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Task 3 Teacher Enquiry: How am I supporting authentic learning for…

- - - - This shift in my inquiry came about as a result of continuing discussion in reflection of my lessons with my supervising teacher, and my peers. The growth of student autonomy was not singular in importance - rather I realised that this is a dialogic space in which student's are able to seek and engage with learning on multiple levels - supporting this by providing authentic access to the curriculum for all students arose as a suggestion from these discussions, which I would follow for the remainder of my inquiry.
  - - - evidence of student engagement with the collaborative class glossary was a positive effect of providing students with what would become an ongoing form of autonomy supporting practice (McNamee & Moscheta, 2015) in the classroom. This is a thread of inquiry I would follow throughout the rest of my internship. How could I use this living document as a tool to support the transfer of student knowledge into real-world applications?
    - - An adapted 3-level reading scaffold was created to support reading for meaning in the context of an assault / murder case in the Parramatta area involving multiple minors. Building on research and reflections from prior weeks, I sought to engage students in class reading strategies that fccused on reading for meaning and modelling literacy practices to students in order to support their development and engagement with the text (Ash, Kuhn & Walpole, 2008; Johnson & Lapp, 2012). (Click to enlarge - magnifying glass in bottom left)
        
        This was intended to support student decision making in an informed manner - what was the result of the case? What have students learned about doli incapax that would suggest this outcome? Do student's believe their friends would agree with this outcome?
        
        From these points of student evidence and teaching practice, a new central need comes into clearer view: How am I able to support authentic learning opportunities? Students seek context and application for their understandings of the law. What can I do to support this?
        
        Arising from this consideration came the need to continue to support students' learning and engaging in practices that would continue to support the co-construction of knowledge in the classroom (McNamee & Moscheta, 2015). Using student feedback from the end of unit survey, learning focused on how students could explore contact with criminal law. What did it look like in action? How did it relate to their own experiences of the law in their lives? The three level reading task (and think pair share) were designed to support students in bridging the gap between experiential understanding of law and curriculum knowledge (e.g. mens rea, actus reus, doli incapax as factors of the law) in their everyday applications (Kapur, Lee & Lee, 2018).
        
        A point of reflection I engaged in as a result of our lesson this week was the need to maintain authorship over our stories, our knowledge and our participation in the various aspects of society (Freire, 1970, quoted in McNamee and Moscheta, 2015) which meant continuing to re-align my practices with the needs of my students. As I considered the importance of sharing this practice of ownership -- of supporting my students in maintaining authorship of their own practices and stories -- my professor, Olivia, shared an article that considers the ways in which our values shine through in our teaching and learning in the classroom (Furman & Larsen, 2020), which I would harness as a point of exploration for the coming weeks of my enquiry.
        
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        In my discussion with my journal peer, Y, I did consider the importance of guiding student questioning that had been engaged with throughout this lesson (Kapur, Lee & Lee, 2018) to reflect on the ways I had used three level reading tasks, and think pair share activities to encourage student's questioning - to what end was engagement with these strategies designed to support a growing sense of student autonomy? Providing clear context for the application of various laws required students to be able to consider and implement prior knowledge (both curricular and experiential) in order to inform their judgements and opinions - however I would need to further consider the ways in which I could guide their inquiry and probe their thinking processes on these subjects.
    - - Student feedback revealed an important area for me to consider further: How much space had been made for students to connect their learning to new concepts through self-directed inquiry? I had begun to engage in the use of Think-pair-share routines with consistency to attempt to engage students in applying knowledge when considering higher-order questions (Carpenter et. al., 2020), but had not yet integrated ways of teaching and learning that would promote student's spontaneous and effective questioning (Oyama, 2018).
- - - - I noticed in the sustained discussion that arose from R's response to the question that there is the opportunity for students to engage in connecting their experiences to learning opportunities and their creation of knowledge. I wanted to focus on implementing this in a way that was accessible to all students, while being culturally responsive. Kieran & Anderson (2019) pose a strategy to connect the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) with culturally responsive teaching (CRT) strategies to support students in their learning. this was a point of interest that I would follow in the coming weeks of my inquiry - particulary given the importance of this expression to R - who, like all students, I wanted to be able to engage with the learning in connection to their own lives and experiences.
  - - - Student R, of first nations heritage: "a lot of my people don’t get to vote, even if they have the ‘right’”
        
