Week 24

Evidence-based evaluation of the impact

Consider how will you evaluate the impact of your Action Plan and how the data will help to provide an answer to your question, so that your evaluation will be evidence based. The following questions, which build on the sample inquiry questions from week 20, may help you as you consider which evidence you will use in your evaluation:

• If you plan to explore an innovation consider What could be the intended outcome(s)/ result / consequence that affect target members of your community? How could you measure this? When could you gather this data?
• If you plan to evaluate an innovation consider to what extent will your innovation impact [intended outcome / result / consequence]on target members of your community? How will you measure this? When will you gather this data?

These examples might help you think about the relationship between different variables in your question and give you a framework to answer your inquiry question when you interpret your data later in week 30 of the Practice course. Week 30 will go into more detail about Efron and Ravid’s (2013) 3 key steps for research data analysis process: Preparation for the data (Step 1), Analysis of the data (Step 2) and Interpretation of the data (Step 3), but at this stage it may be helpful to keep the following points in mind:

Step 1: Preparation for the data If your data collection methods include interview and observation, the audio or video recordings will need to be transcribed into text-based documents. Organising the data within a folder that includes clear file names is recommended to make it easier to retrieve data for later analysis.

Step 2: Analysis of the data For quantitative data, if you use tools such as SurveyMonkey or Google Forms to survey your (students/teachers/other) community these tools normally auto summarise the results and provide the graphs. For qualitative data, the most popular data analysis technique is ‘coding’. Babione (2015) explains that coding is “to sort text ... into categories that provide structure for interpretation” (p.142). The Ministry of Education’s website Te Kete Ipurangi (n.d.) has data analysis examples of putting student responses into categories and themes(scroll down and open the “Visualising and analysing different types of data” part to view the examples). Coding categories can be from your Inquiry question or from literature.

Step 3: Interpretation of the data Interpretation of the data will be discussed in week 30.

You do not have to include how you are going to plan to interpret your data in your RESEARCH 2 Action Plan, however the data analysis steps above may give you a preview of helpful information in terms of how analysed data can be put together to form the answer to your Inquiry question that may help you when you reflect on PRACTICE assessments. Understanding data analysis can also help you to anticipate what the project could potentially reveal or indicate. For example, researchers need to be careful in generalising the results to a wider population because this might not be correct. 

The Australian Council for Educational Research (Meiers & Trevitt, 2008) focuses on interpreting data, the purposes of using data in school, and how data can be used in schools to examine teaching practices in order to improve student learning in an issue of the Digest (Supplementary).

The next section discusses the potential impact of the findings from your project and how you can address the impact.

Potential impact of the findings

Your Action Plan needs to assess the potential impact of the findings from your Inquiry to address criteria 5 of the Assignment 2 rubric. The Association for Qualitative Research (2013) define findings as “the principal outcomes of a research project; what the project suggested, revealed or indicated. This usually refers to the totality of outcomes, rather than the conclusions or recommendations drawn from them.”

While you may not yet know what the findings will be, you need to think about some of the ways in which they might impact on you, your community, your school etc.

Here are some questions (required) to help you to address the potential impact of your findings.

• What are the possible benefits (and disadvantages of the inquiry)?
• How might it impact on your communities or your practice?

Here are some additional questions (optional) that may help you to address the potential impact of your findings.

• How will the outcomes contribute to the topic area you are investigating (after you implement your Action Plan)?
• How will the outcomes from the Action Plan impact on your practice and/or members of your community?
• How will the outcomes from the Action Plan impact on the perception of members of your community about the topic area?

An example from a previous assignment (shared with permission) stated “Potential impact: During the course of my [Research Essay], I found that the majority of research into growth mindset originated from the United States. My inquiry will provide some insight into the impact of growth mindset in a rural New Zealand context. The results of this inquiry may highlight shortcoming in our school-wide goals setting process. It is unlikely that this would have a negative impact on our team as all staff members had input into the focus and design of this teacher inquiry process.”

Resources that might be useful to present your Action Plan

If you submit your RESEARCH 2 Action Plan as a blog or e-portfolio, you can read this document about how to download the free 90-day trial versions of Snagit or Camtasia to capture your work as a video to submit together with the link to your blog or e-portfolio.

Finalising your action plan - Action Plan (RESEARCH Assessment 2) checklist

• The communities you will engage with are identified.
• The actions and timeframe are described, and explained.
• The method of data collection, and ethical issues are identified.
• Evidence of the data collection tools is present.
• How Kaupapa Māori principles are integrated into your Inquiry is explained.
• Potential impact of findings is addressed.
• Relevant sources are referenced. 
• A document, video or copy of your blog is submitted.

