INTRODUCTION SLIDE:

Hi, my name is Tamara Perry and my action research project has aimed to increase student self-
regulation and independence through incorporating opportunities for students to have higher levels
of agency and choice in their learning. The project also sort to increase student engagement through
the use of highly affective, highly cognitive and highly operative elements in their learning activities.

Today I will be presenting the key findings from my research, and exploring how these had an impact
on the students that I taught. I will also be referring to and answering the questions created by my
focus group throughout this presentation.

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Weebly address: http://tamaraperry.weebly.com

Phone: 0406964955 Email: 17666868@student.westernsydney.edu.au

CONTEXT SLIDE:

For my final practicum, I attended Xxx public school located in the western suburbs of Sydney,
which consisted of only 227 students, containing a high percentage of composite classes as they
combine year groups within the same stage together (eg 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6).

The school caters to a very high percentage of students from non-English speaking backgrounds
(83%), and has a selection of students from indigenous backgrounds as well (3%).

Xxx Public School is an EAfS school (early action for success), which aims to improve students’
literacy and numeracy skills by targeting them in the early years of their schooling. Further, the
school appointed two curriculum leaders to continue this approach into the later (primary school)
years, by performing regular data collections in order to identify those who may need further
intervention/support. Additionally, Xxx Public School has recently adopted a PBL (positive behaviour
for learning) behaviour management strategy, implementing it across the entire school, with a great
response from students so far. (Use of Extrinsic rewards; PBL tokens, certificates awarded at
assembly, reward days).
I was placed in a composite stage 2 class of 26 year 3&4 students, who are immensely diverse in
their learning needs and achievement levels. Whilst I have students who require substantial support
in their reading and writing as well as mathematical understanding, I also have students achieving at
high levels in their literacy and numeracy as active independent learners.

Additionally, there were different social and emotional dynamics present within my class. These
factors were often the underlying reasons behind threatening or disruptive behaviour among
students. Bullying amongst peers was also prevalent in the classroom, especially during group work.

FOCUS SLIDE:

I noticed during my first two weeks on prac that students often became reliant on teacher
instruction, and showed little intuitive on their own.

This impacted my research question as previously I had assumed there would be a higher level of
student independence already present within the classroom, and so I had to adapt my question and
focus into working towards independence rather than expanding this skillset that I had presumed
would already be present within students.

The MeE framework recognizes that in order to be beneficially engaged students need to be highly
effective, active and working towards being self-regulated learners (Munns, Sawyer & Cole, 2013,
p.21). Teachers are encouraged to provide regular and carefully crafted opportunities for students to
think hard (high cognitive), feel good (high affective) and be more productive (high operative). These
three aspects are described as being the key elements that not only define but also enhance student
engagement within the classroom, and so I decided to focus on one of these for my action research.

Upon further exploration into the concept of highly operative learning experiences, I realised this
was where I the focus for my action research should be, as it entailed involving students in
tasks/activities that would help them become more competent and empowered in their learning, as
well as more effective. This therefore would allow them to work towards being more self-regulated,
a need I recognized was present within the classroom amongst my students as they often lacked
institutive or the motivation to complete tasks individually.

And so, I decided to base my action research around this concept, in wanting my students to become
more independent in their learning.

Additionally, I wanted to incorporate the ‘M’ part of the MeE framework as well, as I felt my
students lacked a great deal of motivation in approaching or completing tasks. As apart of the
framework, motivation is seen to have six specific factors that are related to ‘motivated’ students;
self-efficacy, mastery orientation, valuing of school, persistence, planning and task management
(Munns et al, 2013). Therefore, I wanted to improve some of these factors within the classroom
through adaptive motivation strategies, such as trying to minimize behavioural dimensions of
avoidance or self-handicapping, as well as building students self-confidence by providing praise and
encouragement when developing their skillset during learning, and promote effort and persistence
during tasks.
FOCUS GROUP QUESTIONS SLIDE:

Please see the list of my focus group questions created during tutorial 7, as they will be referenced
and addressed throughout this presentation.

COLLECTION AND USE OF DATA SLIDE:

I would like to confirm that full consent was obtained prior to conducting my action research project,
both by my mentor teacher as well as the school principle. Individual consent forms to guardians
were not necessary, as the school has previously collected such information earlier in the school
year through their own proceedings.

