Session 6 (4/12)

Today marks the last session of the module. Went into class with a table that Dr. Quek asked us to do. Realised that even though we were all working on the same data, we had very different tables. There are so many details to take note of when presenting our tables. Worse still, many of the papers and journals did not even adhere to the same convention.

We were then told to get into our groups and asked to complete a template. As usual, we split up the work and worked on our own portions. As this was going to be a paper, we needed to, horror horror, make sure that we adhere to APA guidelines. Realised that I still had difficulties with citing online resources, especially when the name of the author(s) is not explicitly mentioned.

After we have submitted our group reports, we were told to do peer review of our course-mates' blogs. My group's understanding is that we should be nuturing and award at least 7 marks per category for the rubric. To my surprise, one group decided to judge our blogs based on their guidelines and I was given only 17/30 while another course-mate only managed to get 9/30. It was no surprise that two of the highest scorers in the class came from this group. I was not angry, but just curious as to which category I fared the worst in. I guess they probably missed the fact that I have one less entry than the rest of the class as I only joined the class from the second session onwards. Wanted to clarify but decided not to. I guess what mattered more to me was that I enjoyed and benefited from the process of blogging, so I should not be too fixated about the score that I got. =)

Just before we ended the session, we were asked to submit an individual reflection. Just completed and emailed to Dr. Quek. I must say that the questions were very thought-provoking and really elicited reflections about my learning for the past two weeks or so. Even though this module did not require me to digest huge stacks of reading and organise them into a paper, I found that I have actually not learnt anything less. In fact, I learnt hands-on how to work on my very own classroom and I am very excited to share my knowledge with my colleagues.

To end, I must say that whatever doubts I have about this module not been relevant to the GE stream have all been long banished, for as Dr. Quek puts it, the learning environment transcends all streams, all dimensions, all domains and all subjects. How apt.

Sesson 5 (2/12)

Time flies and it's down to the second last session. Dr. Quek started the lesson by reviewing what we have learnt in the module so far, which also served as the context for the topic that she was going to talk about.

She showed us a research involving the impact of the use of Classroom Performance Systems in the class done by a beginning researcher and based on the information given, I found it difficult to see the alignment between the rationale, objectives and the research questions of the study. Dr. Quek clarified that the researcher was an amateur and that he had since amended his study. She added that she will pass us a copy of a paper presented by Dr. Sue Trinidad. Furthermore, when we embark on any study, we must first craft the research questions first (which usually takes months), and we must know we can measure the outcomes.

Next, she highlighted that when we are modifying an instrument, we can actually just pick up the relevant scales and not use all the scales in it. Furthermore, we can also combine scales found in different instruments. One example that she showed us was a study done using scales from the WIHIC as well as a scale called material support, which was not from WIHIC. However, she cautioned us that the instruments used must be validated, reliable, adhere to Moos' theoretical framework before we can combine the scales from them. Furthermore, we need to be careful not to combine QTI with the other instruments we have learnt so far, as QTI measures teacher-student interactions.

Karen clarified with Dr. Quek about how we will know how well an instrument measures something, to which Dr. Quek said that the alpha reliability must generally be greater or equals to 0.70. However, she added that if the alpha reliability goes beyond 0.95, then it may be "too good to be true". Piqued by the alpha reliability, I did a Google search and found two websites which seemed to explain it quite well. They are:

http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/Spss/faq/alpha.html
http://www.jalt.org/test/bro_13.htm

From the first website, I also found that we can compute the alpha reliability using the following formula
However, even though an example was given, the explicit calculations to obtain the alpha relaibility were not shown.

As promised, Dr. Quek passed us each a copy of Dr. Sue Trinidad's paper. We were asked to:

• read and identify the gaps found in the dimensions of the classroom



• discuss the improvements made



• evaluate if the gaps and improvements were effectively addressed

However, there were some alignment issues with the printed copy so I went online to find the paper and uploaded the correct version to the Lesson Box. The file was downloaded from http://www.aare.edu.au/05pap/tri05058.pdf.

