Alistair’s Geography Unit: People, Places, Projections

Context

Alistair has been a teacher for seven years, working in the learning areas of History, Geography, and English, as well as being the Aboriginal Education Coordinator for the past two years. Alistair has always considered cultural and personal diversity as an asset and, being both Australian and Latvian, understands that a multi-dimensional point-of-view can be vital in all learning. Working at Roma Mitchell Secondary College in the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program (IBMYP) supports Alistair’s goal that his students are well-round, holistic learners, who embrace, value, and develop their own unique sense of learning and identity, and embrace those aspects in their peers.

Roma Mitchell Secondary School is a Year 8-12 high school located in Gepps Cross, in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. A total 1300 students are spread across three co-located campuses: Co-Educational, Girls’, and Special Education. Roma Mitchell Secondary College is a STEM school, offering a range of in-school and extracurricular activities in the field of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. The school has a diverse and multicultural student population, with many students born overseas, speaking languages other than English at home, and coming from a variety of social backgrounds. The school’s values of Diversity, Respect and Excellence are an integral part of the school ethos and teaching on site.

Alistair’s Year 10 Geography class was highly diverse, reflecting the cultural diversity of the school. The class consisted of twenty-two students (8 female; 14 male), three Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, and nine students being born overseas in various countries including India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Many students in the class have also been identified and Gifted and Talented students, however, the class was not a Gifted and Talented specific class.

Doing the action research

To try and answer this research question, Alistair made deliberate changes to the class environment and pedagogies he used. Four key areas of change were addressed when conducting the research:

1. Diverse classroom set-up
   The classroom set-up was purposefully arranged to heighten student participation and discussion. The physical layout of classroom furniture allowed for individual, small groups, face-to-face and roundtable work. These set-ups were directly linked to the intended outcome of lessons; whether students were asked to collaborate in a group setting, work one-on-one in pairs to promote student talk, or work individually.
2. Activities structured to promote discussion
   The activities during the action research all had clear ‘rules’ and structure. Before the activities commenced, Alistair would explain the rules and what was to be expected, thus allowing all students to be on an equal footing with each other. The activities were diverse and always changing throughout the unit, asking students to be malleable and work in a more challenging and newer environment, instead of an old familiar one. The activities were also designed to elicit discussion and focused more on the quality of the discussion rather than answers.
3. Promote diversity of groups
   Group work was used throughout and was integral to the learning. Consistently using group work throughout was vital to promote positive group thinking, create class routines, and give students the opportunity to learn how to work in groups. This was a skill many students lacked, or did not feel comfortable participating in, and needed multiple opportunities for development and success. The way groups were created also changed with each lesson, and included: random selection, teacher selection, student selection to promote change and challenge. Group size was also changeable depending on the activity and ranged from individual or pairs to small groups our large groups.
4. Assessment tasks that promote student sharing and discussion
   Assessment tasks were designed to increase student discussion and decrease written components. This was purposeful, as many students only saw written assessments as important and worthy of time and effort. Participation and discussion also became an assessable component of the work, and students learnt that participation and discussion is as important as written assessments when gauging learning.

The assessment task was divided into three components as follows:

• Create a ‘new’ map

Students mapped a chosen place or space that was important to them and the community they were part of. The student could also choose what type of map they wished to use to capture this space or place (e.g. street, thematic, picture, topographic).

• Peer discussion

Students then participated in a class discussion about their maps. They created a list of ten questions to ask different members of the class about their maps. Students had to walk around and initiate discussion with one another.

• Cartographer’s statement

Students wrote a cartographer’s statement, answering:

• • A definition of place and space
  • An explanation of their space and key geographical features
  • How they interact with their mapped place/space
  • Why the place is located where it is
  • The changing special characteristics of the place/space
  • How this place holds meaning to you and the community who use it

Data collected during the action research included:

• Alistair’s written reflections after key lessons
• Records of significant teaching moments (including video, photographs, voice recordings, observation notes taken by researcher)
• Student understandings (including  surveys, written feedback, formative assessment tasks, summative assessment tasks)
• Planning documents (unit plans, rubrics)

Student outcomes

Over the course of the unit, many aspects of student learning changed. These changes included:

• Students felt happy and willing to work in a group setting. Even if not their preferred method of learning, they all actively participated and could identify the value in group discussion.
• Students appreciated their own funds of knowledge as useful information, and could see that their interpretation of place was as important as one the teacher, or another ‘expert’, put forward.
• Students interacted with one another in a more positive way, and built relationships with other students they had not interacted with before.
• Students saw discussion as a benefit, not a deficit in assessment tasks.
• Student choice allowed for higher engagement.
• The rearrangement of tables helped support student-to-student interaction.
• Students felt more comfortable sharing information and their opinions with their peers.

Teacher outcomes

Over the course of the unit, Alistair reports that from this action research he learnt:

• CRP enables students to embrace their own and others’ life-worlds and see them as beneficial to learning.
• CRP allows students to consider multiple viewpoints and challenge the status quo for themselves.
• Actively embedding CRP-based pedagogies into learning does lead to student engagement and high-level outcomes, both academically, socially and personally.
• Students were more engaged when they had choice, had a voice, and felt they could contribute knowledge.
• The pedagogies needed to be structured enough to support learning, but flexible enough to embrace and support the diversity of students’ life-worlds.
• The focus needed to be small to initiate big results, meaning that the teacher needed to work with the individual class cohort and develop and modify pedagogies and learning activities specifically for them.
• Students can be assessed on their own life-worlds and interpretations, and can achieve to a high standard
• When building a culture of classroom CRP, both teacher and student feel invested in the teaching and learning cycle