Evidence of online participation (RESEARCH 2) Part B Checklist

• Two pieces of evidence are submitted which are either a screenshot or video capture of your contribution.
• Discussions should be topic driven, add value to the discussion and specifically relate to RESEARCH assessment 1 or RESEARCH assessment 2, or the class notes / materials from this course (Weeks 17- 24)
• Discussions should take place on any reputable online forum (for example Google+, comments on blog posts, professional Facebook communities etc.)
• Email correspondence or online meetings are not accepted.
• Two recorded online conversations must take place during this course (from 12th November 2018 to 27th January 2019. The date should be clearly stated).
• Each of the video/screen recordings should clearly state the date of participation and your name.
• Materials used for previous assessments should not be reused for this assessment.
• Identify the URL (web address) of the conversation clearly in the name or the description section on the portal when submitting your assessment.

References

Babione, C. (2015). Practitioner Teacher Inquiry and Research. USA: John Wiley & Sons. (e-copy available in Unitec library).

Efron, S. E., & Ravid, R. (2013). Action research in education: A practical guide. New York, NY: The Guilford Press. (e-copy available in Unitec library).

Meiers, M. and Trevitt, J. (2008). Using data to improve student learning. The Digest, NSWIT, 2008(3). Retrieved from http://web2.cheltenham-h.schools.nsw.edu.au/moodle/pluginfile.php/8490/mod_resource/content/0/Using%20data%20to%20inform%20teaching.pdf

Te Kete Ipurangi (n.d.). Data Analysis. Retrieved from http://elearning.tki.org.nz/Teaching/Teaching-as-inquiry/Data-analysis

The Association of Qualitative Research. (2013). Findings. Retrieved from https://www.aqr.org.uk/glossary/findings

Research #1 Assignment

Week 23 - Collecting data

Why collect data?

As practitioners, you have hunches about what is working and what isn’t working in your practice and for your students. However, as the Ministry of Education (n.d) points out “without evidence to back them up, hunches remain subjective.” The Ministry goes further, saying that well-planned data gathering can “reveal new patterns of insight, justify change and motivate colleagues, stakeholders, and school leaders into taking action.”(Ministry of Education, n.d).

Although you have checked your hunches/assumptions with research literature in RESEARCH assessment 1, you are required to include in your Action Plan for the Inquiry how you plan to collect data from the relevant members of your community to meet criterion 3 of RESEARCH 2. You have to explain which data collection tool(s) you plan to use, and why you think these are suitable. You need at least one tool, e.g. survey form. You can have more than one method of data collection, e.g. survey form for students and interview for colleagues if you wish. This week’s class notes will guide you on how to do that.

You also need to consider ethical principles/guidelines for this process which has been discussed last week (week 22).

What type of data can you gather?

The data that you gather can be categorised into two types: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative data is data that is numerical and helps answer questions like “what?” and “how many?” but is not always able to explain “why” the situation happens (Easton, 2012). Qualitative data is data that is descriptive (i.e. text rather than numbers) and often gives more detail and greater depth in answering the “why?” questions. However, as researchers are not always able to collect qualitative data from a large population, you need to be careful when making generalisations based on qualitative data (Easton, 2012). Here are some indicative examples of quantitative and qualitative data.

Examples of quantitative data include:

• Surveys: the number of responses to close-ended questions in a survey (e.g. multiple choice, Likert scale, Yes/No, True/False)
• Pre and post test: student grades or test scores
• Classroom (or other location) observations: e.g. Behaviour tally sheets
• Students’ just-in-time responses using digital technologies and posts on social media: the number of responses.

Examples of qualitative data include:

• Document analysis such as students’ essays or blogs
• Surveys: the answers you get from open-ended questions in a survey
• Focus groups and/or interviews: The responses from the interviewees
• Classroom (or other locations) observations: field notes
• Students’ just-in-time responses using digital technologies and postings on social media: the content (text-based) of the responses.

You need to indicate what type of data you would like to collect in the Action Plan. When deciding on the data collection methods you plan to use in your Teacher Inquiry (we will go into more detail about the methods below) you need to think about the purpose of your inquiry and how many different data collection methods you should employ. Using mixed methods (often a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods) will give you richer data. If different methods indicate the same findings you can be more confident in those findings. However, you also need to make sure that you don’t try to do too much. You are a single person, don’t spread yourself too thin!

How do you decide on the data collection tools for your Inquiry?

By now you should have decided on your inquiry topic(s) and your teacher inquiry question to guide your plan. You need to choose data collection methods suitable for gathering data to help address this question. The following sections will explain the steps to select data collection tools for your Inquiry.

Remember that you are still able to refine your teacher inquiry question at a later stage when you work on the data collection methods.

Checking your key terminologies

In the section ‘Defining the key terms in your inquiry questions’ of the class notes of week 21, you were asked to provide definitions of the key terminologies so that you and everyone involved in the Inquiry have the same understanding of those terms when the plan is developed and implemented. To decide on which data collection methods you should plan to use, you also need to be clear about the key terms of your inquiry question.