Learning Conversations:

During independent tasks I listened and observed the differing conversations going on between
students, as well as between students and myself, in order to gauge how confident and comfortable
they were with the task I had set out for them. My main focus during these conversations was to
identify and minimize questions surrounding uncertainty in the task, such as ‘What are we doing?’ or
‘What do I do?’. Further, I sought to provide strategies for greater independence for students
through the learning conversations I was having with them, as I posed questions to get them
thinking about the individual ways they could often solve their own problem. For instance, if a child
was unsure of how to spell a particular word, my first question would be ‘If I was a responsible
learner, where could I find that information?’, which often lead to students having an ‘ah-ha’
moment as they proudly went to seek one of the varying resources set up around the room to aid
them. Additionally, I looked for key terminology in students dialogue to express their understanding
of the content, in order to effectively assess my own teaching practice to ensure I was teaching
explicitly and equipping students to be able to work independently.

Observation:

Observations were conducted throughout the day consistently, in order to identify students’ level of
engagement and confidence in completing tasks that I had set out for them. This was primarily done
through whole class discussions, as I observed students’ body language, facial expressions and
choice of vocabulary in order to determine whether they were engaged in their learning or needing
to be refocused. I documented these in my daily feedback reflections, end of day notes, and
observation notes.

Work Samples:

Work samples were monitored during as well as after lessons, as I would often utilize student work
samples to see if something needed to be further explained for clarification or to use as a teaching
point to praise and encourage other students. Work samples were photographed and later analyzed
in conjunction with my observation notes to determine any improvements for my teaching practices
the next day.

Student Self-Assessment:

Primarily student self-assessment was a concept I had to introduce to my students, as this had only
ever been done in a more informal capacity previously. And so, I collected student self-assessment
through learning conversations as well as via an exit slip I would hand out at the end of lessons I
deemed significant.

KEY FINDINGS SLIDE:

The following slides will illustrate my key findings of my implemented research, detailing how I
ultilisied the MeE framework within my classroom teaching practice, and the implications that had
on my students.

Firstly, I want to briefly outline some of the limitations I found when conducting my research. As
previously stated, I had differing social and emotional aspects present within the classroom, that
could often lead to disruptive or threatening behaviour. Therefore, I spent a majority of my time
implementing effective behaviour management strategies in order to minimize such behaviour so
that learning could take place. This at times heavily impacted my research as before learning could
take place, I needed to ensure all students physiological and safety needs were being met, as
students would not be able to focus on the task at hand when such elements were present within
the classroom. Furthermore, time played a role in how effective my research could be as I
understood that getting students to be fully self-regulated and independent was a process built up
over many years, and so this posed a limitation in the level to which my students could reach this.

DATA 1:

The most significant project I conducted whilst on my professional practicum was the students
‘passion projects’, a researching task aimed to increase independence amongst students as they
were given the choice to select their own topic and present a PowerPoint presentation to represent
the information that they found.

I felt this was a highly operative and cognitive task, as it allowed students to plan, monitor and
evaluate their own learning, promoting high levels of self-regulation and independence (Vialle,
Lysaght & Verenikina, 2005).

Because of the nature of the task, students needed to determine what strategies they would use to
allocate the correct amount of time and effort so that they could be finished by the end of the four
week block. This lead to students being highly motivated, as they displayed factors of adaptive
motivation such as self-efficiacy, planning and task management (Munns et al, 2013). While students
may not have mastered these factors within the short timeframe that they had to complete this
task, I was still blown away by the amount of effort and time they invested into the task, becoming
fully immersed in the task demonstrating ‘Flow’ (Munns et al, 2013).

DATA 2:

Expanding on ideas mentioned in the previous slide, the aim of the project was to develop students
skills in researching, as students learnt how to focus their searches, create effective research
questions, and further how to summarise this information into their own words before creatively
representing this information via a PowerPoint presentation.
And so when I introduced the task to students, I gave an example of my own, using the 5 W’s
strategy. I said all our core questions needed to start with ‘why?’, for example Miss Perry’s research
question is ‘Why do we have tastebuds?’. I found this example helped stimulate students into
brainstorming their own ideas, as students took my example and rolled with it, thinking of highly
creative and interesting topics. I also mentioned they needed 3-5 supporting questions as well, and a
good way to do this was via one of the 5 W’s (What, who, when, where, why). I found that by
introducing this idea to assist students, they were able to work independently as they knew what
was expected, but had the freedom to take these ideas any direction they chose.

