For Each and Everyone: Catering for Individual Differences through Learning Studies

5. Two Learning Studies

5 Two Learning Studies LO Mun Ling, Priscilla LO-FU Yin Wah, Pakey CHIK Pui Man, and PANG Ming Fai Introduction Two Learning Studies, one from each of the two partnership schools, are reported in this chapter. The Learning Study reports are mainly descriptive accounts which show the struggles and processes that the research team went through with the teachers in using the theory (explained in Chapter 2) to plan and implement their research lessons, in order to help students of various abilities learn more efficiently. The Learning Studies reported here, both of which were carried out in the third year of the project, serve as examples to illustrate what Learning Studies are like in practice. As teacher educators, we have our views on teaching and how students learn and would very much like the research lessons to be carried out in ways that are close to our ways of thinking. However, we also believe that teachers have to experience the learning process themselves, if they are to be in a better position to help students learn. Only when the teachers were comfortable with the actions they were to take, and had true ownership of the research lessons, were they genuinely able to learn and benefit from the Learning Studies. Sometimes what, in our opinion, appeared to be small steps taken by the teachers were in fact courageous attempts by them to taking the beginning of a big step. The interesting thing about Learning Study is that we did not have an answer to start with. We did not have a ready script for the teachers to act out, nor did we impose our ideas on them. The research lesson that emerged in the end was often the outcome of a process of negotiation, which did not always result in what we would consider to be the best solution in achieving the intended learning outcomes. A research lesson is valuable in the sense that it gives us the opportunity to learn: students, teachers, and researchers all learn during the process. Very often, we had to make compromises, but we gained many insights about how to facilitate teachers’ professional 76 Lo et al. development, how to improve the curriculum, and how to help our students learn more effectively. Some readers may be critical of some of the practices described in these reports, probably on very good grounds, too, because these research lessons are, after all, not “model lessons.” Nor have we ever tried to make such a claim. Therefore, when people read about these Learning Studies, we hope that they will approach them from the perspective that these are “research lessons.” They represent the genuine and honest attempts of the teachers to improve the learning of their students. These lessons are not an end in themselves, but they contribute to the next cycle of research lessons, which will be better versions than those before them. Primary 4 General Studies: Electricity (LO Mun Ling, Priscilla LO-FU Yin Wah, Pakey CHIK Pui Man) This Learning Study was carried out in School 1 during the third year of the project, when the methodology was better developed and more conscious effort was put into modifying each cycle of the research lesson. The Learning Study group was made up of three general studies teachers and four research team members. None of the teachers had a strong background in science. Only one teacher had taken science in his senior secondary schooling. Nineteen meetings (including three post-lesson conferences) were held in the period between September 2003 to April 2004. Stage I: Incubation of ideas Choosing and defining the object(s) of learning According to the school’s teaching schedule, the research lesson fell into the period when the topic “electricity” would be taught. Reference was then made to the school’s textbook and the research literature to find out what is worth learning about electricity at this stage and the likely difficulties that students would encounter. In the textbook, there is a unit, “Electricity and Life,” which describes facts of various daily-life phenomena related to electricity and safety in using it. As the information is mainly factual, it would not be sufficient to help the students gain a conceptual understanding of electricity. Since the teachers felt that their students tended to think of science as abstract rather than as close to their daily encounters, the group decided that they would like to choose a topic in electricity that would allow the students to have handson...