Slight Challenge
Saanvi Y -
When I first planned my methodology, I never expected there to be any issue on measuring participation. I assumed there would be some vague behaviours, but I planned for that situation to be handled by simply writing down the behaviour and later consulting with the teacher. However, I still need to be able to assign a participation description to a student for that to work. I would need students to stay in their seat the entire class to ensure I can measure their participation. Yet, what if students weren’t in their spots? What if they never stayed in one spot, let alone their designated spot?
I encountered this the first time on week 4 of my observation. It was lab day, and Neon had to actually stand up and form groups of 6 to work on their waves lab. 6 was a particularly difficult number to deal with since the seats were arranged in 2’s and 4’s. Getting clean 6’s was difficult for the class. There was an uneven splicing, where 1 group had 6 people, 1 group had 7, and 2 groups had 8. When they got up and mingled with each other, I quickly realised that depending on their seat to categorize behaviour would fail me. They weren’t in seats.
Luckily, I had committed faces to memory subconsciously. I was able to recognise students as students 1, A, 7, E, or whatever symbol they were given. I focused on students and measured their participation as normal. I stood in the back, dead centre, getting a clear view of every group. Once all their work was done, and they sat down at their assigned seats, I cross checked my own measurements with their seats. I was pleasantly surprised that I had made no error in labeling students as certain seats.
While I may not encounter this again as there are only 2 more days of observation and no labs are planned, I do believe that if any future senior is to require observation for their project and need to observe students relative to their seating chart, I would support committing faces and symbols to memory prior to observation. In fact, the safest option might be collecting consent forms on recording classes. While it may be a hassle for getting consent, it provides the most precise way to follow students and categorise behaviour without fear of human error.
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