Running Head: PILOTING FACE PILOTING FACE 11

Piloting Face of the Research InstrumentsAna Janneth Gmez GutirrezUniversidad Distrital Francisco Jos de Caldas

Piloting Face of the Research InstrumentsThis paper presents the report on the procedure through which the data collection instruments were administered during a piloting pedagogical session. First there is a description of the data collection instruments; second, there is a description of the way those instruments were administered or used; third there is a reflection of the implementation in terms of advantages and disadvantages and finally the possible new decisions to be made for the implementation.In order to contextualize the data collection instruments, it is necessary to clarify that the current research project intends to characterize the different reflections about school coexistence (understood as the way students relate to each other in the classroom in a daily basis) that students experience when working collaboratively and to analyze if students relationships are influenced by working collaboratively. The data collection instruments through which I intent to collect data in order to answer the question are field notes, students journals and students artifacts. Before administering the instrument a consent form (see appendix #1) was sent to childrens parents I order to have their permission for using that data that comes from those instruments written or done by the students.On one hand; the field notes is an observational instrument that according to Burns (1999), includes descriptions and accounts of observed events, including non-verbal information, physical settings, groups structures, interactions between participants. For the purposes of my research project and in order to record information about how students relate with each other (coexistence) and how they develop citizenship competences during my pedagogical intervention. I designed a format that includes: observers name, research question, research objectives, date time, grade, participants (grade), and number of participants, special physical or environmental conditions, observations and comments. (See appendix #1)The field notes piloted instrument t was written the three days after the class was taken. In order to help me writing those notes I used video and audio recordings, technological devices that are a good help but that in my case could be used better because the video camera did not have enough memory and the whole class was not video record and maybe some key aspects were mistaken, something similar happened with the audio recording because I used my mobile phone and this device needed to save each piece of recording, aspect that I did not pay attention to during the while class, so I could lose some other important data.Even though, memory takes a very important role for this type of instrument, that class was a Wednesday and after that class I had more classes, then the lunch, then class at the university and at night when I arrived home I started to write my field notes, the pieces of video and audio recordings were very useful to activate my memory, it was a very demanding exercise in the sense that it is difficult to make the decision about what to describe, if all the descriptions are suitable for the research purposes, as days pass the memory starts to play against your notes, and the exercise is more difficult. On the other hand, Students journals as Burns (1999) proposes, are regular dated accounts of . Learning plans, activities and events, including personal philosophies, feelings, reactions, reflections, explanations in this case those instrument is one of the most important in the sense that students will record the different descriptions, reactions and ideas about the pedagogical intervention in terms of collaborative work and in terms of the experience of coexistence in the different activities proposed. Taking that into account, I had designed a format for the journal in which the students need to register the date, the name of the activity, the description of the activity and answer two guiding questions for the reflections about that days work; the first question is How did I feel about working with others in the activity and the second question was about how did they lived the coexistence that day. It is important to mention that the questions and the answers in the journals are in Spanish taking into account the proficiency level of English of the students and the idea is to obtain the more realistic feelings and impressions the children have during the process.The students journal was used asking the students to follow the given format on their English notebooks, they were explained that the idea was to write a journal of each one of the classes we are having this term. The idea was very well received by them, in fact some of them create a folder with foamy material and show they were really motivated with the idea of doing a journal, what is more, some of them asked me about the possibility of writing on the journal things that are not really related to the English class. The first journal they wrote was an initial format in which they had a general question about how the have lived the coexistence that day ; then discussing with my advisor and taking into account the responses of the students, that were very general in terms of the way they experience the coexistence in the classroom, I decided to pose that second question as changeable and the idea is to ask the children about the different values related to coexistence in order for them to be more concrete in the way coexistence is operating in the different activities during the intervention. The next journal the question was: how did we live the respect during todays activities? In this journal they were more concrete about the aspect of the respect in their living of the coexistence and they started to mention things related