Reflection - What We've Learned about Teaching Student Research

As Fran and I have collaborated on student learning and attitudes through my senior high school students' research process this winter and spring, we continue to "peel the onion" of our action research together, examining our own assumptions, the students' work itself, and the results of the student surveys. For clarity and efficiency, I will list some of these discoveries and further questions (in no particular order) that have come up during our discussions as we have reflected upon this experience:

1. Nearly all students responded that they are glad the know the research process and that they were glad we broke it down into steps. The didn't say "how to write a research paper", but actually used the term "process". I explain to the students that the process is structured to ensure success in terms of the end product; but I also explain that I know they will create their own processes when they are assigned a research project or paper in college. We discuss having the skills to complete the research process and pacing the work. From a teacher perspective, that nearly 95% of the students responding that they value learning the process is an indication that one of our teaching goals was met. As a sidebar to the concept of process, there were points for recursivity in the process - that is when students were outlining or writing the rough drafts, they discovered a need for further research, for example. A way I might break this down more to ensure recursivity is to ask students to find one article or book that adds considerable information they don't have already and have them take notes on that article - and then reflect upon that activity.
2. Students frequently rated taking notecards as essential to determining the quality of the resources they selected. I gather for some of them, sources were de-selected based on their lack of usefulness. As one student suggested, possibly they should take note cards earlier in the process. From my perspective, that was the point of the two overview articles and Cornell note-taking assignment at the beginning of the process. Maybe one strategy we could consider in the future is having students take those Cornell note sheets for one article and transfer them to notecards with headings. The students see value in the note taking, I am guessing, because it helps them build a schema for their topics and to scaffold their new research into their cognitive networks related to these topics. The note cards build cognitive competence and are a concrete way for a student to really see a source. The "AH HA" that Fran and I had around this is that students may not evaluate sources well by skimming, or at least reading and note taking provides greater depth in terms in terms of truly knowing the value of a resource. This also suggests that some of the more digital methods of taking notes - such as the copying and pasting that students would no doubt rely on if they could might not yeild the same cognitive actions of selecting/de-selecting sources, not to mention that students (hypothesis) cognitive gains are not as strong as with writing and paraphrasing. Next year, when I have the class period dedicated to surfing the web at the very beginning of the project, I will have the students copy and paste "notes" into Word from one source. Then I will ask them to bring an overview article to class and have them take paraphrased note cards the next period, followed by a Cornell note taking assignment that night. I would have students write a comparison and reflection of these methods in their Writer's Notebook the following day when they could psycically compare/evaluate the three types of note taking. I think some very interesting
3. While students rated Fran's Web Evaluation and Blog Evaluation lessons highly, few of them rated the use of web sites and, especially blogs, very highly in terms of selecting resources. At first glance, Fran was disturbed by this apparent disconnect. I argue that the lessons were very valuable to the students because they helped students "de-select" many online resources as lacking in validity or quality in some way. So, in that way, the lessons served a very important purpose. Many students, inlcuding my AP Lit students commented on the value of these lessons as they weren't familiar with all the eval strategies Fran was teaching. In general, our students have no idea how to evaluate online information or what tools are available for that purpose.
4. Students prefer having choice of topics in the research process. Many mentioned this in the post-experience surveys. This is clearly motivating to students and elevates the positive emotional attitude toward the research. This is one of the rare opportunities they have had a chance to delve into an interest of their own in English.
5. For my action research, I posited the question: How can School Fusion (our online teacher 2.0-esque web pages) faciliate student learning in the research process? The student surveys indicated that the students found the online sbib card examples and handouts very usefull - most students ranked this a 5/5 on the survey. They were neutral in terms of the educative value of the two blog responses they did, but my sense during that period is that there might have been a positive affect established with the blogs because students were able to state what they saw as strengths and targets for improvement after the first semester research paper (voice their own reflections) and then, later, to read what everyone's topics were and to respond to at least two of those. If I were to do this survey again, I would ask a few affectively-oriented questions. Clearly the use of SchoolFusion to post models is an important new way of students learning to teach themselves.
6. Not an aspect of our action research, but one point that is important that became clear through the survey responses is this: The number one value - beyond all the steps and lessons we taught the students - is help from the teacher. This was written in the student reflections and indicated in the survey over and over. This means that students value the teacher interaction through the process; we know this generation learns socially, and to them, that means collaborating with a teacher or librarian as much as it does a peer. When I do this process again next year, I would like to set up quick-collaboration sessions with each student in the process - no more than five minutes each while they are taking notes. I also would like to follow up with another quick conference during the rough draft phase. I don't know how this will work with the numbers of students we will be teaching, but I think if I can have the librarian answering their research questions and circulating, that will help me focus on each individual student, at least briefly. Much more research needs to take place in terms of teacher as fellow learner/collaborator.
7. So much of how we teach now (ensuring all learners are on task, etc.) limits the developmental need that our students have to achieve some independence in and to take responsibility for their own learning. I want to do more in my teaching that models how a literary scholar might look at a poem or how a researcher might look at research or how an essayist might develop an essay, etc. and then turn over responsibility to the learners; if I can structure some small group collaboration more formally into the research process, the students can be responsible for each other. Creating stable social learning groups in the research process is another goal for the next time around. Students do this informally to some degree - we saw that in the fall survey in that students who do well tend to discuss their work with and get information from other students. The lowest achieving students are left out of that loop completely - and don't even know it. Again, fertile grounds for further research.
8. Working with Fran, my teacher librarian/collaborator increased my own learning exponentially throughout this process. We learned volumes beyond what we intended by continuous verbal reflection and discussion. Both of us read widely in literacy research and application literature and bring a richness to this discussion that isn't possible with every colleague. We are different enough in perspective that we can challenge each other as we reflect upon and refine our teaching and learning experience. My research this year would not nearly have been as productive for me or my students without a collaborator. (Besides, they loved it that we were researching them!)