Even though the write-up was relatively long, it was surprising readable. It also helped that I had three very enthusiastic group mates to chew over and digest the information. However, Dr. Trinidad seemed to use the term Computers in Education and Computers in Teaching interchangeably, which was a huge source of confusion for us. In addition, we had difficulty trying to pick up the information required. When we were done with our group report, Dr. Quek introduced another useful tool, Google Docs, to us. We were asked to create a powerpoint presentation and share it with the rest of the class. In no time, I have gained access to all the other three groups' work! Everything is stored online and I can even see who has modified which document. More importantly, it's free! Power!

We were next introduced to the paired-sample t-test. Even though I had learnt this way back in JC as well as in MED871 and MED872, I struggled when my classmates asked me about it. It seems that most of my classmates did not know this test at all. I guess the greatest test of whether you know something or not is to see if you are able to explain it convincingly to people who do not know it at all. I did a search and found the following:

Statistics Glossary
An example of how the test is used
Degrees of freedom

I guess I really have to re-familiarize myself with my statistics if I want to embark on any research then.

After lunch, we were given WIHIC (both the preferred and actual forms) to do. We then compiled our results in a template given by Dr. Quek, first in our group and then as a class. As the template had provisions for more items in a given scale then were present in our survey forms, we deleted the additional columns, not realising that the formula would be affected. Yuen Han pointed that out later on and as a result, my group had to use the results compiled by them instead. Important lesson learnt!

After we have compiled our results using EXCEL, we copied them into SPSS. The original version installed on our desktops was 15.0, but we realised that the license has already expired. All our hard work went down the drain as we could not even save anything. Luckily, a helpful technician was on-hand to help us install version 16.0 and before long, we were up and running. I think this incident really reinforced Dr. Quek's point about having lessons in NIE instead of Teachers' Network, as resources and infrastructure are much better over at the former, even though Easterner me still thinks NIE is too far!

Anyway, we realised that there were some bugs with SPSS and we had to manually overwrite them. We then churned out the results and exported them to html form, so that we can view them from any web browser without the need for SPSS. My group churned out a total of 12 files (one for each scale, actual preferred, and one for the paired-sample t-test). When I saw what Yuen Han's group has done, I realised that you can actually combine the reports into one neat little html file! Another lesson learnt! Should always play around with the different functions.

After we were done exporting the results, Dr. Quek gave us some homework to do. We needed to extract the results from the reports and compile them into a table. Always nuturing and kind, she added that we can always compare our tables in the next lesson to see if we have done anything wrong. I guess that was really reassuring for me as well as for many of my classmates, who also struggled with SPSS.

P.S: SPSS stands for Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, and the current version is 17.0!

Before we ended the lesson, Dr. Quek reminded us that Thursday will be our last session and we will need to submit a report on that day too. It really seems like yesterday when I barged into the class not understanding a single thing. I really must thank Dr. Quek and my wonderful classmates for helping me catch up. Nice people do exist! I hope all of us will do well for the module. =)

Session 4 (28/11) continued

We headed back to our cosy laboratory after attending the paper sharing sessions.

We got into our groups and were given a case study each to work on, where we had to identify the issues in the given school and eventually decide whether to send our child to that school if given a choice. I thought it was interesting to see things from a parent's perspective, and it certainly brings to question what we value in an education, what we perceive as an ideal learning environment.

On another note, in one of the case studies, it was mentioned that 50% of the teachers in the school had been with the school for more than 20 years. Dr. Quek has always advised us not to stay put in one school for too long as we may grow too comfortable there and resist change. Indeed, I have learnt in another module that we only learn best when we are the edge of competence. However, how long is considered too long? Piqued by this and as brought up by Dr. Quek in class, I did a search on Wubbels and it turned out that Wubbels had indeed done a study and found that:

• Beginning teachers do manage to adopt greater dominant behavior, and this increases for the first 6-10 years of their careers. They gradually feel more secure in the classroom, and exhibit increasing control over the proceedings. After the 10th year, things begin to level out in terms of dominance, though the teacher's cooperative behavior begins to decrease at this point.


