Discussion of observations and interviews

Over the course of the ILA it was observed that the teacher would first teach content and then students would be required to work by themselves, with minimal teacher support.  Due to observations and an interview with the teacher it was also discovered that no specific inquiry based model was used for the purposes of teaching content or research skills.  Whilst the QSA senior Modern History Syllabus did form the basis of the research assignment, the teacher admitted that he does inquiry-based learning does not inform the design of his unit or lesson plans.  With regards to the information seeking process students had minimal informational retrieval skills and most students relied on shared resources or resources that had been provided by the teacher.  When students did undertake their own independent research they used the QLD State Library, and relied heavily on online textbook chapters.  Some students didn’t have much variety in their sources, over relied on one particular author.  Only one library lesson was attended, and this was so the school librarian could show students how to access the online resources found in the QLD State Library.   

Proper referencing standards were not adhered to and it was observed that most students did not reference their work; rather they would only reference one paragraph.  The teacher explained that this was quite normal, as they are not expected to use full Harvard referencing throughout their assignments.  On the whole students seemed to be on task and engaged with their work and they were able to individually with the teacher throughout the assignment period.   

Discussion of questionnaire results

The questionnaires and observations revealed that students’ confidence significantly increased between the two questionnaires.

At the start of the research assignment, students felt overwhelmed, lacked confidence and generally felt confused about the assignment. As the graphs show above, most students were not interested and did not know much about their set topic at the start of the assessment.  Many also felt that it would be a difficult assignment to write.  It was also discovered that at the start of the assignment, students lacked interest in the topic and generally didn’t know much about their chosen area for the assignment.  During the first questionnaire 76% of the students reported that they were either not interested or did not have much interest in the topic, while the same amount of students also reported that they didn’t know much about the topic at all.  This however dramatically changed as students’ started to gather information and gain a better understanding of their specific topics.  In questionnaire two, students were feeling significantly more confident with 94% reporting that they knew quite a bit or a great deal about the topic and 88% stating that they were quite interested in the topic.    

In questionnaire one, most students reported that writing the assignment, undertaking research, finding relevant sources and writing the research journal would be the easiest tasks to undertake during the assignment period.  However at the end of the research task

When asked to report on the most difficult tasks, students stated that finding valid sources, writing the research journal, writing the essay, structuring the essay, making sure their writing is clear and concise, keeping within the word limit, research, motivation, time and source analysis for the research journal would be the most difficult. 

The results indicated that many of the students were at different levels with regards to their academic writing and research skills.  It also became apparent that most of the students had some form of difficulty with gathering information and analysing sources for relevancy and reliability.  Most of the students also struggled with the source analysis section of their research journal.  By the end of the research assignment most students reported that they felt quite confident about the topic and that they would be happy to discuss issues regarding Soviet Russia.  Some students also felt confident that if they were to read an article about their set topic they would be able to understand and make judgments based on their analysis of the article.  This showed a dramatic improvement from the start of the research assignment, as many students only new various facts about their set topic.  

Several data gathering methods were employed over the course of the ILA.  17 students participated in the ILA over 5 weeks.  Data gathering methods included several questionnaires, interviews and observations.  Questionnaire 1 was given to students at the start of the research assessment.  This was designed to see what students understood about the their topic, how they were to gather information, what prior knowledge they had about the topic. Questionnaire 2 was given to students at the end of the research assessment after they had handed in their assignments.  This was designed to see how they felt about the assignment, whether or not they gained any knowledge, how they felt about research and searching for information and if they felt confident in this. 

Observations were undertaken throughout the research project, once a week for one hour over the course of a 5-week period.  These were also undertaken whilst observing students and their search methods. Interviews were also conducted with several students throughout the research period to gain an understanding of how they were feeling and what areas they were struggling in. These interviews were fairly impromptu, as not all students could participate due to their workload.

At the end of the ILA, the data was gathered up including, questionnaires, transcribed interviews and observations. Questionnaires were coded for data analysis and the interviews and observations were used for the discussion of results.

A qualitative approach was applied to this research as it was deemed the most appropriate for the type of research and observations undertaken. A constructivist approach was also adopted throughout the study as the researcher was extremely interested in the views, values, beliefs, feelings, assumptions and ideologies of the individual participants rather than just gathering facts and describing acts (Charmaz, 2000 as cited in Creswell, 2012, p. 429).   Charmaz (2003, p. 272) also recognises that the constructivist approach does not seek single, universal truths; rather, it addresses human realities and how people develop relations with what they do, think and feel.   

References

Charmaz, K. (2003). Grounded theory (Ch 8). Strategies of qualitative inquiry. 2, 249.

Creswell, J. W. (2012). Educational research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.