Mark Byers
Western Alamance (NC) High School
Social Studies 

I primarily teach ninth grade World History, but have also taught Civics and Economics, World Religions, Military History, U.S. History, and World Cultures.  I entered teaching as a second career through lateral-entry certification after two decades teaching youth and adults as an ordained full-time youth pastor.

INSPIRATION

A researcher brings much to a project.  In recent years, I have witnessed/experienced a (seemingly) endless bombardment of anti-lecture rhetoric from administrators and so-called-experts who are no longer in an active teaching environment.  For some time, I have called my own practice “directed-discussion” – a kind of politically-correct cousin to lecture. 

Rather than a “monotonous monotone monologue by a moron,” directed-discussion includes: pre-class student reading, frequently posed dilemmas for student verbal response in “real-time,” multiple forms of input (student-drawn maps, charts, tables, visual images), and my own colorful/ humorous/ energetic content-delivery.

Determining how student learning occurs in "directed discussion" through an analysis of student note-taking and reflection. 

Finding ways to keep history interesting:  Students make cardboard shields and act-out ancient Greek phalanx warfare

STUDENT POPULATION FOR THIS STUDY

It is important to know the basic profile of the student subjects.  This was a second-semester ninth grade class, so the students had largely acclimated to the High School environment with its increased demands and expectations (contra Middle School).  The class was a World History class, so assessments and expectations were teacher-developed rather than state-mandated.  It was an Honors-level class, so there was an atmosphere of preparation for college by the students (expectations, homework load, higher-level thinking, etc.) and by myself (format, expectation of initiative and study skills, etc.).  The actual research-event was fairly deep into the semester, so the students had become comfortable with my delivery and my in-class academic expectations.

STUDY QUESTIONS

1. How does pre-class preparatory textual reading impact in-class note-taking during directed-discussion?
2. How does a student’s in-class verbal participation impact his/her note-taking during directed-discussion?
3. How do pre-class preparatory textual reading and in-class note-taking in a directed-discussion format impact performance on teacher-developed assessments?
4. How do a student’s in-class verbal participation and in-class note-taking in a directed-discussion format impact performance on teacher-developed assessments?

FOCUS RESEARCH QUESTION

How do students learn from directed-discussion as evidenced by their note-taking efforts, self-reflection on their learning, and preparedness for teacher-developed assessments?

RELEASE FORMS

Separate release forms (see attached below) were developed through the school system and Elon IRB Board.  They were explained to and signed by all students and their parents prior to the day of the research event.  On the class day for main data collection, several things happened.

>> Student Release Form

>> Student Release Form (Parents)

PRE-EVENT SURVEY

This was a confidential self-report by students on their level of pre-class textbook reading.  This was not part of any class grade.  The format of an Honor-level class ordinarily requires pre-reading as a foundation since I deliver 40-60% additional content, so this was not an extraordinary assignment.

>> Surveys

DIRECTED-DISCUSSION:

I distributed or encouraged several aids to the note-taking process.

• A graphic organizer was provided with the basic framework for the directed-discussion topic (the three Punic Wars between the Roman Republic and the Carthaginian Empire).

  >> Graphic Organizer

• Students had also spent class time drawing/tracing two maps of the ancient Western Mediterranean region to assist in note-taking on the first two Punic Wars.  These could/were used to make notes on the content (verbal and visual) I delivered. 

  >> Western Mediterranean region tracing outline

• I also suggested that an additional sheet be used for further note-taking.  (This was not required, but 24 of 30 students did so.) 

• During the directed-discussion, students were occasionally given specific phrases or facts and directed to “write this down” or “make a table” with regards to a specific topic. 

• There was also much verbal interaction and discussion with 99 incidents of student-teacher exchanges, including 20 that lasted more than 5 seconds each.  There were extensive choral responses (where the class did a kind of voice-vote) or hands-raised “poll-taking” on various topics and issues. 