• Overall, then, teacher-student relationships steadily improve during the first 6-10 years of a teacher's career, leading to greater student achievement and more positive attitudes. Soon after, however, a change occurs that is both welcome and unwelcome. Teachers appear to decline in cooperation and increase in opposition, a change that negatively affects student attitudes. They also become more strict, however, and this can heighten student achievement.

(Source: Retrieved 29 November 2008 from http://pdonline.ascd.org/pd_online/classmanage/el199704_wubbels.html.)

While running through the search results, I also found this link (http://books.google.com.sg/books?id=KhMAYVDnXboC&pg=PA103&lpg=PA103&dq=wubbels+10+years&source=web&ots=wZX8lMD96a&sig=Z5HIZqEvfUkDsOi6QwKGWwILDFA&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result) to be quite interesting. One significant result included here, in my humble opinion, is that a study found no clear evidence of effects of the SOL program on teachers' (who have been teaching between 1 and 10 years) reflective attitude and inclination towards motivation.

All these certainly leads me to think more about my very own teaching career, and how I should always be careful not to rest on my laurels.

P.S: Really looking forward to the next lessons, where Dr. Quek promised more hands-on action and an opportunity to try out SPSS.

Engaging D&T Pupils in Technology - Mediated Learning Environment

After lunch, we were invited to sit in one of the paper presentation at the APERA Conference.

When we reached NIE LT1, we realised that the venue was very empty and that there were actually three sub-paper presentations.

Paper 1
Personally, I thought the first speaker, Mr. Loke, was merely reading every single word on the powerpoint slides with hardly any elaboration. In addition, I thought he could have first introduced some of the abbreviations that he used, like what D&T, KF meant, especially when some of the members of the audience were guests from abroad. Also, one should also use "grade level" instead of "secondary xxx" when addressing an international audience.

Some things that I liked about the presentation:

• The presenter patiently went through the learning activities associated with D&T.



• The presenter spelt out clearyy what was meant by AOD.



• The presenter delineated clearly the learning objectives of D&T Teaching and Learning with AOD.



• The rationale of the study was presented in a clear and concise manner too.

While it was good to break up the monotony by introducing pictures, I thought the speaker may want to spread out the pictures and insert them at appropriate breaks. For example, the speaker may want to insert some pictures to illustrate what he means by D&T learning activites. Nothing much was also mentioned about the subjects and participants in the case study.

Other than the technical aspects of the presentation, I must admit I was actually quite curious as to whether the strategies presented in this paper could be extended to other subjects like Mathematics and the sciences. Certainly worth exploring.

Paper 2
The speaker, Mr. Yeo, first shared the research question, methodology, procedure and his data analysis, but he did not go into details as to how the sample of 15 students was selected, nor whether having more boys than girls in his study affected his findings or made his conclusions less generalisable. After the sharing, I went to speak to Mr. Yeo personally and he confirmed that the n1 and n2 in Holsti's (1969) coefficient of reliability are equal, which makes me wonder why they just cannot express the denominator as 2n instead of n1+n2.

Paper 3
This was the last paper presentation. Again, as per the previous speaker, the rationale, research questions, methodology, findings and analysis were shared right at the beginning of the presentation, though I am still not entirely convinced about the convention adopted in computing the impact factor. I thought that given more time, the speaker should be able to describe his findings in greater detail.

All in all, I did not find the sharing by the three speakers useful as I am not convinced that students' learning have enhanced by the provisions set up by the researchers. Furthermore, it remains to be seen how these provisions can help to enhance students' understanding in less "visual" subjects like my own subject domain, Mathematics. Nevertheless, I thought I have learnt two new "tools of trade" in the Holsti's coefficient of reliability as well as Markov's equation.

Session 4 (28/11)

Dr. Quek started off the session by reviewing the Wetpaint pages, as some of the groups have added even more information and touched up their pages. We were also given time to respond to the questions posted in the discussion forums.

