Student Engagement & Phoenix Park

Similar to many of my classmates had mentioned in the discussion section of this course, I too have questions concerning engagement of the students in the mathematics classes at Phoenix Park.  My concerns rest with the amount of students who are off task and question the teachers’ accountability.  However, after careful examination of this issue, from my own experience and that of my colleagues in very large junior/senior high mathematics classes there are many students who are off task or zoned out and no matter how many times they are spoke to or teachers try to intervene and get them on task they still seem not to care.  No matter how interesting and intriguing you make the subject in a traditional classroom there are still going to be students who are off task, whether they are misbehaving or day dreaming.  This seems to hold true in the project based mathematics’ classrooms Boaler presents to us in chapter 5. 

So for me the question of engagement seems to be centered around not how many students are on task, but how many are engaged in the mathematics they are learning?

Boaler reports that many students took the openness and freedom with ease while some students “found the openness of work completely disconcerting,” they were “uncomfortable with the lack of structure” (Boaler, 2002, p.60).  With this in mind, how many of our students sit in our classrooms and are unhappy with the structure and traditional approach?  There are many students who could excel in the environment similar to Phoenix Park, but whose learning is being suppressed because of their current learning environment.  Like Boaler I would have to pose the same question, “a small but important portion of the year group at Phoenix Park misbehaved in lessons and said they did not like the school’s approach.  However, it is difficult to know whether the students’ lacked motivation caused their negative views about mathematics, whether it was the other way around, or whether neither one caused the other” (p. 83).  “Motivation to learn is pivotal in students’ attainment of understanding in all content areas” (Middleton & Spainas, 1999).  Would the students who seemed to be off task be unmotivated and uninterested in any classroom? 

Although a portion of students reported that they hated the teaching and learning approach at Phoenix Park, in Boaler’s research many of their responses seemed to indicate that they were learning something they may not of at Amber Hill.  Boaler asks students  “to describe the most interesting piece of mathematics they had ever done in a school lesson.  Many of the Amber Hill students described a lesson from elementary school or Years 6 and 7.  At Phoenix Park, all of the students described one of the projects they had experienced since starting at Phoenix Park in Year 8, and all descriptions were positive” (Boaler, 2002, p.68).  I think it speaks volumes when she describes an incident where two boys who initially seemed most resistant to the open-ended approach questioned a teacher who was teaching them in a more traditional form “‘whether they were going to do any work today,’ indicating they did not regard copying off the board as work probably because it did not present them with a problem to solve” (p.63).  Although students misbehaved and opposed the open-ended approach, with maturity they recognized what true learning looks like.

Boaler states teachers at Phoenix Park “needed to know a lot about the students –what they knew and what would be most helpful for them to work on” (p.83).  She describes a lesson that the department head was introducing and notes, “he did not spend much time at the board telling the students information; rather he created an arena for discussion and negotiation” (p.54).  “When students were stuck, teachers ask them to explain what they knew so far, they listened to students carefully and selected appropriate questions and interventions that helped students move forward” (p. 83).  Teachers supported students in their learning and encouraged them.  They did not give them the answer but guided them to use their own devices to think for themselves, “enable[ing] students to move in a number of directions around the mathematical terrain” (p.57). 

Instead of sitting in a classroom and using a set rule to solve countless mathematical examples, getting one answer, students at Phoenix Park “were asked to think for themselves, plan their work, and solve problems.  They needed to make decisions and coordinate strategies” (p.76).  Teachers taught students “how to learn as well as teaching them mathematics,” giving students opportunities to achieve their highest level of learning (p.64).  I think it is amazing that during a project titled 36 pieces of fencing “none of [the] students [were] using calculators, nor [did] they ask for them” (p.54).

The openness approach of Phoenix Park did provide differentiated instruction to all learners.  Research has shown that “differentiated instruction is one byproduct of PBL, because this strategy allows for individual student needs to be addressed by several means: purposively assigned groups, multi-tiered evaluation and assessment, and deliberately selected learning tools” (ALME, 2008).  Teachers provide projects that allowed students to work at their own pace and achieve their highest mathematical levels of achievement.  “It was common at Phoenix Park for students to engage in mathematics at a variety of levels of difficulty,” students could take projects as far as they could intellectually (Boaler, 2002, p.57).

Students at Phoenix Park “believed mathematics to be an active, inquiry based discipline,” seeing it as a subject involving “explorations, negotiations and inquiry” (p.77).  They seemed to have “a richer and more balanced view of the subject” (p.77).  Aware that mathematics not only involved answers but more importantly processes and methods.  The Phoenix Park teachers encouraged this.  How many times in my own classroom have I encountered students who are only concerned with achieving the right answer and don’t care about the processes.  Once these views are bred into students they are extremely difficult to change.  A project based approach like implemented at Phoenix Park ensures “students play an important role in governing their learning,” engaging students in more “idiosyncratic investigations, directing their own learning and making decisions about what they are going to do and how they will do it to achieve target goals” (ALME, 2008).

In the end, after reading and thinking about this chapter I feel that “students at Phoenix Park spent less time working than the students at Amber Hill, but they seemed to spend more time engaged with their work” (Boaler, 2002, p.76).  Teachers play essential roles in ensuring students excel in their learning, and even though there is small but important percentage of students off task, I cannot justly say this is because of the learning environment.  I believe that both the reform classroom and the traditional classroom have their challenges, however, I am both impressed and intrigued by the work that has been done at Phoenix Park.  I don’t think they have everything figured out, nor do I feel does our current education system, however like I would like to be able to observe the school now and see where this approach has taken them.

“Meaningful learning rarely occurs from the traditional lecture method, therefore, students who are engaged with finding a solution to a situation that is personally meaningful make the most of the experience, have increased motivation, and are willing to persist in the task, even when it is complicated, or when they experience minor setbacks (Cross, 1996).

References:

ALME.  (2008).  Project Based Learning in Middle Grades Mathematics.  Retrieved at http://www.amle.org/portals/0/pdf/research/Research_Summaries/ProjectBased_Math.pdf on October 24, 2011.

Boaler, J.  (2002).  Experiencing School Mathematics.  New York: Routledge.

Cross, K. P. (1996). Classroom research: Implementing the scholarship of teaching. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 60(4), 402–407.

Middleton, J. & Spanias, P.  (1999).  Motivation for achievement in mathematics: Findings, generalizations, and criticisms of the research.  Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 30, 65–88.