Where are you? Where am I? Where are we?
Saanvi Y -
My name is Saanvi Yadav. I’m a senior at BASIS Peoria interested in setting up better foundations for students. Setting up stronger foundations for students in the classroom helps ensure that they can perform at their best levels and be productive members of society.
I’ve personally experienced how minor interactions in the classroom can either motivate or discourage one from studying different disciples or studying at all. It’s changed who I am, who I’ll be, and the people I surround myself with.
Interactions in the classroom tend to be dictated by the seating arrangement. Those who sit near each other and have closer relationships tend to focus more on each other and can be distracted. Those who sit near students they don’t know can either cause themselves to learn more of other perspectives and form new friendships, or cause isolating experiences. Either way, interactions are heavily influenced by seating charts, which can in turn influence classroom behavior. This is why I chose to study seating arrangements in the classroom and its impact on participation. Since participation can also influence attention to work material and willingness to study (peer pressure, competition, etc.), I’ll also study how seating arrangements in the classroom impact student achievement.
Gendered seating arrangements have been rarely tested. However, there has been research on how both gender groups lack skills the other gender group has, and how influential peers are to others. This motivated me in testing whether placing students of opposite genders in close proximity may force them to pick up on skills they lack, and positively influence each other to develop necessary skills such as communication and risk taking.
I’ve decided to study the impact of gender integrated seating arrangements (boy-girl-boy-girl) on the achievement and participation of 6th grade Arizonan students in an algebra based physics course. The reason why I chose 6th grade was because they have developing synaptic connections, making them much more impressionable. Their behavior is much more likely to change based on their interactions compared to 17-18 year olds who have more developed synaptic connections and are thus less impressionable. I chose an algebra based physics course for various reasons. Physics is a course where both achievement and participation can be easily viewed. There are labs and lectures for participation, and homework, quizzes, and assessments for achievement. Physics also has objective answers. In an English classroom, for example, grades can be more subjective and based on the grader’s preferences in writing. Also, an algebra based physics classroom helps us better view the impact of achievement on female students. Many female students struggle with maths anxiety, where they perform at equal or even better standards than their male peers, but believe they are underperforming. This impacts their question asking and answering, causing their risk taking skills to never develop fully compared to their male peers.
Rather than making the teacher learn how to teach life skills to specific gender groups while still teaching a full subject, a simple seating chart may solve this dilemma.
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