We were then briefed that the focus of today's session will be to understand the rationale for modifying and how to modify the Learning Environment instruments. We were asked to refer back to nine instruments in Fraser's reading on Science Learning Environments. Just as we thought we were overwhelmed, Dr. Quek showed us Meng Fai's work, and we realised that there are many more instruments! Luckily, Meng Fai was on hand to share with us some of his considerations when choosing and modifying the instruments. It certainly helped me to understand better what it means by a validated instrument, why we should avoid re-inventing the wheel as well as be sensitive to the context and the target group.

In addition, even though I have already learnt factor analysis in MED871 and MED872 before, seeing the research reports as well as hearing Meng Fai speak helped me put everything into context. I learnt that we must be careful not to change the meaning altogether of the test items, as well as be mindful that we do not test the same thing using different items. I also learnt that the ordering of the items may also affect the results. An important practical lesson to consolidate the learning from the earlier two modules instead!

Session 3 (27/11)

Dr. Quek started the day's session by sharing the rubric that she will be grading our blogs by. I think she brought up a very pertinent point in that while a rubric allows us to know the expectations and what to work towards, it may also encourage some of us to aim for the minimum and as well as stifle our creativity in how we do up our blogs. A very good point indeed.

Next, each group presented their Wetpaint pages on the gurus in the field of learning environments. One of the groups copied and pasted the wrong photo of Walberg and that taught me a valuable lesson in that even though there is an abundance of resources on the world-wide web, we need to be discerning as to whether the information we get there is reliable. In fact, while researching on the history of Rudolf Moos, I had difficulty trying to discern whether the write-ups were about the right Rudolf Moos.

After the groups have presented their mini-research, Dr. Quek instructed us to post at least two questions on our wiki so that other groups can come in and respond. I thought it was nice as it provides an outlet for visitors to comment as well as participate in discussions so as to bring our understanding to a deeper level.

We were then introduced to the notion of the "4-steps Learning Environment" and it especially made sense to me as an educator. I began to think about the learning environment both in my classes of high ability learners as well as in the domain of CCA, where in my capacity as the teacher IC of my school's Table Tennis team and being a avid ex school team player as well, I occasionally do spar with the players as well. I started to think about what the learning environments are like, how I can assess as well as improve on it.

Before Dr. Quek acquainted us with the three key elements in any learning environment (namely the physical settings, the human participants as well as the social climate/culture), she revisited Murray's Needs-Press model. That really helped me to see the big picture and there and then, everything that I have learnt prior to that seems to fall into place neatly. It also opened my eyes to the many considerations about any learning environment that I needed to be aware of and how lacking and uncondusive the learning environments that I have taught in were. I also learnt that in designing any learning environment, I need to be clear about whether I want to be driven by the outcomes or whether I wanted to be more process-oriented.

We then learnt about how to assess the learning environment as well as the different approaches to Learning Environment Research. The three approaches are as follows:

1. the use of trained observers to code events, usually in terms of explicit verbal communication


2. the use of ethnographic and naturalistic inquiry data collection methods; and


3. the use of pupil and/or teacher perceptions obtained through questionaire administration

The provision of these three approaches had dual effects on me:

1. Helped to put whatever I have learnt in MED871 and MED872 in context (in fact, I am quite thankful that I have done both these modules prior to this module and I can finally see the application).


2. Helped me to better understand the difference between alpha and beta press.

In fact, I began to appreciate why the third approach is usually favoured and I wondered whether baring cost and time, the first two approaches will give a more accurate reflection of the learning environment.

I also learnt about the following considerations when choosing instruments to assess the learning environment:

1. target audience


2. design (no. of scales, no. of items, order of items, inclusion of double-negative items etc)


3. mode of administration


4. qualitative or quantitative or both?


5. what exactly do I want to find out about the learning environment

Dr. Quek also brought up that any instrument must contain all three dimensions of Moos' theoretical framework, though not necessarily of equal coverage. We are also introduced to the actual and preferred forms as well as class and personal forms. Instruments like the E-Learning and WIHIC were highlighted. Having always been of the opinion that it is better to have even number of items on a Likert scale when administering any survey, I must say that these instruments alerted me that sometimes, a 5-point Likert scale may do a better job.