• A total of 60 minutes of the class was videotaped to develop data on verbal interaction patterns and determine the origin of the student notes that would be analyzed.  Possible origins of the notes might be verbal interaction, teacher-delivery, etc..

POST-EVENT SURVEY

At the end of class, students self-assessed where he/she thought he/she learned the content of class: something that was already known by the student, textbook reading, delivered by the teacher, or from class discussion.  (During eventual coding by the researcher, another category for “non-responsive/ erroneous/ extraneous” was added).

>> Surveys

POST-CLASS ACTIVITIES

• Immediately upon the end of class, all student material created for note-taking was temporarily collected and photocopied for later study.  Student confidentiality was maintained and no analysis was done until the semester was over and all grades submitted on behalf of the students.
  
  >> Sample Student Notes
   
• A teacher-developed assessment (Unit Exam) was later given to cover this class (and other material).  Overall grades were recorded to assist in the analysis of the main and secondary questions.

DEFINITION OF TERMS USED

• As used in this report, a “note” refers to a discrete written bit of knowledge evidenced on the photocopies of student material developed in class.  A “note” might be a complete sentence, a bulleted note, a phrase set off with punctuation marks, a line on a handout, etc..   Of course since note-taking varied from one student to another in a highly personalized way, I maintained a consistent counting method only within one specific student’s own material.

• Similarly, whenever “volume” of note-taking is discussed, it refers to the number of discrete “notes” by a student.  Of course, ten “notes” for one student might include 100 actual words, whereas for another student it might only write 50 actual words or even use abbreviations!

>> See Student Sample

INITIAL DATA ANALYSIS

In order to refer to various ranges of student work and performance, several sets of terms were developed from the raw material.  Throughout this section, the following are used in relation to the Pre-Event Survey [see PDF attachment]:

• HIGH-readers.  Students who self-reported a “close or deep” pre-class reading of the textual material.  In a class of 30 students, five fit this classification.
• LOW-readers.  Students who self-reported a “skim/part” or “did not read” pre-class reading of the textual material.  In a class of 30 students, six fit this classification.
• A further 19 students were in the MID-range between these extremes.

>> Surveys

Similarly, the following were derived from the video recording of the class:

• HIGH-verbals. Students with at least three verbal interactions.  There were 9 students in the range.
• MID-verbals. There were seven students who had one or two verbal interactions during class.
• NON-verbals. These were the 12 students who had no verbal interactions with the teacher or fellow classmates.

Students are also divided into four equal groups when described by the volume of notes that each made.

STUDY QUESTION – 1

How does pre-class preparatory textual reading impact in-class note-taking during directed-discussion?

HIGH-readers took significantly more of their notes from material that originated with the teacher’s delivery (55%) than they took from material that originated in class discussion (44%).  However, they wrote down a slightly lower volume of notes in response to the class setting.  Given that each student would develop very personalized notes, this difference does not seem especially significant.

As might be anticipated, LOW-readers developed notes that originated more frequently from class-discussion (59%) than from the teacher’s delivery (41%).  This was likely due to the fact that they had less content available to them before class, so they took more of their notes from class interaction.  In fact, LOW-readers took the highest volume of notes of the three reading clusters [HIGH-readers -- 50.0%; MID-readers – 50.9%; LOW-readers – 54.5%].  A classroom teacher would hope that a student who read little before class would make it up through in-class effort.  However, when it comes to earned grades, how successful was that approach remains to be answered.

Interestingly, there was no correlation between how much/well a student read before class and how verbal they were in class itself.

STUDY QUESTION – 2

How does a student’s in-class verbal participation impact his/her note-taking during directed-discussion?

HIGH-verbal students took significantly more notes that originated from the teacher’s delivery (57%) than from the discussion component (39%).  It seems that HIGH-verbals frequently sought clarification of teacher-delivered content and, too, may not have needed to write down what they heard or spoke.  Auditory learners probably found that writing it down again (!) was unnecessary.

