)
When reflecting on and analyzing the responses from the fifth grade survey, I found myself bouncing back and forth about whether it should have been focused on "thinking" or "learning". I also would definitely make some changes in terms of how questions were worded the next time I present a survey to students of this age range. However, there was some analysis from the survey that I believe benefited me in my practice with them. I also think the results helped me to understand where they stood in relationship to my inquiry focus on learning from each other and fostering a learning community. From this survey it seemed that many students see thinking and learning tasks more as independent than collaborative in nature. Few students mentioned the sharing of information, getting help from other students, working together on tasks, etc. Also, I was struck by the fact that many of them used formal assessments and grading as their main measure of knowing if that had learned something or completed a task effectively. When comparing these results to my reflection on the younger student survey it made me wonder if some students begin their school experience valuing each other as learning tools and support, but over time are encouraged to become so independent that they may lose sight of that. This made me feel as if encouraging a better community of learners with all my students would be important in helping them to see beyond tests or grades and think about the value of building collective knowledge and understanding.
Strategies and Tools for Encouraging Peer Teaching and Sharing of Knowledge
As I thought about what strategies I should implement for my inquiry, I reflected on those that I had been trying in my previous Fall placement, as well as what I had learned from various readings in graduate courses. The strategy that came to mind the most was classroom and student discourse. I had already believed that it was important for student voices to be heard in the classroom and for their ideas to be validated, questions answered, and misconceptions addressed. In addition, some of what I had read and learned in my methods courses, really supported how valuable discourse is for student learning and building the right social context for the classroom. For example, “Classroom talk may support and promote student learning in mathematics both directly and indirectly. Classroom dialogue may provide direct access to ideas, relationships among those ideas, strategies, procedures, facts, mathematical history and more. Through classroom discourse all of these aspects of mathematical thinking can be discussed, dissected and understood. Classroom dialogue also supports student learning indirectly through the building of a social environment – a community – that encourages learning. Through classroom discourse of certain types, students are encouraged to treat one another as equal partners in thinking, conjecturing, exploring, and sharing of ideas” (Chapin et.al, 2003).
It was even clear to me from my own experience as a student in my math methods course how much the discourse and sharing of ideas from my own co-hort members contributed to my own learning.
It was even clear to me from my own experience as a student in my math methods course how much the discourse and sharing of ideas from my own co-hort members contributed to my own learning.
" What is important to note is that in this graduate class we accomplished this by rich and open discussion of a single shared problem. It makes me realize how I don't want to just drill students on multiple iterations of one problem type. Instead, I want to spend that time really diving in to one, particular, well crafted problem and making time to discuss and share our discoveries about it." - From the Final Reflection in my Problem Solving Notebook (Artifact 8)
Yet, as I had realized in my previous placement discourse requires buy in from your students in terms of seeing the value of listening to and learning from each other as well as speaking up themselves. Also, is very difficult to manage effective and authentic classroom discourse when you are on a strict time limit outside of your control. As I got to know my new teaching placement, I realized that this latter challenge was the one I had to face the most. As a "specials" teacher, the students I was working with only had science class twice a week for forty five minutes each time (see my schedule below). With this intense restriction on the time we have together, I felt it was crucial for me to focus my inquiry on how I could build a community of learners using strategies other than the somewhat time consuming classroom discussion.
There were three main strategies that I implemented with my classes that I believe were successful in developing communities of learners in science class: peer teaching and coaching, collaborative learning with peer assessment and reflection, and sharing content and co-constructed knowledge online. Each of these strategies had their own challenges, benefits and drawbacks. I believe though that through implementing these multiple strategies, I set a clear expectation for my students that learning from and teaching one another was an important norm in my classroom. I felt confident and satisfied that I was mindful of this important dimension of teaching, “The norms in a particular class determine how students and the teacher are expected to act or respond to a particular situation. Normative practices form the basis for the ways tasks and tools are used for learning” (Carpenter and Lehrer, 1999).