For example in Practitioner teacher inquiry and research, Babione (2015) describes a teacher inquiry project about a “One-to-one iPad initiative”. The research question is “How does the implementation of a schoolwide iPad initiative at a high school affect the perceived level of student achievement across all math curriculums?” (Babione, 2015, p.250). So what does ‘perceived level of student achievement’ mean? Does it mean how students perceive their level of achievement? OR How teachers perceive the student level of achievement? OR parents perceive the student level of achievement OR all of these? And specifically, what is achievement? Is it the students’ improved test scores? OR the students’ improved skills to perform collaborative tasks? OR the students’ improved competency in problem-solving skills?

Different meaning of a terminology requires different data to answer the research question. To work out these type of details, you can revisit the terminology that you have used in your Research Essay (RESEARCH assessment 1), week 21 and decide on a workable definition for your teacher inquiry.

What data do you need to collect?

Once you have a clear definition about what your inquiry is actually looking at, think about the data that you need to collect. For example, if you define achievement as the mean of your class’s test results, you need to collect data from your students’ test scores. Or, if you define achievement as meaning improved skills to perform collaborative tasks, you might want to talk to students (or their teachers) about their skills, or observe the students when they work on their collaborative tasks, or look at their collaborative worksheets. These are data collection methods, which you would choose based on the data that you are interested in.

Starting to work on your data collection plan

To help you think about these questions, begin by viewing the “Data collection” video from the beginning to 6:25 (required) in which Dr Margaret Riel suggests different data that provide information about student learning. This should give you some ideas about what data you think is necessary to gather. Then, from the key terms of your inquiry question, list all the possible data you think could help you answer it.

However, as much as you may want to have all the relevant data, this goal may not be realistic, as it can be time consuming to design, administer, collect and analyse data. You need to consider the constraints and opportunities in your specific context.

To help you decide on your data collection method(s), in the following section, we will provide more detail on their strengths and limitations so you can consider the methods that will best suit your inquiry plan. We will focus on four common methods that are often used in educational research.

The ethical considerations as required in criterion 3 of RESEARCH 2 and discussed in section ‘Ethical Considerations for Your Action Plan’ of the class notes of week 22 should be relevant to the method(s) of data collection you choose for the Inquiry.

Data collection methods

Survey/questionnaire

A survey or questionnaire is used to obtain opinions from respondents to provide information through a set of questions (Babione, 2015).

A strength of this approach is that a survey or questionnaire can be distributed and collected quite easily (Babione, 2015), especially since there are a number of online survey tools such as Google Forms and Survey Monkey which make it fairly straightforward to create, send and collect responses. A survey can be done with a small or large number of respondents and can include both quantitative and qualitative data. Some online survey tools also include some automatic data analysis features.

The downside can be that you are not always able to control the number of responses, especially for an anonymous survey, and the responses can be biased or the responses may not always reflect the real opinion of the respondents.

Now, consider the pros and cons of doing a survey and decide if you would like to use surveys as one of your data collection methods. If you wish, read the section about surveys extracted from Efron and Ravid’s (2013) book (supplementary) related media. The extract provides guides to help you write survey items with good examples. Additionally, this checklist for developing a survey (Peters & Irish, n.d.) (supplementary) related media provides a list of questions to help you check your survey design. Don’t forget to include the tool (the survey questions) in your assessment submission if a survey is one of your chosen data collection methods.

If you plan to conduct a large scale survey, for example, across the whole syndicate or the whole school, you can use the calculator on this web page (http://www.surveysystem .com/sscalc.htm) to determine the appropriate sample size for a survey (e.g. how many responses you should collect) to have the result within a certain margin of error (also called the Confidence Interval) and for a given population (i.e. the total number of students in your school).

Interviews:

Interviews are frequently used to obtain verbal perspectives and opinions from individuals or group about their understandings and experiences, thoughts, feelings, motivations, and the actions of others (Babione, 2015,p.124). Here is an example of an interview schedule including the purpose of the interview and interview questions.

A strength of interviews is that they provide a richer and deeper perspective about the situation and help to verify information from other sources.

A constraint of interviews is that it can take time to arrange and conduct the interview session and analyse the collected data. Because an interview is a person-to-person interaction, interviewees might answer to please the interviewer instead of telling them what they really think and feel, especially if the interviewees are afraid of unfavourable consequences as a result of the interview.

If you choose the interview as your data collection tool to use in your teacher inquiry plan, read this section about interviews from Efron and Ravid’s 2013 book (supplementary) related media. The section outlines different types of interview, the interview process and how to develop the interview questions. Don’t forget to include the tool (the interview questions) in your assessment submission if an interview is one of your chosen data collection methods.

Observations

Efron and Ravid (2013) define observation in research as the act of purposefully and systematically observing the activities, people, and physical aspects of the educational setting.

The strength of observations is, as Babione (2015) points out, that observing humans in natural settings provides insight into the complexity of human behavior and interrelationships among groups. Observations allow you to collect data such as nonverbal behaviours, gestures, and body language, the dynamics of the setting that cannot be obtained through interviews or surveys.