        In our seminar, Olivia described practices about using trauma-informed language in the classroom. With a topic as important--and potentially traumatic for students--as this, how could I make the best use of these practices going forward? It was profound and important for R to be so forthcoming, but I think it is best to use trauma-informed practices (Brunzell, Stokes, & Waters, 2019), as Olivia mentioned to support further engagement. E.g. instead of asking: who has been discriminated against? I could ask: Who knows someone who has been discriminated against?
  - - - My observations presented me with an opportunity to consider how I would begin to engage students in learning from an autonomy supporting perspective: I engaged with articles from Evans and Boucher (2015), as well as Pattal and Zambrano (2019) to begin exploring methods of supporting student autonomy in the classroom to empower them as constructors of knowledge.
    - - This was my first experience during the internship of observing students choosing how to interact with learning in the classroom (Pattal & Zambrano, 2019), which I sought to integrate into my own lessons and teaching.
- - - - The focus of this lesson was on student inquiry; supporting students in a responsive environment as they seek to investigate the various ways in which our human rights are protected by Australian Law. Students began the jigsaw in expert groups that would form the basis of their investigation. From this point, students would break into smaller groups to share their knowledge and begin writing a paragraph responding to their specific investigation
        
        This would then be the basis for students to move into a final, large group and collate their work into a cohesive sustained piece that would present an investigation into a range of ways that human rights are protected in Australia. In the process of creating a cohesive whole, students were facilitated in sharing peer feedback, which was modelled throughout the practice and stages of grouping.
        
        setting out clear checkpoints for students allowed for student accountability in their own investigative practices; at each stage students were required to have completed a certain amount of research or writing based on their research - made clear through the use of google documents (via google classroom) that could be used to provide real-time feedback.
        
        The intention of this series of tasks was to develop student's authentic connection to the importance of laws in our societies (Yu, Kreijkes & Salmela-Aro, 2022) - supporting their practice in collaborative spaces as co-constructors of knowledge from the perspective of equal experience and capability (Herrington, Parker & Boase-Jelinek, 2014; Pahomov, 2014; Stanley, 2021) in order to support authentic learning in a real-world application that remains relevant to students beyond the boundaries of the curriculum.
        
        These tasks were developed in collaboration with my supervising teacher who first elicited the idea during our discussions and de-brief session for lessons in week 4. I had raised concerns about the transmissive, or highly-didactic nature of the last lesson as something I wanted to shift my focus away from, as I believed I had not met the needs of my students in the way I had attempted to involve real-world context as a connection to authentic learning.
        
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        Discussions with my university professor and peers about their experiences with open-ended activities influenced my decision around how to structure these checkpoints. hearing one of my peers, R, discuss the difficulties she had in keeping students engaged with the task during their practical activities helped me to consider how I could effectively implement checkpoints for student progress that would not impede on autonomy, but rather create a sense of accountability that is reflected in their work as equitable members of a knowledge-making exercise (Bias, 2022; Yu, Kreijkes & Salmela-Aro, 2022)
        
        Students were given access to group materials on google classroom to simulate a collaborative environment found in real-world workplaces, that would act as an exploration point for research.
- - - - Students had made clear connections to the previous lessons, and had adapted their knowledge in consideration of it's application to meet the needs of their communities at a range of scales - reflected in an authentic approach and understanding of these issues that resulted in a meaningful product (Kim & Reeves, 2007)
        
        I noticed that students had integrated discussion of human rights in effective and clear ways throughout their proposals that were not directly related to the protections of human rights as we explored in week 5 - but rather used this as a means to investigate the areas where Australian laws are not protective of human rights - which students integrated into their work, including clear reference - representing a defined and appropriate use of cognitive tools in an integrated manner (Abrams, 2014; Jonassen & Reeves, 1996; Bias, 2022; Aviram, 2000) that was reflective of a growing sense of student autonomy in making clear connections between their own experiential knowledge and an array of curriculum related knowledge that had been re-negotiated in terms of existing knowledge from each student's own terms (Oyama, 2018).
      - Meaningful products (Kim & Reeves, 2007) for students were represented in a range of proposals to reform laws, or aspects of the Australian constitution to better serve the needs of the multiplicity of communities within Australia. Building on the autonomous practices engaged with throughout the course of lessons in weeks prior (specifically week 5) allowed students the space to consider and reflect (Walsh & Sattes, 2011; Herrington, Parker & Boase-Jelinek, 2014) on their construction of knowledge and meaning in relation to their own communities in a way that was meaningful and authentic - resulting in proposals that were supported by evidence from community, personal experience and investigative research.
        