Completing Individual Tasks in a Group Setting to Encourage Peer Teaching and Coaching
The normative practice of expecting students to help and learn from each other was especially important in classes of younger students. Many of these students are still very dependent on others to engage and support them in their learning experiences and often need additional scaffolding in order to to complete work independently. Due to this level of dependency, I came to realize that whenever we had independent work, some students would waste time waiting for me to come around and help them get started or answer a question when they got confused. Therefore, when I began a unit I designed for first and second grade (prior to my official teaching take over), it was important to me that all students were able to make the most of their time by not relying on only me for guidance, but were asking their peers for assistance or clarification. I wanted to set the expectation that all of us could help each other be successful and get the most out of our classroom activities together. I was explicit that we should be functioning more as a community than as a set of individuals. I knew in order to do this I would need to be very clear that I was specifically looking for that kind of behavior in my classroom and acknowledge it with positive reinforcement when I saw it happening. After a while, I was able to have activities in my lessons that included challenging individual projects, because students began to feel responsible for not just their own success but the success and learning of their classmates as well. See the video clips and photos below for examples of how these activities went:
Collaborative Learning with Peer Assessment and Reflection
to Require and Recognize Learning from Each Other
Before my own teaching take over month began, I was co-teaching a unit on different energy sources with 4th grade students. The way we structured this unit was very interesting to me. The focus was on collaborative learning in small groups and then sharing the group knowledge with the class as a whole. Each small group had individual members that were responsible for certain types of knowledge related to their particular energy source. Then, the group as a whole was responsible for teaching that energy source to the rest of the class. Groups gave presentations with the important information they had researched and created a study guide for their classmates on their particular energy source. The class was then responsible for learning all the information about all the energy sources. This was a great example of how to manage collaborative learning through "positive interdependence" which happens when "group members are linked together in such a way that one cannot succeed unless others do, and they must coordinate their efforts to ensure that everyone completes his or her specific goal" (Gilles, 2007). This shared responsibility led to students respecting the fact that they needed to work with, actively listen to and depend on one another to succeed. In the end, this project worked to establish the same types of normative practices that I was interested in to foster a community of learners in the classroom.
In this project it was essential that the students saw themselves as both teachers and learners and recognized that they needed to learn from their classmates. I was excited by how very little content was delivered from the teachers in the room. This was a great example for me of cognitive apprenticeship. “The master coaches the apprentice through a wide range of activities: choosing tasks, providing hints and scaffolding, evaluating the activities of apprentices, and diagnosing the kinds of problems they are having, challenging them and offering encouragement, giving feedback, structuring the ways to do things, working on particular weaknesses. In short, coaching is the process of overseeing the student's learning.” (Collins, Brown and Hollum, 1991). In this unit and for this project the teachers functioned much more as coach and facilitator of the learning experience, than the source or deliverer of the knowledge.