DATA 3:

This slide elaborates on how students worked most efficiently during their writing tasks, being able
to self-regulate themselves through explicit modelling and understanding of the five stages of the
writing process (plan, compose, revise, edit, publish). By modelling the beginning of each stage, I
found this helped students become more independent as they understood what was expected of
them and were able to express their ideas easily into the template I had set out for them. I found
that by providing some deeper guidelines for students, simply in explicitly modelling the content and
ways to present their work, this helped them become more engaged and self-regulated as they were
more confident in their capability to complete the task, and thus remained focused and engaged.
Whereas previously, when I had conducted a lesson composing an informative text, I found students
were very distracted and not completing the work to the standard I was aiming for. I realised upon
self-reflection that this was due to my teaching practice not being explicit enough, and so changed
this aspect of my lessons to find amazing results as shown above.

DATA 4:

Please see students completed poems describing aboriginal land, where choice of how to represent
their poems further helped increase their engagement and motivation for completing the task as I
found students who at times lacked motivation to finish were highly motivated as they wanted the
chance to be creative and decorate their poems.

DATA 5:

Additionally, students were given the chance to self-reflect on how they felt they worked best; in a
group, or by themselves during writing.

Students were able to identify how they felt they worked best, whether that be collaboratively or
independently, and also gave a reason for their answers. I found this was an incredibly helpful guide
for me in how to set up my writing tasks, making sure to give time for both whole class
discussion/collaboration, as well as individual independent work at their tables.

DATA 6:

Students were highly engaged during our visual arts lesson where they recreated the cover of that
weeks core text called ‘How the birds got their colours’. I found students were highly motivated and
immersed in this activity, the highest level of engagement I had seen thus far as students thoroughly
enjoyed the opportunity to be creative without the teacher setting any limits. This is seen in the
following slide during their learning conversations with me, as many were quite surprised when I
explained they were going to be able to decide on the elements of their painting because I was
giving them ‘creative choice’. I explained that their painting was their own, and as long as students
were keeping up with the different steps I was calling out (head, body, wings, feet and beak, etc)
that they were able to convey that in any way they wanted to.

It was so exciting for me as their teacher to see them fully engaged and working independently to
complete this task, with the majority of students barely talking to each other as they were so
involved in what they were doing.

DATA 7:

Please note the learning conversations mentioned in the previous slide.

DATA 8:

And finally, I incorporated elements from the MeE framework into my maths activities as students
learnt about inverse operations, discussing and thinking about the key examples they noticed in
their subitising video before being sent off to explore this concept further by creating as many
inverse operations in their groups as they could on their Mabble game boards. I found students were
self-regulating themselves during this activity, reminding each other to stay on task and for all group
members to participate as they enthusiastically tried to create as many inverse operations as they
could. I did notice that one group, my high achievers, after about 5-10minutes began to become
‘bored’ and slightly disengaged. When I went over to enquire about their board, they said Miss Perry
we already have the most out of everyone. I then changed tactics, saying to all groups oh I wonder
who has the most on their game boards, perhaps ill have to give out some dojo points to the group
with the most, and as I went over to another group I exclaimed ‘OH! This group has 6! Wow I think
they're in the lead’. My high achievers group suddenly burst into excitement as they went oh no they
have the same as us! Quick guys we need to find more! And continued to work enthusiastically on
this task with this new found motivation. And so I realised, that sometimes motivation strategies
changed, and that both intrinsic and extrinsic forms of motivation were significant and valuable in
their own way when utilised appropriately within the classroom.

CONCLUSION KEY FINDINGS SLIDE:

The key findings of my research demonstrate how providing students choices surrounding their
learning through highly cognitive, highly affective and highly operative learning activities helped
increase their engagement and independence, which in turn allowed them to become more self-
regulated and motivated in their school work.

From the examples presented and discussed previously, it is evident how student engagement was
increased as students had more agency and autonomy over their learning tasks, resulting in a higher
sense of motivation and focus among students.
I was blown away by the shift I saw in students, particularly surrounding behavioural and social
issues, as these decreased drastically over the course of my professional practicum as a result not
only on the behaviour management strategies I implemented, but also as a result from the higher
level of engagement and independence I saw amongst students in their school work.

IMPLICATIONS:

The implications of my research has been deeply rewarding to see, not only in my students but in my
own mentality and teaching practices as well. Please see the slide above for a thorough listing of the
implications and changes I saw not only within my students, but also established in the shifting of
own teaching practices as well. Participating in my action research has shown me the incredible
significance and value of being a self-reflecting practitioner, and is an aspect of my teaching practice
I greatly look forward to maintaining throughout my teaching career.