Collaborative Action Research: Complex Instruction and Student Participation

• In Event: 21.027 - Mathematics Teachers and Researchers Supporting Student Voice in Mathematics: Collaborative Action Research or Allywork?

Abstract

We were interested in learning how structured group work may influence students’ ideas about smartness. This topic was compelling to us after a discussion occurred in Author’s third grade classroom about a student being a nerd because they were smart in mathematics. We also were interested in developing students’ sense of themselves as learners to combat a pervasive narrative in the community about “damaged students.” Through the project’s summer institute, we became aware of the Complex Instruction (CI) approach to group work and decided to use the text Smarter Together! Collaboration and Equity in the Elementary Math Classroom (Featherstone, Crespo, Jilk, Oslund, Parks, & Wood, 2011) to guide our implementation of small groups. A central tenet of CI is the attention to equalizing status among group members; Status is, “… an agreed upon social ranking where everyone feels it is better to have a high rank within the status order than a low rank” (Cohen & Lotan, 2014, p. 27). We wanted to equalize the status among group members so that students would begin to value each other’s ideas and contributions. Through the use of complex instruction, we also hoped to broaden students’ ideas about different ways that one can be smart in mathematics by highlighting students’ mathematical competencies.

Prior to beginning the collaborative action research in November, students had worked in groups at various points during the school year. Prior to starting the collaborative action research, we conducted an anonymous status survey in October that asked students to name three other students they would most like to work with. We tallied the number of votes each student received to create a status score. This survey revealed clear status hierarchies among the students. Between November and April, we planned and implemented a group task each week and followed up each group task with a short student survey that asked students to rate how comfortable they felt working in a group, how well their group functioned. We also asked whether or not they had the opportunity to share an idea, ask a question, work alone, and/or listen to others’ ideas. We also wrote reflections on our observations after implementing a group task.

Over the course of the school year we responded to the students’ surveys by creating explicit norms for group work, developing student talk moves to help them discuss their ideas, assigning roles with specific talk moves to encourage participating in discussions, and using commercial breaks as means for students to reflect and adjust the way group members were functioning. We found that the role cards supported students in developing a way to work in a group and have dialogue. Regardless of the role, analysis of classroom interaction suggested that students developed a sense of ownership and responsibility for their role. Secondly, we found that the talk moves supported more dialogue among students and engagement with others’ ideas regardless of their status. In April, we administered another status survey. Our analysis of this survey indicated students’ status scores were more equal.

Authors

• Victoria M. Hand, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Brent Jackson, Michigan State University

• Carla Roberts-Caudle, Flint Public Schools