I feel that the research that I conducted was very helpful for my own practice. As we move towards the NGSS, students will be asked to write more than they have in the past. While the results of my study didn't show enough to be considered "statistically significant," the gain was enough that I saw the value in the process and want to continue it moving forward.
The new questions that arose from my study centered around wanting to know more about how the process helped my students who had already scored well on the initial assignment. There isn't a ton of research out there about how the peer review process improves critical thinking skills in students who were already showing a good understanding of the content. While I don't consider myself proficient at all when reading other people's research papers, the process really made me concentrate more on the structure of the paper itself. I found myself looking things up on different websites before I would give feedback as to make sure (hopefully) that I was giving helpful feedback. I would like to learn more about how this process not only helps my students who are struggling, but what is the effect on those who have a pretty good understanding of the content. I think that as I move forward, I would focus on more of the specifics of the feedback process. For example, the wording of the prompts or the amount of prompts given and the effect that has on how students respond to other student's work. I am also interested in how going through this process affects how students respond in their short answers on their assessments. There is a lot of different questions that I feel still haven't been answered that I could still work on.
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My research question was whether peer feedback would lead to a gain in student achievement; specifically in science. Now that I have looked over both my quantitative and qualitative data, there seems to be a noticeable gain in student achievement between my control and treatment group. On a scale of 1-16, students made a 2 point gain from their rough to their final draft in my treatment group compared to my control group.
I feel that this showed that the process of peer feedback did lead to a gain in student achievement. When students revised their own work, they only made a roughly one point gain. When they received feedback from their peers, their average gain was almost 2 and a half points. Students were able to more clearly write their hypothesis, explain the purpose and procedure of the lab, and more clearly state their evidence. I think that moving forward, I still have some questions. I wonder what the numbers would look like if I did the same research, but flipped the two classes. They are both relatively close academically, but I wonder if I could repeat the same results with by switching the two groups. My other question revolves around which specific part about the peer review process was the most beneficial. I wonder if it was being able to see others work or the comments specifically that created the gains that I saw. What the results showed in relation to the learning process itself is that students really need the chance to revise their work. Through the feedback and revision process, students are able to see what high quality work looks like, the opportunity to reflect on their own work, and have to go through the process of critically thinking about others and their own work. It is a very lengthy process that can't be done with every assignment, but is definitely worth the time to incorporate into my own practice when I can moving forward. For my quantitative data, I decided to use a rubric to score student work. The plan for now is the control group will complete their assignment and submit their work. They will be given a score and then the opportunity to revise their work before submitting it again. My other class will complete the same assignment, but rather than revise their own work, they will go through the peer review process before submitting their final copy. I included a link of what the rubric will look like here. By using the rubric it will give me the ability to look for progress (or lack of) between the two groups.
For my qualitative data, I decided to use Google forms as a way to collect my data. Here is a link to what I have put together so far. After the students have completed the treatment, they will answer the 3 short answer questions that I included. My original research question looked at whether using technology and peer feedback would lead to an increase in student achievement. I also looked at the 3 following subquestions to help me answer my research question: 1) Can students demonstrate a growth in conceptual knowledge through the peer review and revision process in science? 2) Does the process help students understand what high level writing looks like and are they able to use that tool to improve their own writing? 3) Does the process of peer feedback and revision help build procedural knowledge? Each data collection method will help me answer not only my main question, but the three subquestions that I had as well. The qualitative data will give me an insight into how the students thought and felt about the process. The quantitative data should give me the results I need to determine if there was a significant difference between the two groups of students in regards to student achievement through their writing in science . My driving question for my research is built around students being able to anonymously submit their work to a website so they can get feedback and revise it before they submit their final copy. I want to see whether this process helps with student achievement. For my research I will be using a website (peergrade.io) to help me. My current plan is to use a set of pre and post test questions to gather my qualitative data. Here is a link to some of them that I have completed so far. These are just a rough draft, and I still will need to develop my post test questions. My plan is to use Google forms as a way to collect all of the short answer responses from my students. As far as my quantitative data collection, I am going to use a rubric similar to this one here. This isn't fully developed yet because I haven't decided which lab I am going to use yet. This will help me gain the quantitative data I need for my pre and post test.