        For individual students this was reflected in the further development of knowledge at a level beyond that practiced in class - students had moved from an analysis level to a creative level, drawing upon multiple strings of research and investigation to support their knowledge-making endeavours (Bloom, Krathwohl & Masia, 1956) using a range of tools provided to them (Jonassen & Reeves, 1996; Kim & Reeves, 2007) in the creation of new personally meaningful solutions to real-world issues that we are currently responding to.
        
        The use of tools available to students was a marked consideration throughout this inquiry - but I did not quite enunciate this aspect of the enquiry throughout my planning or inquiry into teaching; it was factored into planning as an aspect of authentic learning; that cognitive tools (Jonassen & Reeves, 1996) and layers in the classroom (Abrams, 2014) were a functional aptitude to addressing student needs. In reflection of this, I am aware of the ways that this factored into my own decisions and the ways in which I approached pedagogical moments in teaching and learning to address the needs of students - mainly in supporting the positive use of these cognitive tools to engage students in their learning.
        
        While I had followed the intention of this idea throughout the teaching and learning sequence, it was not until week 5 in discussion with my peers that this became clearly defined and apparent in my inquiry as a focus for why students should engage with autonomy supporting practices, or the authentic learning opportunities I had designed for them. Reflecting on the need for students to be able to connect authentic learning to their own communities (Walsh & Sattes, 2011) and propositions for students to be positively involved in supporting the development of their communities.
        
        While not directly acknowledged by students, having been able to follow their drafting process in preparing this task over the course of the unit provided an opportunity to acknowledge the way they had engaged with and responded to the material presented across a range of lessons - effectively addressing student feedback presented in week 3 to drive student learning and engagement in a range of technological and physical environments to support learning (Bias, 2022; Jonassen & Reeves, 1996).
- - - - Reflecting on the action I took in this lesson lead me to consider how I could encourage students to engage in research and learning in a way that was more supportive of their autonomy and authentic learning. Although they had participated in researching and sharing in group and class discussions that took place across the room and multiple whiteboards - this remained seated in a largely transmissive mode of learning. My next step came about through discussion with my supervising teacher: provide students with the opportunity to engage in an expert jigsaw to determine and share learning on their own terms to achieve an outcome.
        
        Discussion raised from the contention between classifications of offenses was harnessed to encourage student engagement and decision-making in relation to an ongoing civil and criminal case that occurred in local proximity to the school - the embezzlement of millions of dollars into a local RSL's poker machines. Students broke down the aspects of the case in a think-pair-share routine, and ideas were discussed and added to the board. From the perspective of teaching, my intention here was to facilitate debate between students on the implications of this crime (Boud, 1981), rather than guiding their individual responses.
        
        Reflecting on this lesson lead me to consider ways that I could reduce the didactic elements (Boud, 1981) I found to be present in such discussion, and exploration of curriculum content - even if guided by student interest. In responding to student needs (authentic learning opportunities), I would need to focus on how to create a more responsive learning environment that focused on engaging student in all aspects of learning - including things such as defining their own learning intentions, selecting projects they believe to be valuable, engaging in self-assessment, reflecting on their learning and making significant decisions about their learning (Boud, 1981; Deci & Ryan, 1985; Evans & Boucher, 2015).
        
        Ultimately I did not implement all of these strategies as I would have hoped in the following weeks - however I did have the opportunity to discuss these ideas and concepts in detail with my supervising teacher, who lead me to develop an extended jigsaw activity as a result of this discussion. Noticing the need for students to feel engaged in the creation of their own knowledge was not being properly supported in this lesson (McNamee & Moscheta, 2015) - had I succumbed to perceived pressure from external compliance?
        
        I would look further beyond this idea to consider the need of my students to engage in authentic learning in a range of scenarios, and how this was achievable through a range of digital and physical resources that supported a culturally responsive approach to their learning (Herrington, 2012; Kieran & Anderson, 2019).
      - Should Pokies pay back stolen money? [video, ABC news]
- - - - the 3-level reading task was intended to support students in reading for meaning - and connecting that meaning to their prior knowledge in a transfer response: Examine the role of law in society using evidence from the above article.
        
        I modelled this practice to students in class; first sharing an example of how our pages could look at the end of our shared reading, and then highlighted the text with students as we read through the scaffold together.
        
        This was an intentional process suggested by my supervising teacher to support my practice in the classroom (knowing when to pause, what to focus on for students in the moment) and to support modelling positive practices for students (Furman & Larsen, 2020).
        