If you choose observation as the data collection tool you would like to use in your teacher inquiry plan, read this section about observation extracted from Efron and Ravid (2013). The extract explains the different types of observation, its process and how to develop an observation form such as a protocol form for qualitative observation and behaviour log, tally sheet and checklist for quantitative observation. Don’t forget to include the tool (the observation protocol form/behaviour log/tally sheet/ checklist, etc) in your assessment submission if observation is one of your chosen data collection methods.

Artifacts and documents

Artifacts and documents are records that provide contextual information for a study (Babione, 2015). Examples of artifacts and documents include student work, school reports, demographic information, grades, test scores, portfolios or teacher journals.

The advantage of this data collection method is that the artifacts and documents may already be available during the course of your teaching and you don’t have to design an extra tool to collect the data.

If you choose artifacts and documents as the data collection tool you would like to use in your teacher inquiry plan, read this section about artifacts and documents extracted from Efron and Ravid (2013). The extract provides a checklist of suggestions and guidelines for gathering and using official and personal artifacts and documents.

Pre and post intervention data

What baseline data do you need to collect? Baseline data is data collected at the start of an inquiry project that allows you to establish the current situation which will enable a point of comparison for data you collect throughout your inquiry.

The video on developing a quantitative research plan (supplementary) related media may be relevant if you are thinking of including experimental methods in your data gathering (e.g. comparing pre-test and post-test student results).This could be used if you are developing an intervention designed specifically to raise student achievement in a particular area, e.g. spelling or mathematics. You could give students a pre test to ascertain their current level and then give them a similar or the same test after the intervention to determine whether there has been improvement.

For each data collection method you need to explain why you have chosen it, the data it will provide for you and why this data will be important.

Integrating the Principles of Kaupapa Māori into your Teacher Inquiry

As you choose the type of data to be gathered and the respective data collection method(s), remember to consider a KM approach in the process. As examples, look at the Taonga tuku iho - the cultural aspirations principle and Ako - a teaching and learning relationship, some questions that you can consider are:

• Taonga tuku iho - the cultural aspirations principle: To what extent do you consider the way Māori people think, understand, interact and interpret the world when choosing the type of data to gather and the method of data collection?
• Ako - a teaching and learning relationship: In what way would you learn back from the students and/or whanau about the pedagogy to be implemented through the gathered data and data collection process?

You can select any other principle and raise your own questions as well.

Write down some key ideas to answer the question in your e-Portfolio.

Checking You’ve Done All That Was Required for This Week

The Tasks-list on the next tab helps you to check you have done all the required activities.

References

Babione, C. (2015). Practitioner teacher inquiry and research. USA: John Wiley & Sons. (e-copy available in Unitec library).

Easton, C. (2012, April). Data for self-evaluation. SecEd. NFER. Retrieved from http://www.nfer.ac.uk/schools/data-for-self-evaluation-seced.pdf

Efron, S. E., & Ravid, R. (2013). Action research in education: A practical guide. New York, NY: The Guilford Press. (e-copy available in Unitec library).

Ministry of Education.(n.d.). Data analysis. Retrieved from http://elearning.tki.org.nz/Teaching/Teaching-as-inquiry/Data-analysis#js-tabcontainer-1-tab-2

Peters, T. and Irish, J. (n.d.). Introduction to Survey Research Methods. Retrieved from http://hms. harvard.edu/sites/default/files/assets/Sites/Academy/files/CTL%20Resource%20Survey%20Research.doc

Riel, M.( 2014, 28 April).T7: Data collection.[Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyILgB1R5Cc

Shaddock, A (2013). Using Data to Improve Learning: A practical guide for busy teachers, ACER Press.

Week 21 Developing an Action Plan

Linking your Research Essay to your Action Plan

For the past week, we have been looking at how analysing and critiquing the research literature gives you insights into what has been studied in your area of focus. The process of working on your Research Essay should provide you with specific questions for your inquiry.

In this week and the following ones, following up on your inquiry questions, you are going to develop your Action Plan by considering what actions you will need to take and when, what data collection methods you need to use, designing the data collection tools and integrating Kaupapa Māori in your inquiry, then finally discussing the potential impacts.

When will you take action?

Remember that at this stage, you develop the Action Plan but are not yet taking action. This week we are still in the “Learn” phase of the Spiral of Inquiry. Using the new learning you gained from the literature in the Research essay, you are now, as Kaser and Halbert (2017) suggest, tailoring the new learning to your context by planning your inquiry.

For this Action plan (Research 2) assessment, you are not required to actually collect any data yet. The plan should be carefully designed so that you will be able to implement it during the last 8 weeks of the programme (Applied Practice in Context course) while reflecting on different aspects of the implementation (these aspects will be introduced the last 8 weeks).

What does your action plan look like?