It has indeed been very heavy-going but I must say that the carrom game after lunch helped to freshen me up quite a bit.

Session 2 (25/11)

Ok, this is kind of late, and I have two days' worth of materials to reflect on...

I joined the class as Dr. Quek was introducing the key terminologies in Classroom Learning Environments and they are namely:

• School climate


• School culture


• Perception


• Learning environment


• School learning environment


• Classroom learning environment

Dr. Quek went on to clarify that even though the first two terms, school climate and school culture, are very similar and often mistaken for each other, there are actually subtle differences between the two.

While reading Fraser's reading on Science Learning Environments: Assessment, Effects and Determinants, I also learnt that in addition to alpha press and beta press introduced by Murray, Stern actually extended the notion of beta press by making a distinction between private beta press and consensual beta press.

This was also my first introduction to the founding fathers of the realm of Learning Environments, having been exposed to the works of Fraser, Walberg, Moos, Lewin and Murray, and some of the instruments they developed to assess the learning environments.

Walberg - Learning Environment Inventory (LEI), Harvard Project Physics
Moos - Classroom Environment Scale (CES), Theoretical Framework - The 3 Dimensions of Learning Environments,
Murray - Needs-Press Model
Lewin - Field Theory, B=f(P,E)

What truly amazed me was the amount of details captured by Murray's seemingly simple model. If my classmate has not pointed out, I may not even have noticed that the connecting arrows were different and meant different things! And this model was developed 70 years ago!

Dr. Quek then briefly touched on the demands of the design of the learning environment to meet the goals of education in the 21st century, following which she shared the four different perspectives on learning environments as defined by Bransford, Brown and Cocking (2000) and instructed each group to read Chapter 6 of the book How People Learn and summarise one perspective each. My group was tasked to work on community-centred learning environment and here are my take-aways:

- The degree to which environments are community-centred is getting incresingly important and related to the learning that takes place in them.
- The community includes several aspects of the community, namely the classroom, school, degree to which students, teachers and administrators feel connected to the larger community of homes, businesses, states, the nation and even the world.

Positive aspects

• Norms for people learning from one another


• People continually attempting to improve


• Social norms that value the search for understanding


• An environment that allows students the freedom to make mistakes in order to learn (Brown & Campoine, 1994; Cobb et al., 1992)


• Emphasis on community (strongly affected by the adults who work in that environment) (Brown, 1988)
  

Negative aspects

• Different set of expectations for different students (MacCorquodale, 1988)


• Cultural expectations (Schofield et al., 1990)


• Classroom norms which may encourage modes of participation that may be unfamiliar tp or awkward for some students (Rogolf et al., 1993)


• Grading practices like the public display of a "high achiever" bulletion board (Deyhle & Margonis, 1995)


• Competition among students for teacher attention, approval and grades


• Individual competition at odds with a community ethic of individuals contributing their strengths to the community (Suina & Smolkin, 1994)

This really opened my eyes to the possible effects the community could have on learning in my classroom, and sensitised me to pay greater attention to these details next time round I am in a classroom.

Furtheremore, this way of collaborative learning also allowed me to learn a lot more about the other three perspectives from the other groups. Certainly more efficient and easier to digest!

We were tasked to do up a wetpaint page on one of the following and share with the class the following lesson:

• Kurt Lewin's Field Theory - 1936 (Group 3)


• Henry Murray's Need- Press Theory - 1938


• Rudolf Moos' theoretical framework - 3 dimensions of human evnrionments (Group 1)


• Walberg's involvement in the Harvard Project Physics (HPP) - 1960s( Group 4)


• Barry Fraser -80s’


• Darrell Fisher-80s’


• Theo Wubbels-90s (Group 2)
  

Now, that's another useful tool worth exploring!

There's just the little problem of trying to digest the huge stack of readings as well as the four books that I have borrowed from the library.

Will report back soon, I hope!