        First, students defined words they had not previously encountered - providing a clear progression from reading the text to developing an understanding of the text. Students' moved through levels of statements designed using the information in the text to support literal, idea, and argue statements. To gain insight into what students knew, I designed a transfer task in the examination of the role of law in society. Students were free to write or type their response - given the time constraints of the lesson, I did not offer an alternative to a written response.
        
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        In completing the task, one student asked, with concern: "Sir, this is all new knowledge to me. What do I do?" I confirmed to the student that this was completely ok: we had begun looking at a new text and new issues. It is a part of learning to express uncertainty as we move towards the construction of knowledge (McNamee & Moscheta, 2015).
        
        Conferring with my supervising teacher about her use of popcorn reading with year 12, I had found a range of research advocating for the use of alternative reading practices that focused on supporting student reading for meaning (Ash, Kuhn & Walpole, 2008; Johnson & Lapp, 2012) - which complimented the use of reading codes - where information was highlighted in various colours according to what the information tells the student.
        
        This was a practice I would consider widely in my inquiry and attempt to put into practice across multiple lessons. My intention to work towards an independent student learning experience meant that I had to find ways to support students to feel that they had the capacity and tools (Abrams, 2014) to engage in these activities appropriately. What was clear in this evidence from students was that they were able to effectively draw upon information in their reading - but to what extent would they be able to transfer this skill to self-chosen texts?
        
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      - 3-level reading scaffolds were included as an access point for all students to engage in literacy practices. Discussions with my supervisor encouraged this, in order to support EAL/D students with a range of opportunities to access the same content while addressing all levels of student capability (ref). This practice was considered as a point of consistency - for students to use this information later in the lesson sequence, I would need to provide opportunities for students to continue to self-assess their progress in using such scaffolds when reading for meaning. This provides visibility for students to see the consistent application of their effort and rationale in their decision making (Evans & Boucher, 2015; Young-Jones, Levesque, Fursa & McCain , 2021).
        
        This was intended to provide a continuous point of visibilty for students. What I learned as a result of this first attempt was the multiple ways in which I can provide feedback -- I do not always have to collect physical papers and return them. Using Google Classroom, I realised I could add another layer of near-immediate, or 'live' feedback that could be shared with students, and would be assistive in allowing them to compare and make judgements about their progress in the topic.
      - connecting current issues to student's real world experiences (e.g., student's part time jobs in retail settings where these lending schemes are apparent) intended to provide opportunities for students to share their views and opinions in an informed manner - connecting learning opportunities and curriculum content to their experiential knowledge. (Ref)
        
        Here I saw connection to real-world issues as a form of encouraging student autonomy - what I did not consider in depth at this point was the opportunity for students to choose this material themselves. In review of this attempt, my journaling peer, Y, offered some direction in a further review of Autonomy supporting practices in the classroom (Aviram, 2000), which I would not look into deeply until a further discussion with my supervising teacher to consider the opportunity for expert jigsaw activities in the classroom.
    - - What is a hung parliament and what happens if there is one on Australia's election day? [Guardian]
        
        My observation of the class discussions from last week encouraged me to integrate a think pair share activity to support smaller-group discussion and involve students who may not have been as comfortable to participate in a whole class discussion -- thus supporting student's autonomy in encouraging them to make consistent and informed decisions in their learning. opportunities for students to discuss provides an alternative means of expression for students who may prefer to ideate verbally, helping students to work towards learning goals through a series of flow states made visible by such activities (Marques, Lopez, & Pais-Ribeiro, 2011)
- - - - Moving forward, I believe my focus will be informed by a continuing interest in the promotion of student values, autonomy and authentic learning scenarios (Marquez, Lopez & Pais-Ribeiro, 2011; Herrington, Parker & Boase-Jelinek, 2014; Manniko & Husu, 2019); and the skills that I will need as a teacher to realise a positive development of these outcomes in my students. Developing my skills in the context of continuing to provide new learning experiences for my students, and understanding the authentic contexts in which students learn, live and engage with the world beyond the classroom will continue to guide my ongoing teacher inquiries.
      - Engaging in this inquiry has provided clarity in the value of deciding on a detailed and specific form of guided inquiry within our teaching practices - there is a significant amount of evidence presence in any form of teacher inquiry, and it can quickly become overwhelming to consider, and attempt to re-focus in onto transformative outcomes for students that align with the products of our inquiry.