NON-verbal students were evenly split on teacher-delivered content (50%) and discussion-driven material (49%).  As might be expected, the volume of their note-taking was much higher (58.1% of their notes) than was that of HIGH-verbals (49.2%).  Apparently, it is harder to write and talk at the same time.

For reference, actual incidents of verbal interaction remained relatively stable throughout the class…aside from a surge of organizational and logistical questions at the beginning of class.  This chart shows incidents in five-minute intervals.

STUDY QUESTION – 3

How do pre-class preparatory textual reading and in-class note-taking in a directed-discussion format impact performance on teacher-developed assessments?

As disclaimed, I am aware that the volume of notes does not necessarily correlate to the quality of those notes.  Teachers intuitively know this.  In fact, the highest quarter of the students (by volume of notes) did not score significantly higher (82.4% average score on the relevant Unit Exam) than did the lowest quarter of the students (80.9%).

On the other hand, there was a startling relationship of pre-class text reading and grades earned on teacher-developed assessments.  HIGH-readers (89.9%) scored much better than the MID-readers (79.8%) and dramatically better than LOW-readers (69.8%).

STUDY QUESTION – 4

How do a student’s in-class verbal participation and in-class note-taking in a directed-discussion format impact performance on teacher-developed assessments?

There was virtually no difference in performance on a teacher-assessment if a student was HIGH-verbal (78.2%), MID-verbal (79.6%), or NON-verbal (78.7%).  This might suggest that the manner in which a student developed his/her notes does not matter so much as what happens outside of class, especially in terms of pre-class reading preparation.

What I Discovered

As a high school teacher making his first foray into academic research, I began this project thinking I would be able to “prove” a personal belief.  My brilliant and patient colleagues helped me re-tune the focus of my research to a more objective and clearer goal.  In that process, I was reminded what I often tell my students about how actions can cause “unintended consequences”.  I discovered that finding out what you don’t know is often as valuable as finding out what you do know.  Almost a year’s work on directed-discussion has brought me to three kinds of reflections.

THE DEAD ENDS OF KNOWING…

• I found how truly rare it is for non-textual and non-teacher material to work its way into student-developed notes.  It reminded me that I cannot assume they will “get it”...unless I make sure.

• When working through the coding process of student notes, I found the difficulty of distinguishing the precise origin if there were overlapping sources of presentation.  In the future, I will continually refine the questions to be more sure of the manner of answer.

I WILL DO THIS NEXT SEMESTER…

• Students think they can be successful by either reading ahead OR by participating in class.  It is not either/or…it is both/and.  Verbal participation can refine what is already known…but it cannot fully replace what is not known.

• Maintaining student compliance to a teacher’s instructions seems less politically-correct every day.  Many teachers seem apologetic to make demands of their students.  On the data-gathering day, in-class student compliance to make a specific table (21 out of 30), use the graphic organizer (26 out of 29), and making another page of notes (24 out of 30) was very high.  However, when the reading assignment was given several days in advance…student commitment was vastly worse.  Only 5 students reported that they had read the pre-assignment “closely” or “deeply”.

• I doubt that I can ever again exaggerate the importance of reading prior to class coverage.  It seems obvious that a student’s grade would correlate to his/her reading effort.  But I will now stand in front of a class and say, “If you don’t make a special effort to read well and thoroughly…you are already two full letter grades behind!”  THAT is very different!

SOMETHING I AM ALREADY THINKING ABOUT…

• While I tabulated notes and discerned origins, I really want to know what “good” notes are.  What characteristics do they have?  Are there patterns or traits students can cultivate to increase their value?

• This research was done in an upper-level Honors environment.  How would it compare and contrast at a lower level of academic expectations and capabilities?  Why?

• I am already thinking about using regular mini-surveys on pre-class reading.  I want to strengthen my awareness of its impact and I want to see how changes in the reading affect or don’t affect performance.

Somewhere I came across a quotation by Abraham Maslow: “When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail”.  As a reflective practioner, I just found a few more tools!