Choosing my Action Research Project

My final decision about my action research project topic was based both on the results from my student surveys and interviews and on what I was learning as a student myself in the MAT program. The MAT program's focus was on social justice and multiculturalism. I decided to search the existing scholarly research that combined both social justice and mathematics in education. What I found was very exciting. I found that teachers had used social justice based mathematics projects and examples to engage their students in mathematics and that some of these researchers had found that their students' academic achievement as well as their engagement in mathematics had increased. I was very excited by this connection and decided that I would design my own social justice based mathematics program and implement it with my students. I also decided that my program would include well structured group work and work on the computer and would use the text very little. In this way I would be incorporating my students' preferences, as shown in the surveys and interviews I conducted, into a new and engaging mathematics program.

My first step was to design a program that met all of the criteria mentioned above:

• Social justice issue based
  
• Group work based
  
• Computer/technology based
  

Now I knew where I was going with my research and felt like I had a viable plan for creating a program that would truly engage my students in learning mathematics. I felt that it was likely that if I were to engage students I would also increase their academic achievement in mathematics. This was a very exciting time in my research because I had a road map; I knew where I was going and how to get there. Eureka!

Photo Note: The photo is a view of the doorway to my classroom during the 2007-2008 school year.

SPSS Results and Interviewing

Using the fabulous SPSS statistical analysis program I was able to determine that there is no significant difference in how much my students like math based on gender or ethnic groups. However, since I was working with only nine students this is largely due to a small sample size. Nothing is statistically significant when you have as sample size of nine; that's just the reality of my research. However, when I looked at the means with my own eyes I could see that there was no difference in mean for liking math for boys vs. girls-the mean was exactly the same. In fact, neither the boys nor the girls liked math. The average was somewhere between Neutral and Disagree in response to the statement "I like math." However, looking closely at the means for the ethnic groups in my class (Caucasian, Hispanic, and Native American) I could see a big difference. In my class my Hispanic students liked math the best, then the Caucasian students, and the one Native American student did not like it at all. These results may not be statistically significant, but they were still significant to me, in the context of my teaching situation and my students' needs. I did not see equity-not all of my student's needs were being met in the area of mathematics.

Next I interviewed my students to gain more information. From the interviews, which I conducted individually and recorded and then transcribed, I learned that my students liked working in groups because they felt like they could learn from each other and from helping each other. I also learned that my students didn't like the text because it was not engaging. They felt like they were working in an abyss when they had to work on problems in the text by themselves. And finally, I learned that my students liked working on the computer because it was also interactive.

Both the analysis of the survey results and the information I gathered from interviewing my students led me to see that I needed a new type of mathematics program that included:

• More computer based work
  
• More group work
  
• Less text based work
  
• More equity-meeting the individual needs of each student

Note: The photo is a view of a section of my classroom in September 2007

Where the survey took me

From the open ended/written response questions on the surveys I gave to the students at my school I learned that 7/17 students who replied to the question "What is your favorite way to learn math?" preferred to learn math by working on the computer and 6/17 students preferred to learn math in small groups. These results would guide my choices throughout the rest of the Action Research. Also, three of the students in my 6^th-7^th grade class specified that if they could change one thing about math they would not use textbooks.

From the Likert scaled response questions on the survey it was clear that over 50% of the students in my 6^th-7^th grade math class did not enjoy math and most were ambivalent about the math lessons I had been teaching so far that year. Keep in mind that this survey was given in September of my first year at this school-only a few weeks of math lessons had been taught by me in my classroom at the time of the survey. The next steps in my research project were clear after looking closely at my surveys:

• I needed to run some statistics using SPSS to determine if there were any major differences in the Likert scaled response items based on groups including:
  
  • Gender
    
  • Ethnicity
    
• I needed to get more information; I needed to interview my students to probe deeper.
  

Looking deeper into my focus area: mathematics

After determining that mathematics was an area of need at my school I began formulating survey questions for the students at the school to determine what effective teaching practices were already being used and what areas might need improvement. I chose to survey the whole school because my colleagues were also interested in looking into mathematics as a school wide action research project. I also tried to create a survey that would give me a clear sense of my own students attitudes towards math and preferences for learning math.

My completed survey focused on how much students liked or did not like math in general and then strove to determine exactly what teaching techniques and/or activities students found engaging and which activities they did not find engaging. The first set of questions used a Likert Scale, the second set was multiple choice and focused on demographics, and the final set was written answer.

All three teachers at our school gave the survey (I created a smiley/grumpy faced one for the K-2nd grade class). The results of the survey indicated that the students in my class did not like math (6th-7th graders). The rest of the school was much more positive about math overall. My students, who I will focus on for my Action Research Project, particularly disliked lessons based on the text book and particularly enjoyed group work and computer supported mathematics. My next post will share some more of the specifics I learned from my survey and tell the story of where it led me next.

The Beginning

I began my action research in my 6th-7th grade classroom in Fall 2007. I had eight students for the 2007-2008 school year; four were sixth graders and four were seventh graders. It was my first year at the school and I was a first year public school teacher with a history as an environmental/outdoor educator.

My research began with informal discussions with my principal and the other two teachers at our very small school. I questioned my colleagues to determine what areas of academics were most in need of change or scrutiny. These discussions led directly to the academic area of mathematics. The students in my class had not performed well on the State Standardized tests the previous school year. Their in class test scores were also low if taken as a class average. These informal discussions and the previous year's State Standardized test results gave me my focus area: Mathematics.