The area I decided to focus my inquiry on is the community climate in the classroom. It was important to me that along with the academic progress my students were growing as caring individuals who see themselves as part of a context or as members of a team working together… in other words... as a community of learners.
This is important to me because it is important for their well rounded growth to not only excel academically but realize that working together cooperatively is gratifying. It builds a sense of community from early on. Having tools to problem solve collectively and knowing the importance of working together as a team will help them all their lives. Being a teacher in their formative years I can give tools, power and experiences to problem solve, they will always have something to fall back on when they need to.
The question I am asking is "what is the evidence that my students operate as a community of learners? What I am doing to promote my classroom as a community?"
The context I teach in is: Racially, the student population is primarily white 72% and Asian 14%, 8% had no response, 3% Latino, 1% African American, 1% Filipino, 1% other. 0% of the student body participates in free or reduced lunch programs compared to the 15% average in California. Five percent of students are English learners.
The data I collected to answer my question was primarily incidental. I also looked at some video data and journal notebooks.
The changes I have made in my teaching practice as a result of my inquiry is the way I go about in my expectation of students, the importance I place in making opportunities for resolution of issues, empowering my students to resolve their differences, time for conversations, teaching the tools to help them in their own conflict resolution.
The changes I have seen in my focal students as a result of my inquiry are hard to identify. However, I see an overall climate of cooperation. It has been mostly a gain in my learning and the changes I plan to make in my teaching of skills and tools for cooperative learning. In the past I felt threatened by conflicts. I was afraid of not being able to know the truth if a conflict arose; not knowing how to find the truth. I also felt terribly under pressure to resolve conflict almost like a judge. I needed to know who did what; what the right resolution should be; what was a just consequence?
What I have learned from the inquiry is that the most important tool to give to students is an ability to constructively solve conflicts. I should teach them all the way along not so much to just get along but that conflicts will arise because of conflict of interests. I need to teach them how to justly approach conflict resolution with input from all parties. I also want them to learn to hear each other’s point of view. This would require thoughtful teaching through literature, class meetings, journals, problem box etc.