I also believe that one of the responsibilities of the teacher as coach, is to provide opportunities and guidance for students to reflect on experiences working with their peers. During a collaborative learning project in my own unit, students wrote and performed a skit with their group members. I had all students peer-assess each group so that their critique of other groups' interpretation of the project could help them to reflect on their own group's contribution. After all groups had performed, I made time for reflection as a class on the individual performances, but also the value of the project as a whole. This reflection was meaningful because it gave students a chance to recognize they had not just learned about the content related to the project, but also were experiencing the value of working with and learning from their peers. See the video clips below for a taste of those conversations and reflections:
I believe that the peer assessments and class reflection added value to this collaborative project. Robyn Gilles states, "group processing enable(s) the children to realize what they had accomplished and to receive feedback from their teacher and their peers on what they had achieved" (Gilles, 2007). I believe it helped students to meet not just cognitive learning goals but also social and affective goals related to working together, valuing each other and appreciating the classroom community. Students are able to recognize that by actively participating in the classroom community they can build their collective knowledge, understanding, and creativity in ways that are fun and engaging. Peer assessment and reflection are strategies that I believe help create a better classroom context for more meaningful collaborative learning. “When a teacher succeeds in setting up a classroom in which students feel obligated to listen to one another, to make their own contributions clear and comprehensible, and to provide evidence for their claims, that teacher has set in place a powerful context for student learning. Over time students come to value their classmates contributions and strive to make their own contributions of value to others” (Chapin et al., 2003)
Co-Constructing Knowledge and Sharing Content Online
As previously stated, one of the greatest challenges of my Spring placement was that our schedule only allowed for forty five minutes twice a week (see schedule above). These students are fortunate to have the opportunity to learn science in a dedicated science classroom with a confident science educator. However, it is not near enough time to ever feel satisfied with how much was covered or how in depth we could go, or even how much student discourse or questioning we could allow. The unfortunate reality was that at the end of those forty five minutes, students were out the door as an entirely different class was coming in. With this challenge in mind, I prepared a special website for my student teaching take over of the classroom that would be dedicated to extending and supporting classroom experiences. I intended the website to be used as a tool for students to communicate with me and their classmates outside of school over the specified topic of urban trees. It functioned almost like a blog. I was the facilitator of a homework thread each week, where students were expected to contribute their own tree observations and reflections. My hope was that this site could provide a space and opportunity for the type of classroom discourse that I knew would benefit my students if only I had more time with them. I'm thrilled to report that the site was such a success during my take over that I made a new version of the site for the unit we did with students the following month. My mentor and I wanted to continue this routine and keep using this exciting new tool. There were and continue to be four main types of interactions that students participate in on the website:
- Individual posts with response from the teacher
- Reacting to, affirming, and/or encouraging other students' posts
- Asking and/or answering other students' questions
- Making suggestions and/or challenging other students' thinking or reasoning
One-Way and Two-Way Interactions Between Individual Students and the Teacher (Artifacts 12-16)
At the beginning, the students' posts consisted mostly of their own observations and/or reflections and then I responded as their teacher. In these interactions I learned so much about the students and could build a relationship with them by reacting to, affirming, encouraging, and connecting to their individual responses. I was also able to encourage them to clarify their thinking, address misconceptions, and ask questions of them, posing myself as the learner and them as the teacher who has knowledge and experiences to share with me. I was also able to encourage students to suggest resources for the classroom that they thought other students would benefit from or enjoy. Even these one-way, sometimes two-way interactions between myself and one particular student helped to build a feeling of community from the very first week of the project. Below are examples of this type of interaction on the site:
Students React to, Affirm, and Encourage Other Students in Their Class (Artifacts 17-33)
As the project continued and the student posts started coming in, I was thrilled to see students begin to utilize the reply button that was available to them on the site. I had assumed that many students had been quietly reading other student posts which had value in itself. However, once they started being comfortable enough to use the reply button, they really took the interactions to a new level. Most students used the reply function to affirm or encourage their classmates posting simple comments like "cool" or "neat". Other students would be more specific and reference something they liked or reacted to in the post of another student. What was surprising and exciting was that occasionally students from other classes would review and comment on classes outside their own and even on other grade level classes (you can tell by the code numbers being different). Below are examples of this type of interaction on the site:
Students Ask Each Other Questions and Answer Questions that Other Students Have (Artifacts 34-45)
The students became more and more confident with the technology and functionality of the site, as well as my expectations for it's use. Some students began to not only comment on other students' posts but ask questions of the other students. Those students sometimes came back and answered the questions forming a brief exchange on the site. I appreciated how the students' comments and questions seemed to display increased interest in what each other had to say or share. Their questions also encouraged other students to extend their thinking and not just let it end with what they recorded for their original post. Below are examples of this type of interaction on the site:
Students Make Suggestions and Challenge Each Others' Skills, Thinking and/or Reasoning (Artifacts 46-51)
The final way that I noticed students interacting with the website involved students pushing each others' thinking, making suggestions to one another and the teacher, and sometimes challenging or disagreeing with a classmate's thinking or reasoning. These interactions were surprising and exciting because they were clear evidence that some students were taking on the role of teacher. It was amazing to me that sometimes I felt that I could just step back and let the students discuss and think through things together on the site. It was wonderful to see certain students had become confident enough to take risks and very actively participate in the online community that we had created. Some of the interactions that involved students challenging each others' thinking, led to great discussions on the website but were also brought up in class, so that we could build off their inquiry together in person as well. Below are some examples of this type of interaction on the site:
At the end of my teaching take over, I was incredibly pleased with the participation of the students on the website. I was also thrilled by the enthusiasm the students seemed to have for it. I could see how building respect for and interest in their classmates on the site had led to being more interested in each other in class as well. Students were much more confident sharing their own experiences or thoughts and were asking questions not just of the teacher but also of fellow classmates.