I chose all of these tools because they seem like the most efficient way to collect all of this data. Students being able to submit their work anonymously was important to me for a couple of reasons. Through my research, and conversations that I have had with students, the need for anonymity was clear. This website allowed me a very quick way to implement that part. As far as Google forms, it breaks everything down in so many different ways, it just seemed to be the easiest tool to collect the data that I need. The purpose of my research is to see if this process allows students to not only build their content knowledge, but to see if it can lead to an increase in student achievement and procedural knowledge. Students are expected to not only be able to memorize and recite vocabulary, but they need to apply those terms and continue to build 21st century skills. This research should show me whether this process allows them to continue build on their foundational skills and help them expand their critical thinking skills. It wasn't until 2 years ago, that I really began to start to look at the research that was being done in education. A training that I attended at the beginning of the school year focused on these huge collection of studies that showed which factors showed the most significant things that a teacher can do to increase student achievement. Things like teacher clarity, feedback, and classroom discussions have shown to help students make the progress that we all hope to in our classrooms.
As we continue to look for research that connects to our driving question, I haven't really found any consistent names that have focused specifically on peer feedback, especially at the middle school level. When John Hattie collected all of the research above, they were done through huge meta-analyses. He collected and analyzed thousands of research studies, but didn't actually conduct most of them himself. While I try and use these results to try and be a better teacher, I haven't been able to use or find a ton of research specifically done by John Hattie. Another researcher that I have run across has been Graham Nuthall. While I didn't agree with a lot of what he said, there were pieces of his research that spoke of how important student motivation is in the learning process. While some of his work tied into my driving question, I haven't been able to use any of his research due to the time those studies were conducted. He does speak about peer feedback, and how his estimation was that 80% of it was incorrect. My plan is to use that number as guide as I try to structure my research in such a way as to minimize this huge number of feedback mistakes that are given by students. Through my research I have come across common themes (how prompts can help students with their feedback, how the different ability levels of students determines the type they give, how the use of higher level thinking can lead to longer student engagement, etc..), but not necessarily a researcher whose name keeps showing up. All of the research has helped lead me to my current driving question, but I haven't really found any consistent "pioneers" that have consistently come up in my research. Many of the studies I have looked at have been so narrow in focus, it has proven difficult to find commonalities in all of it. When I think about the context for my driving question, it was mostly driven by a huge meta-analyses by John Hattie. What he looked for was the largest factors that improved student learning all across the world. Since his original studies, some of the factors have moved slightly up or down the list, but most of it has remained the same. After I finally settled on an idea where I wanted to focus my research (after 2 that didn't work), I knew I had chosen one that will really benefit both me and my students. Using feedback in the classroom has shown to have a strong correlation with student achievement. As far as moving from international all the way down to the site level, I feel that in the context of attempts to improve student learning, it applies from any school in California to any other school in any other country.
One of the articles I chose, it talks about the role that feed back plays in student learning. One part that has been really helpful spoke about the importance of placing prompts before students are able to give feed back to their peers. It will be important to carefully choose prompts that lead to the type of feedback that will be beneficial for students. I found a site that I am going to use (peer grade) that allows students to submit assignments anonymously. Students are expected to give feed back to 3 of their peers. Once they have completed that task, they are given their own assignment back, with access to the feedback, and can revise what they wrote. The article also talks about the importance of going through the process beforehand of teaching students how to give feedback. For example, focusing on clear and specific feedback so that students don't have to try and filter through a bunch of unhelpful viewpoints. Without going through this process, I don't think I can get the results that I am hoping for. Another important topic that I am reading about is how the process of peer feed back will allow them to see what high end work looks like. The hope is that through consistently seeing the range of student work, they would get a better perspective of what is needed to obtain high scores on their work. This is one part that I am really interested to see how it plays out in my classroom. Students always get their work back with a score and/or comments on it, but probably don't get the opportunity enough to really see what was expected through their high achieving peers. The article also talks about how students tend to evaluate their own performances higher than they are. I hope that by modeling this work on a consistent basis in class, students will get the opportunity to see what is really needed to show that higher level of understanding we all hope that they achieve. After reviewing the IRB, it definitely made me think about the research that we are going to do a little bit differently. I am still trying to decide what I am going to do with my driving question. I know that I want to do something based around student clarity, culture in the classroom, or how teacher behaviors can or can't shape a desire to strive for life long learning. What I'm going to need to know is how to assemble everything in the appropriate manner. There might be some effects on students that I hadn't really thought about previously. Obviously none of the decisions I make will be as serious as some of the case studies we read about, but it is important to be mindful of the impact our decisions have on our students. My need to knows will be based on conducting research that has the smallest amount of impact on my students. What are effective ways to measure impact on something that isn't as obvious as some of the examples that we read about. With a study like this, will I need parental consent and assent from students? What is the best way to focus my driving question on just one topic, and what do I do if some of my research leads me in a different direction? I'm sure these are all questions that I will have an answer to in the coming weeks, but right now they are clarifying questions that I will need to answer. The topic that I wanted to focus on was teacher clarity. The articles that I found are below.
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May 2018
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