Rowan McCloskey s4526447

Approaches to Teaching and Learning 2

Case Writing Assessment Task

One of the classes I taught while on placement was Year 7, Civics
and Citizenship. It was an all-boys class and like most groups contained a
diverse mix of students with different personalities, backgrounds and
ability levels. I found I was able to achieve a positive level of engagement
while introducing topics and was able to facilitate solid contributions from
most students while we were undertaking class discussions. When it was
time for students to carry-on with further practise and inquiry however,
the class would become unfocused.
I would tell the students to carry on with an inquiry-based task,
either individually, in pairs or in groups and a lot of students would
become distracted and disengaged. For example, one task was to outline
a campaign to overturn a school policy they didnt agree with e.g. school
uniform. When I would walk around the class to see how students were
going and found a lot of them doing little work, they would often say they
dont understand what to do or would share similar questions relating to
specific elements of the task. By this stage of the placement I felt I had
developed good relationships with many of the students and also had a
decent idea of their capabilities. Because of this, I knew the level of
disengagement wasnt because of lack of interest, and importantly, it
wasnt because the activity was beyond their capability level. Facing this
disconnect between the students behaviour and engagement during class
activities to that during their own inquiry-based learning I had to look at
my own teaching practice.
Since early in my investigation of learning theories, Constructivism
has been the approach that has appealed most to me. This has been
enforced by the study of the Australian Curriculum which lists some of the
skills that students need to learn as problem-solve, identify, interpret, sort
from range of sources, explain etc. (Education Sources Australia, n.d.)
Skills that would be hard to gain through teacher directed, command and
control methods. A centre-piece of constructivist learning is the need for
students to engage in their own learning about topics that they have an
interest and investment in. As Mufti and Peace (2012) describe, learning
is an active process by which individuals construct and develop their own
understanding of the world based on their experiences. I still hold this to
be completely true but I believe my practice fell short in some crucial
ways.
First and most importantly was my failure to scaffold the activity.
Although a key plank of constructivism is autonomous learning, it is still
vital to provide students with a frame of reference which they can operate
in and to make sure they are on the right path. This is particularly true at
the lower levels of secondary school where students may not have a lot of
experience with the type of freedom that this learning style allows.
Bruning et al (cited in Schunk, 2008, p.247) outlines the process well by
describing instructional scaffolding as the process of controlling task
elements that are beyond the learners capabilities so that they can focus
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Approaches to Teaching and Learning 2

on and master those features of the task they can grasp quickly. At a
practical level this means that I could have gone through an example of a
political campaign with the class to provide a template that they could
work from. Another useful technique that my mentor always reminds me
to use is for one of the more advanced groups to run through their workin-process to help guide students who may find it more difficult.
The next insight is one that I gained predominately through
discussion with my mentor. This was my tendency to only instruct the
students verbally. What I should have been doing and what I started to do
from that moment on was to, instruct the students verbally as well as
writing the instructions on the board. One of the basic tenets of pedagogy
is that people learn in different ways. So while some students may have
been okay with me simply telling them, most would have found it a lot
more helpful to have been able to read it off the board and then perhaps
write it down themselves. In addition to this, when students ask questions
relating to a concept that has been clearly outlined it allows the teacher to
refer them back to the instructions so they can try and work it out for
themselves.
The last factor is one that I touched upon earlier, which is that these
students hadnt had a lot of experience with this learning style. They
were just out of Primary School where traditionally the learning
environment is teacher-directed and their regular teacher, while highly
skilled, still predominately used the chalk and talk style of teaching. This
is a factor because much of the literature makes clear that this style of
learning is not one that can be introduced overnight. The process needs to
be constantly practised, reflected upon, improvements incorporated then
practised again etc. (Schunk, 2008).
When I made these adjustments, I noticed definitive improvements
to engagement levels in my classes. Once tasks had been scaffolded and
instructions were put on display, students were able to move into their
research and problem-solving a lot quicker. There were obviously still
questions and students still needed assistance but the vast majority of
these were related to content and werent regarding the actual structure
of the learning activity. In future classes I will also make sure to regularly
incorporate inquiry-driven activities so students get practice doing them
and can improve their ability to critically engage in issues and become
used to the process.
A final point Id like to make is how important it was to make a
connection and build positive relationships with the students. Because of
this I was able to identify the likely cause of the issue and it could be
remedied quickly. While crucial at all levels of teaching, in this class I
found it very valuable, particularly because it has been identified that, a
strong pattern of under-achievement, and disengagement from school,
particularly for boys occurs in the middle-years age group (the Centre for
Applied Educational Research 2002, p. 4). This pattern would only be reemphasised if a teacher was to blame all indicators of disinterest on
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Approaches to Teaching and Learning 2

students, without entertaining the possibility that it might be a sign of

flaws in teaching-practice.

List of References
Mufti, E. & Peace, M., 2012. Teaching and Learning and the Curriculum,
Continuum, London.
Schunk, D., 2008. Learning Theories, an Educational Perspective. Fifth ed.
Pearson, Merrill Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River.
The Centre for Applied Educational Research, Faculty of Education,
University of Melbourne 2002, Middle Years Research and Development
(MYRAD) Project - Executive Summary, State Government of Victoria,
Department of Education, Employment and Training, viewed 5 June 2015,
<http://www.eduweb.vic.gov.au/edulibrary/public/curricman/middleyear/re
search/MYRADexec summary.doc>
Education Services Australia, Australian Curriculum Browser, Australian
Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, viewed 5 June 2015,
<http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/Curriculum/Overview>