The Action Plan template for a video, and Action Plan template for a written document provide a framework for the key components of the action plan that you need to cover. If you haven’t already made a copy of either of these templates (in week 16 and week 17), you should do it now as we will look at each component more closely in this week’s and the following weeks’ class notes. Even if you don't use one of the templates directly, they contain useful guidelines for what should be in your action plan.

Define your community(ies)

Make a list of the communities together with explanatory notes of why and how you would engage with them.


Students - Groups based off data. Rotation - stations - flipped learning.


Year 5 Teachers - Karen and Myself

Senior Management -  
Nick Stygal - Head of Maths 
Shona - DP Maths
Jenny Team Leader

Principal/BOT - Data 

Parents - learning conferences - meet the teacher

This part relates to the criterion 1 of RESEARCH 2

To start your plan, you need to clearly identify the communities that you will be engaging with in your inquiry by answering the questions: Who will be involved? Why have you chosen to engage with them? What is the context for the communities? How will you engage with your community? Already in week 17 you investigated the needs of your communities. In this inquiry plan, you can decide to engage with the same communities or narrow your focus to fewer communities or extend to reach out to more communities. You may engage with one community or more throughout the inquiry (for example, engaging with students and other teachers for implementing new pedagogy, collecting data and discussing findings) or you can engage with different communities at different phases of your inquiry, for example, consulting with a head of department before implementing a new teaching approach; working with and collecting data from your students and colleagues, sharing the results with your school and whanau at the end.

Now, make a list of the communities you will engage with and add this to your e-Portfolio, together with some explanatory notes of why and how you would engage with them.

Defining the key terms in your inquiry questions

This part relates to criterion 2 of RESEARCH 2

Your action plan should clearly lay out what needs to be considered and to be done, how and when and who would be involved. These are to be developed based on what your inquiry question is.

Remember that while it’s not advisable to completely change the direction of your inquiry, it is possible that certain aspects in your proposed inquiry questions could be modified when you develop your action plan to suit the specific situation that you have not been able to foresee in previous stages.

As your action plan is guided by your inquiry question(s), it is important to clearly define the terms in your question. You can do this by drawing on the resources you have reviewed in your Research Essay to define the key terms and explaining how those terms are translated into practice in your inquiry.

For example, “learner agency” can be defined as learners feeling that they are in control of, and active participants in, their learning (Ministry of Education, 2016) and intentionally make choices and act on those choices responsibly (Knight, Barbera & Appel, 2017). In practice, it might be that students are able to negotiate their learning goals and choose the digital devices that they feel fit to use for different types of learning activities. Another example is about “gamification”. Deterding, Dixon, Khaled and Nacke (2011) defined gamification as “the use of game design elements in non-game contexts” (p.10). In practice, it might be that writing activities are designed with different difficulty levels and students earn an achievement badge once they complete a level.

Now, list the key terms in your research questions, defining the key terms using the relevant resources, then explain what they will look like in your practice when you carry out your inquiry. Add those notes to your e-Portfolio.

Your actions and timeframe

This relates to criterion 2 of RESEARCH 2

Having defined the key terms in your inquiry questions, you should have a clearer idea of what you could plan to implement in your practice. The actions and timeframe you need to specify in your Action Plan should be specific in terms of their purpose including who will be involved, when and what resourcesare needed. The actions should also include when you collect data and from whom. You don’t have to explain the data collection methods and tools in detail when presenting the actions and timeframe section as there will be a separate part in the Action Plan where you will discuss that in more depth (more information about data collection methods and tools will be discussed in week 23’s class notes). Always consider how these actions will help to address your inquiry question(s) or if you need to adjust your question(s) to scale down your inquiry.

Below is an outline of what your actions and time frame might look like. Depending on your context, you can adjust it to use more or less time to carry out a given action.

Inquiry question: To what extent does [particular digital or collaborative innovation] impact on engagement/outcomes/ in [subject area] for [year or level or particular priority learners] at (school name)?

Actions	Timeframe
Inform the relevant communities (list the communities, in what ways will you inform them	Week 1
Collect student baseline data (indicate which tool will be used)	Week 1 or week 2
Describe specific teaching and learning activities related to the particular digital or collaborative innovation you will carry out	Week 2,3,4,5.
Collect endpoint data	Week 5
Analyse data	Week 6

During the first 3 minutes of the Plan your action video (supplementary), Margaret Riel recommends the logic model as one of the tools to help work out a plan of actions. The logic model consists of 3 key elements: inputs (Resources), outputs (Actions), outcomes (Impacts). When you plan your actions, knowing your inputs (the resources such as available learning materials, collegial support etc) and the outcomes (the impacts you would like to see such student skills improved) would help you to consider the suitable actions you need to take.