to some behaviors they were having during the class that is related to the way they relate to each other. (See Appendix 2)Finally, the artifacts from to Norums (2008) perspective are things that societies and cultures make for their own use. They provide material evidence of the past by documenting and recording the past. Artifacts can provide historical, demographic, and (sometimes) personal information about a culture, society, or people. Insights into how people lived, what they valued and believed, their ideas and assumptions, and their knowledge and opinions are revealed in artifacts. Examples of artifacts include photographs, memorabilia, tools, buildings, toys, pottery, jewelry, clothing, weapons, gifts, paintings, graffiti, furniture, and tombstones. For the purposes of this research students artifacts are going to be understood as the different materials (workshops, billboards, brochures, etc.) they are going to produce during the pedagogical intervention. So far, the artifact that was administered was a worksheet in which they completed information about what they see in the school snack as part of the beginning of the inquiry cycle they are doing around the school snack. The format was to complete information related to their school snack like: what do you see in the package? What times do we usually eat it? What do we do before, during and after eating it? And what other food do we eat during the day? That artifact was developed on a worksheet per groups in which the students wrote the descriptions of the school snack, using their previous knowledge about descriptions and their bilingual dictionaries for writing the information in English. Taking into account the way the activity was developed, it is important to mention that too many explanations by me were necessary, the worksheet itself was not clear and the linguistic input was not enough in the use of previous knowledge and the bilingual dictionary. The administration of this artifact had a very important aspect and was that the school snack arrived just before starting the class, o that the students were able to have the real packages for the descriptions. The artifact provide some insides of the way the students related to each other during the school sack eating moment, which contributes somehow to the research question and objectives. (See Appendix # 3)The main conclusions after piloting, administering and/or using the three main instruments on this research project is that changes are necessary to be done; not only because of the piloting process results but also because of the characteristics of this project itself; in which the reflection and the changes are part of the process of action research. The principal decisions made for each one of the instruments are related to some changes of the formats themselves, so that they can give more data to accomplish the purposes of the research questions and objectives.The field notes format in general is acceptable, the decisions related to this instrument are in the taken notes method and the different devices or additional help needed to have notes that provide strong data related to the way students relate each other and the implications of collaborative work in those relationship between students. The decision consists on; first, write the complete notes of the class the same day the class was done; second, be sure that the technological devises used for the note taking process, are working the whole class or at least the most relevant moments of the class in which those citizenship competences related to the way students relate to each other take place.The journal as I mentioned needs to have more guiding questions in terms of the way they express their ideas about working together and the way they relate to each other in that collaborative learning process; the question related to coexistence (the way they relate to each other) needs to be more concrete in terms of the values they are supposed to experiment as citizenship competences related coexistence and peace. After a general question about any value, the next journal needs to have more specific questions in order to inquiry more in deep about the different situations they are living in the classroom, when working together. In other words the guiding questions of the journals need to be changeable taking into account the general reflections the students do during the process.The artifacts need many adjustments in terms of the linguistic input and the instructions given to the students, so that they can develop the task without needing too much explanations from the teacher; definitely the dictionary and the previous knowledge are not enough if the idea is that they develop appropriated language processes while developing other social and cognitive processes.

References

Burns, A (1999). Observational techniques for collecting action research data in Collaborative Action Research for English Language Teachers. Cambridge University Press.Norum, K. (2008). Artifact analysis. In L. Given (Ed), The SAGE encyclopedia of qualitative research methods (p.24-26). Thousand Oaks, CE: SAGE Publications, INC. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412963909.n14

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Appendix # 1 Consent Form

Appendix #2Field Notes FormatObserverAna Janneth Gmez Gutirrez

Research Questionwhat type of reflections about school coexistence are unveiled when elementary students work collaboratively

Research Objectives To characterize the different reflections about school coexistence that students express when working collaboratively. To analyze the way school coexistence is shape when students work collaboratively

DateApril 15th - 2015

TimeFirst hour ( 6:15 7:10 am )

participants501

Number of Students36

Special physical or environmental conditions

ObservationComments

Appendix #3Students Jornals

Appendix # 4Students Artifacts