I felt as if I had successfully found some strategies that foster a community of learners in my classroom. However, I was still interested in knowing if they actually valued each others' contributions. At the end of my unit, I gave all students first through fifth a reflection survey for their feedback specifically on the homework project that involved the website. The results clearly demonstrated that being able to share their thoughts with others, read others' comments and respond to others was one of their favorite parts of the project. One type of evidence for this conclusion was the frequency of responses that included the notion of "other people" when students were asked the open-ended question, "what did you like most about the tree project?"
I felt as if I had successfully found some strategies that foster a community of learners in my classroom. However, I was still interested in knowing if they actually valued each others' contributions. At the end of my unit, I gave all students first through fifth a reflection survey for their feedback specifically on the homework project that involved the website. The results clearly demonstrated that being able to share their thoughts with others, read others' comments and respond to others was one of their favorite parts of the project. One type of evidence for this conclusion was the frequency of responses that included the notion of "other people" when students were asked the open-ended question, "what did you like most about the tree project?"
Word Clouds Depicting the Frequency of Student Response Codes When Asked, "What did you like most about the tree project?"
1st and 2nd graders (Artifact 53)
Top response codes with number of responses:
|
3rd through 5th graders (Artifact 54)
Top response codes with number of responses:
|
It also became clear to me that many students did in fact value their classmates knowledge and contributions when I asked them to reflect specifically on reading the comments of other students and whether or not the website had helped them in any way. Below are some select quotes from older students' surveys (Artifact 55):
"It affected me because I could use those comments as a guideline to what my comment should be like" - 5th grader
"Other people's comments inspired some of my comments" - 5th grader
"I like that it gave me a chance to learn about different trees and other people" - 5th grader
"The other comments showed me really cool facts about trees I didn't know about or pay attention to before!" - 5th grader
"Looking at other people's comments helped me not be confused" - 4th grader
"I learned from other people that there are way more kinds of tree than I thought" - 4th grader
"It's fun commenting on others in the class and answering the questions they have" - 4th grader
"The website helped me see other people's opinions on trees and gave me new ideas" - 4th grader
"When I looked at other people's comments it helped me to think more about my own tree" - 4th grader
"When I read other people's comments it made me want to reply to them and connect with them" - 4th grader
"The comments made me feel like everyone could speak and I wondered who had those good ideas" - 4th grader
"The comments got me excited to hear about other trees and want to talk about them" - 4th grader
"I could compare what other people were doing to what I was doing" - 3rd grader
"It gave me more ideas and I could go back and add more detail about my tree" - 3rd grader
"Other people's comments got me more interested into trees" - 3rd grader
"I learned a lot about other people in my class and in other classes that I don't know" - 3rd grader
"I think we will keep talking about our trees the way we did on the website" - 3rd grader
"I really wanted to know how other people were observing their tree and I could read the other comments" - 3rd grader
"I was really excited to see if other people would comment on mine" - 3rd grader
Students seemed to value each others' contributions in a few distinct ways. First they recognized that their classmates were sharing information that was new to them and so they had learned something from reading their comments. Also, many students expressed how they were grateful that they could use their classmates' comments to help them get new ideas, think differently about their own observations/contributions or understand better what was expected for the assignment. In addition some students realized that they really enjoyed learning about other people in their class, even something as small as what they liked or found interesting. As their teacher, I also enjoyed this aspect of the project, especially because I had such limited time with them that I often don't get to hear what they are thinking or feeling. Reading these free-response comments on the website truly made me feel like I had a better sense of who the students are and what excites or interests them. I was keenly aware that we would likely not have had time for revealing much of that during our brief time together in class. Yet, learning about students in this way is right in line with the vision of "teaching as improvisation based on knowledge of content, pedagogy and listening in order to come to know children" (Shultz, 2003). I also recognized that students who may never have raised their hand in class were openly sharing on the website. That was a really wonderful outcome because those students could now be included in class discourse in a way that may never have happened in school.
