Final Asst - Research Proposal

I have been teaching mathematics for the past five years at a high school in British Columbia and I have taught all three streams of math courses that B.C. offers: Principles, Applications, and Essentials of Mathematics. Principles of Math is considered to be the “normal” math stream and students are often required to have Principles of Math as a pre-requisite to get accepted to most of the post-secondary institutions in British Columbia and across Canada. In other words, it is the level of math that is the most difficult of the three because of its abstract nature. Concepts taught in Principles of math are not necessarily applicable in most high school students’ daily lives and hence I often experienced students questioning whether they are ever going to use the knowledge being taught in principles in the “real world” in the future. I mostly teach Grades 10 to 12, and among these I noticed that Math 11 is the most abstract and driest course of the three and students often feel the same. The reason probably has to do with the lack of diversity of topics in Math 11; math 10 and 12 cover quite a variety of topics, whereas math 11 focuses too much on solving for variables. For this reason, students in Principles 11 often get bored more quickly compared to students in Principles 10 or 12 and they rely on operational processes of mathematics to get the answer instead of genuinely trying to understand the concepts. This was the main reason why I wanted to focus my research on math 11 classes, but there was another important factor why math 11 interested me more than other grades. In math 11, students are first introduced to graphing calculators and I have noticed certain students, especially female students, show anxiety in using graphing calculators when they are first introduced. So I wanted to observe and analyze the mind-set of math 11 students more closely through my research. The question I had was how can I communicate with math 11 students to improve my understanding of their mathematical comprehension and their reactions to graphing calculators? Traditional teacher-centered methodology certainly has limitations to carry this out and this made

me look for alternative ways to communicate with my students. I thought about incorporating a higher level of literacy into math, but how would this look? Initially I thought about having students complete in-class paper-and-pencil journal writing activities at the end of each class but I soon realized that the current generation of students might respond better to writing in an electronic way, so I decided to conduct my research in the effectiveness of electronic journal writing in Principles of math 11. Traditional assessment, such as homework, quizzes, and tests, are good at testing what students know how to do at the time, but do those measurements really allow teachers to know what students truly comprehend constructively? Hence, I wanted to see if I can use electronic journaling as a means of teaching in a constructive way. Class e-blog will be set up prior to the research where each student will have their own user identification and password. Each day, certain prompt will be given relating to the lesson covered and students will be asked to respond to each prompt in written forms. Such prompt can be done in two forms, either descriptive or mathematical. Descriptive prompts will be rather nonmathematical and will ask for students’ opinions or point of views. For example, questions such as “Explain how you study math” or “Share your experience in having good math teachers in the past” are considered to be descriptive prompts. These descriptive types will make students feel more comfortable in starting e-journals, especially in the beginning of the experiment, since probably not many students have experienced journal writing in math classes in the past. Mathematical prompts will ask for students’ understanding of what was taught during the lesson based on the curriculum, and to answer these questions they might have to refer to their notes or textbook. Examples of mathematical prompts can be “Describe what quadratic formula does in solving” or “Summarize chord properties with diagrams and words. Be specific”. These mathematical prompts will be given right almost right after the lesson is taught so that ejournaling can be a brief review at the same time.

Assessment-wise, e-journaling will be done for marks and assignments will be given on a daily or every other day basis. I think it is important to do it on a daily basis to increase the consistency and to familiarize students with the idea of literacy in a math class. I will provide feedbacks to each student for every entry and marks will be given out of 5 for each entry. These marks will be based on completion marks but I will have a specific rubric set up prior to the activity. The rubric will have 5 check-points and hence each point checks to see if a student has met that criterion or not. So, for example, if a student is missing any check point, then that student will receive 4 out of 5. This rubric will be shared with students so that they have guidelines as they write e-journals. See Appendix A for the rubric designed. In collecting data, not only the entries from students e-journals, but I will keep my own journal as well as a means of my own reflection and this will act as field notes. Basically I will report on what went well and what did not go well. Also, I want to make a note on changes in my relationship with the students in the experimental group. For example, does this journaling encourage students to express themselves better in a non-verbal way and does it help to create a deeper bond with me? Are there any potential difficulties that I may face during this research? I will not know until I actually start the research but since journaling will be done through the electronic means and that means most students will do it at home, access issue may arise if anyone has no computer at home. I will encourage students to use the school facility as much as they can or see if I can set up a few computer stations in the classroom so that anyone who has time left over in class can work on e-journaling in class. Another difficulty might be students’ mind-set as they are introduced to the idea of journaling since the idea of the e-journal approach might be foreign to them; that is, they may be skeptical or they may question the purpose of the activity before even they try. This is one of the reasons why I decided to give marks for the journal activity since certain students may decide not to do it if they think they do not see any point in doing journals.