Now in your e-Portfolio make a list of the actions you could carry out for your inquiry, describing what has to be done, who should be involved, what resources you need and how long each action might take. Check if you can fit all of the actions in the plan so that you can finish the action by week 30. If not, you need to reduce the actions and/or engage with fewer members of the communities for each action. Reach out to your colleagues, leadership teams or your Mind Lab peers to seek feedback about the actions and their timeframe.

Integrating the Principles of Kaupapa Māori into your Teacher Inquiry

As you define the communities, remember to consider a Kaupapa Māori approach in the process. As an example, this week's class notes look at the Whānau - the family structure principle and the question that you can consider is:

• To what extent will the students’ whānau be involved in the inquiry?

You can select any other principle and raise your own questions as well.

Write down some key ideas to answer the question in your e-Portfolio.

Checking You’ve Done All That Was Required for This Week

The Tasks-list on the next tab helps you to check you have done all the required activities.

References

Knight, J., Barbera, E. & Appel, C. (2017). A framework for learner agency in online spoken interaction tasks. ReCALL : The Journal of EUROCALL, 29(3), 276-293. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S095834401700009X

Ministry of Education. (2016). Learner agency. Retrieved from http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-resources/NZC-Online-blog/Learner-agency

Deterding, S., Dixon, D.,Khaled, R. & Nacke, L.(2011).From game design elements to gamefulness: defining "gamification".Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments(pp. 9-15). Findland: Tampere.

Week 22 - Ethical Issues and Kaupapa Maori

In week 21, the second week of the “Learn” phase of our Spiral of Inquiry, we started the journey of developing an action plan by discussing what actionsyou need to take for your Teacher Inquiry. In this third week of the “Learn” phase, we will consider the professional learning and the professional relationships you need to engage in ethically, when doing educational research and the use of Kaupapa Maori approaches to teacher inquiry.

Professional Learning for Your Teacher Inquiry

Your goal is to make meaningful changes in your professional practice by implementing your Teacher Inquiry. So far, in the earlier phases of the spiral of inquiry, you have developed your thinking about what is happening (Scanning) and why this is happening (Focusing and Developing a Hunch), these are all important learning processes (Kaser & Halbert, 2017).

In this “Learn” phase of spiral of inquiry, your new learning should be motivated by and connected to changing the learning experiences of learners; it should also be directly linked to the focus identified in the second phase of the spiral; it should help you gain a good understanding of why the new ways of doing things in your teacher inquiry are better than previous practices; and how your new learning could be sustained and supported over time (Timperley, Kaser and Halbert , 2014).

Before you leap straight to action, you need to stay curious about current research evidence that you have evaluated and how it applies to learners in your context (Kaser & Halbert, 2017). To be able to respond to the learning needs of students within the unique context of your teacher inquiry, it is time to consider what can be done - what do you need to learn? why is it important? and how do you learn?

Ethical Issues in Your Teacher Inquiry

A new topic this week is to consider any ethical issues relevant to your Teacher Inquiry. Over the last few weeks, you have chosen your Teacher Inquiry topic and decided on your research question/s. This week, we will explore some key ethical principles in educational research and how they are related to your Teacher Inquiry.

Research Ethics

Do your students give an authentic answer when you interview them? Or do they just tell you what they think you would like to hear because they are afraid of the consequences? Are your students’ parents willing to give a response that isn’t positive about your pedagogical approach if they think that it could impact the way you treat their child? As a practitioner researcher, you need to consider these kinds of questions when you plan to conduct a study in your own classroom or in your school. As Blaxter, Hughes and Tight (2006) point out “all social research (whether using surveys, documents, interviews, observation, or computer-mediated communication) gives rise to a range of ethical issues around privacy, informed consent, anonymity, secrecy, being truthful and the desirability of the research” (p.158).

Our Research Ethics video (required) in the related media, discusses the need to avoid harm, distress, disadvantage or anxiety to your students. It gives examples such as disruption to learning from students missing part of a lesson, or lowering students’ self-esteem by highlighting perceived difficulties or deficiencies.

It is important, when you plan your Teacher Inquiry, that you are aware of these issues and think about how to minimise the potential harm you may cause to the participants in your Inquiry project.

The Key Principles of Research Ethics

Here are some key principles summarised from the New Zealand Association for Research in Education Ethical Guidelines (NZARE, 2010) :

• Seek at all times to avoid harm and do good.
• The rights and welfare of learners, research participants, and the public should take precedence over the researcher's self-interest.
• Have a specific duty of care to research participants: to avoid unnecessary anxiety or harm to participants, groups or communities by the research procedures that are used, by the details in the research reports, or as a consequence of participating in the research.
• Give participants a clear description of why the research is being undertaken, what it involves, how it will be reported, and the extent of public availability before participants make a decision about their involvement in a project. Their consent to being involved should then be sought without undue pressure or persuasion and they should have the right to withdraw at any time.
• Consider the capacity of each potential participant to give consent or assent to participate. In research that involves young children, parents or caregivers also need to be asked for their consent.
• Store confidential information securely and anonymise whenever practicable. Keep individual information or private matters strictly confidential.
• Make sure that the participants’ educational progress is not hindered when research projects take time away from regular teaching and learning activities.
• Give a report of research findings to participants to enable them to benefit, directly or indirectly, from their willingness to facilitate the research exercise (NZARE, 2010).