Conclusions and Implications for Future Practice
By the end of my teaching take over, I was incredibly proud of the communities of learners that I had fostered and developed. Students were working together on collaborative projects, listening to each other better, taking responsibility for helping other students succeed, and pushing each other to learn more by asking questions and challenging each others' thinking. I was often able to play the role of coach and facilitator of learning rather than the exclusive source or authority of knowledge in the classroom.
I was also pleased to find that these strategies and tools were not only helpful in building a community of learners, but also in extending student learning experiences beyond what I could have done with only more traditional teaching methods. My hope is that the students I worked with are on the path to becoming true lifelong learners that will be committed to learning from and teaching others both inside the classroom and outside of the school context.
In my future practice, I plan to continue investigating cognitive apprenticeship and collaborative learning. In particular, I am excited to explore new ways to use internet tools and technology (such as class websites and blogs) to help build a sense of community in my classroom and extend learning experiences beyond my time with students in school. I agree with other innovative educators that claim, "weblogs are truly a constructivist tool for learning" (Richardson, 2010). I believe that websites and blogs are powerful tools for developing a community of learners approach to education because "everyone has a voice in the conversation, and all ideas, even the instructor's, are given equal presentation in the blog. As students participate, they also take ownership of the space... and this can lead to a greater sense of participation" (Richardson, 2010). I plan to work on using these types of tools to prevent students from having a one-way relationship with learning and knowledge or at best a two-way relationship with the teacher. Instead I'd like to encourage them to see learning experiences as a networked hub where they can connect with many different people and endless new sources of knowledge. In this way, learning experiences in the classroom wouldn't have a finishing point, but would just be the beginning of each student's own learning adventure.
I was also pleased to find that these strategies and tools were not only helpful in building a community of learners, but also in extending student learning experiences beyond what I could have done with only more traditional teaching methods. My hope is that the students I worked with are on the path to becoming true lifelong learners that will be committed to learning from and teaching others both inside the classroom and outside of the school context.
In my future practice, I plan to continue investigating cognitive apprenticeship and collaborative learning. In particular, I am excited to explore new ways to use internet tools and technology (such as class websites and blogs) to help build a sense of community in my classroom and extend learning experiences beyond my time with students in school. I agree with other innovative educators that claim, "weblogs are truly a constructivist tool for learning" (Richardson, 2010). I believe that websites and blogs are powerful tools for developing a community of learners approach to education because "everyone has a voice in the conversation, and all ideas, even the instructor's, are given equal presentation in the blog. As students participate, they also take ownership of the space... and this can lead to a greater sense of participation" (Richardson, 2010). I plan to work on using these types of tools to prevent students from having a one-way relationship with learning and knowledge or at best a two-way relationship with the teacher. Instead I'd like to encourage them to see learning experiences as a networked hub where they can connect with many different people and endless new sources of knowledge. In this way, learning experiences in the classroom wouldn't have a finishing point, but would just be the beginning of each student's own learning adventure.