Method

Introduction 

 

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I began my ILA with a Year 5 class inquiring about geography and moved to a Year 9 class inquiring about the Industrial Revolution in History. This impacted slightly on how and when data was gathered. I moved from an inquiry in which I was working collaboratively with the teacher and students, to an inquiry where I was mainly an observer of the process.

The second ILA was part of a 7 week unit and unfortunately, the teacher and I only became involved during the research assessment stage of the unit. Throughout the inquiry process of the research assignment, each student was given access to laptops for 3 x 60 minutes per week for three weeks. The students had to rely on the Internet, as the school had very limited hard copy resources for the students to access. Teacher assistance and feedback was provided as and when required. The students were required to present their research in a multimodal presentation.

With my first ILA, the teacher and I were “tuning” the students into the topic and the data gathered was from the first exposure to the inquiry. Unfortunately, I missed this stage of the second ILA.

METHOD

During these inquiries, I used several methods to acquire data. The major data gathering device used was Todd’s, Kuhlthau’s & Heinstrom’s (2005) SLIM toolkit. This provided me with reflection sheets to distribute to the students. During my first ILA, I was able to gather data from the first reflection sheet. Due to a time factor impacting on the second ILA, I decided to issue only two reflections one and three. Other data was gathered from observations during the ILAs, and discussions with students and teachers. These observations and discussions provided an informal insight into how the students were engaging with the inquiry activity and assisted in identifying areas where additional support was required.

I elected to use the SLIM toolkit as it had been designed to assess student learning through guided inquiry and had been developed by specialists in the field. It provided a methodical approach to data gathering and analysis, as opposed to the more subjective approaches of observation and discussion.

During the first ILA, Reflection Sheet 1 was administered to the students at the beginning of the inquiry unit. The students reflected on the five questions relating to their knowledge and experiences. During the second ILA, Reflection Sheet 1 was administered on my first day with the class, however the students had already participated in several class sessions introducing the topic. Reflection Sheet 3 was administered at the end of the inquiry when the students had completed their research and were presenting their findings.

 REFERENCES

Todd, R, Kuhlthau, C & Heinstrom, J. 2005. 'Impact Studies', Rutgers School of Communication and Information, Accessed 19th September 2013, Source: from http://cissl.rutgers.edu/joomla-license/impact-studies?start=6