For a more detailed explanation of the responsibilities that educational researchers have to the participants in their research, see NZARE ethical guidelines for educational research (supplementary) in the related media.

The first eight slides of the Ethics in Educational Research slide set (supplementary) in the related media, provide an overview of the three key principles of ethics: protecting participants from harm, ensuring confidentiality of data, and minimizing deception, while the subsequent slides look at scenarios of studies conducted in classroom settings and discuss the potential situations that a practitioner researcher should take into consideration.

Another supplementary video, Research to Practice - "Ethical Teachers, Ethical Researchers", discusses the importance of integrating teaching, research, and ethics. The Canadian teachers featured in the clip also explore distinctions and similarities between the roles of teaching and researching, as well as the ethical use of data.

Be Sensitive Towards Cultural Differences

The guidelines of the New Zealand Association for Research in Education (NZARE) are underpinned by understandings of Aotearoa New Zealand as (a) locally, a linguistically and culturally diverse state; (b) regionally, in the Pacific; and (c) globally, part of an increasingly networked society (NZARE, 2010).

The Association asserts that educational researchers in New Zealand should have a specific commitment to encouraging and facilitating research by Māori, research in te reo Māori, and research that promotes the aspirations of Māori (NZARE, 2010).

If you plan to carry out research which involves whanau, this “Researching with whanau collectives” paper (supplementary) provides a whanau researcher guideline to serve as an ethical framework.

Ethical Considerations for Your Action Plan

For RESEARCH 2, criterion 3, you are asked to explain how you will collect data for your Teacher Inquiry from relevant members of your community/communities (this will be explained in more detail in the class notes of week 23) and to consider ethical principles/guidelines for this process. You need to check that your method(s) of data collection follow ethical procedures and education-relevant ethical guidelines such as those presented above.

As you are going to implement your Action Plan in the PRACTICE course, It is important that you think about the ethical implications early and explain how you will address possible ethical issues you may encounter when you collect data for your Teacher Inquiry.

The following table lists some example questions to help you to consider the ethical issues related to the data collection method, you can download the template and answer these questions after looking at the class notes of week 23. Note: You do NOT need to include this table in your Action Plan.

Table 1: Ethical consideration for your Teacher Inquiry project (template to download)

What are the possible ethical issues/questions that I need to deal with /answer?	Y/N	Related data collection method(s)	What are the possible solutions to mitigate the harm?	When would the mitigation be introduced?
Will the students lose any learning opportunities when they take part in this Teacher Inquiry?
Will you seek parental consent (e.g. to video their children)?		Observation by recording student interaction
Will personal data be collected? And if so will it be confidentially and anonymously?	Y	Class data
Will you use students’ maths samples anonymously?
Will an interview or survey be imposed on students?
Will the participants be made fully aware of all intended uses of the information, for what period of time, and the potential effects of this use?	Y
Will the respondents be given the content and purpose of the data collection (e.g. survey or interview etc. ) so that they may make an informed judgment about whether they wish to participate?	N/A

Integrating the Principles of Kaupapa Māori Research into Your Action Plan

As part of your ongoing professional learning, you need to consider what it takes to successfully carry out your Teacher Inquiry with Māori learners, and how to further develop your cultural competence while integrating the Principles of Kaupapa Māori in your Teacher Inquiry.

To help you fulfill criterion 4 of RESEARCH 2 (explain how you integrate Kaupapa Māori principles into your Inquiry) we have been providing example questions in each week’s class notes to link the weekly course content/topic at different phases of your Spiral of Inquiry model to relevant Kaupapa Māori approaches (principles of Te Noho Kotahitanga), and you have hopefully been recording your thoughts about the relevant principles and considerations to your eportfolio.

Again, this week, we ask you reflect one of the Kaupapa Māori approaches - Kia piki ake i ngā raruraru o te kāinga - The Principle of Socio-Economic Mediation, how could your inquiry addresses community needs or priorities of Māori students with socio-economic disadvantages? How can this Principle be applied to the ethical consideration of your Inquiry that have been discussed in the previous section?

As we mentioned in week 17’s class notes, according to the Katoa Ltd website the potential of Kaupapa Māori is based upon six intervention elements or principles:

• Tino Rangatiratanga - The Principle of Self-determination (Week 18 & 19)
• Taonga Tuku Iho - The Principle of Cultural Aspiration (Week 18 & 23)
• Ako Māori - The Principle of Culturally Preferred Pedagogy (Week 19 and 23)
• Kia piki ake i ngā raruraru o te kāinga - The Principle of Socio-Economic Mediation (Week 22)
• Whānau - The Principle of Extended Family Structure (Week 20 & 21)
• Kaupapa - The Principle of Collective Philosophy (Week 20)

To enhance our understanding of these principles and their application, there are publications from New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER). You may wish to revisit Indigenous epistemology in a national curriculum framework?” (MacFarlane, Glynn, Grace, Penetito & Bateman, 2008) (supplementary) about the key competencies and the values, beliefs and preferred practices that are embodied within an indigenous Māori cultural worldview.

Whānau - the extended family structure principle

The whānau and the practice of whanaungatanga (family connectedness) is an integral part of Māori identity and culture. The cultural values, customs and practices that organise around the whānau and collective responsibility are a necessary part of Māori survival and achievement. There are many examples where the principle of whānau and whānaungatanga come to the foreground as a necessary ingredient for Māori education, Māori health, Māori justice and Māori prosperity.

Whakawhanaungatanga - Learning within and through the contexts of everyday human interaction. Learning to take responsibility for supporting and caring for others. Collaborative learning.

As an example, this week's class notes look at the Whānau - the family structure principle and the question that you can consider is:

• To what extent will the students’ whānau be involved in the inquiry?
• Whānau - the family structure principle The whānau and the practice of whanaungatanga (family connectedness) is an integral part of Māori identity and culture. What other perspectives may be relevant as you apply your new learning from the literature to your Action Plan

Ako  - the culturally preferred pedagogy principle This principle promotes teaching and learning practices that are unique to tikanga Māori (custom). There is also an acknowledgment of ‘borrowed’ pedagogies in that Māori are able to choose their own preferred pedagogies. Rangimarie Rose Pere writes in some depth on key elements in Māori pedagogy. In her publication Ako she provides expansive discussion regarding tïkanga Māori concepts and their application to Māori pedagogies.

AKO - A teaching and learning relationship 

In te ao Māori, the concept of ako means both to teach and to learn. It recognises the knowledge that both teachers and learners bring to learning interactions, and it acknowledges the way that new knowledge and understandings can grow out of shared learning experiences. This powerful concept has been supported by educational research showing that when teachers facilitate reciprocal teaching and learning roles in their classrooms, students’ achievement improves (Alton-Lee, 2003).

• Ako - a teaching and learning relationship: How is your hunch different from (or similar to) the literature regarding the perspectives of people other than the teachers on the area of focus?
• Ako - a teaching and learning relationship: In what way would you learn back from the students and/or whanau about the pedagogy to be implemented through the gathered data and data collection process?

Tino Rangatiratanga - the self-determination principle

The principle of tino rangatiratanga has been discussed in terms of mana motuhake, sovereignty and self-determination. Tino rangatiratanga is about having meaningful control over one’s own life and cultural well-being. This principle is embedded in the Treaty of Waitangi. In signing this Treaty in 1840 the sovereign chiefs of Aotearoa New Zealand sought to protect their taken-for-granted, sovereign rights into the future.

Being able to make choices over what they do and how they learn. 

• How could the principle of Tino Rangatiratanga (Self-determination) be applied to your inquiry topic and area of focus, for example, how can growth mindset be nurtured in digital and collaborative learning environment?
• Tino Rangatiratanga - the self-determination principle: To what extent is your hunch different from (or similar to) the literature in how the area of focus helps the students/whānau to get meaningful control over the student’s learning and cultural well-being?

Now it is the time to integrate your thoughts into your Action Plan by answering some questions such as:

• How would you apply a Kaupapa Māori approach to knowledge gathering? 
• 
  
• How would you apply a Kaupapa Māori approach in developing your research questions? AKO

• How would you apply a Kaupapa Māori approach to identifying community priorities, plan data collection, or put your plan into action? Tino Rangatiratanga - being in control of what they learn and how they learn it

References

Blaxter, L., Hughes, C. & Tight, M. (2006). How to research. (3rd Ed.), Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.

Kaser, L. & J. Halbert. (2017). The Spiral Playbook: Leading with an inquiring mindsetin school systems and schools. C21 Canada. Retrieved from http://c21canada.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Spiral-Playbook.pdf

Kaupapa Māori Research [Web log post]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.kat oa.net.nz/kaupapa-maori

MacFarlane, A., Glynn, T., Grace, W., Penetito, W & Bateman, S. (2008). Indigenous epistemology in a national curriculum framework? Ethnicities, 8(1), 102-127.

New Zealand Association for Research in Education (NZARE). (2010). NZARE Ethical Guidelines. Retrieved from http://www.nzare.org.nz/portals/306/images/Files/NZARE%20EthicalGuidelines2010.pdf

Timperley, H., Kaser, L., and Halbert, J. (2014, April). A framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry. Centre for Strategic Education, Seminar Series Paper No. 234. https://educationcouncil.org.nz/sites/default/files/49.%20Spiral%20of%20Inquiry%20Paper%20-%20Timperley%20Kaser%20Halbert.pdf