Final Reflection
At the start of writing this thesis project I had absolutely no idea as to what might be a good topic of focus for my study. I was very nervous that whatever I chose would not be a topic rich or complex enough to be something that would allow me the kind of research, collection and analysis of data that would make the study worthwhile. I was nervous that I would run out of ideas and inspiration after just a few months. I thought about focusing the project on student motivation with their schooling or on issues of racism in schools, both of which interest me. After changing my topic multiple times and mulling over possible new ones, I realized that the best option in which to complete this thesis would be to actually do something that would benefit my teaching. I realized that I was approaching the choice of topic for the thesis from entirely the wrong direction. I wanted to attach myself to something that would be exciting, a topic that would benefit greatly from the work that I was doing in the classroom. Only when I realized that the topic and study should be something that benefited my teaching craft was I ready to think about choosing an appropriate topic. I thought about my teaching and areas that needed the most development. I realized that although I thought that the idea of Harkness teaching was fantastic and greatly beneficial to students who engage in it in the classroom, I was having on average only three formal Harkness discussions per trimester. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the study had to be centered on something related to Harkness teaching. Not only was Harkness teaching a large part of my school, and intimately connected to a social studies classroom, it was also something that I had never totally committed to as a teacher at Pacific Ridge. It was time to get serious!
The research question itself evolved quite a bit in the initial stages of this project. Initially I wanted it to be focused on Harkness teaching but I was advised to make the topic broader to allow for wider audience appeal. Pacific Ridge School is the only school in the Western United states that uses Harkness teaching in its classrooms and I wanted teachers other than my own colleagues to be able to benefit from having read the completed thesis. I initially wanted to make Harkness teaching more equitable for all who engaged in the practice. The minor change that I made to the research question was really only in the wording. What was initially something that would focus on Harkness teaching became something that would focus on classroom participation and student discourse. I was worried that if I used the word Harkness, that it would limit readership as it is quite obscure to those that don’t know about the practice. Interestingly I had a change of mind quite late in the data collection process regarding the research question and the focus for the thesis. I realized that if this thesis was going to be something that benefited me as a teacher it had to be more focused on the Harkness method of teaching because that was what I was trying to improve in my own practice. I narrowed the focus again to be very Harkness centric, but actually kept the research question unchanged. I found that it actually still applied well to what I was doing with regards to my research. The final question became: "How can I structure classroom discussions to ensure equitable participation?"
My early research proved difficult initially to determine where students were not experiencing equitable participation. After staging a few early discussions I found that many of my planned Harkness discussions resulted in some students not speaking at all, while some dominating conversations in class. While I already knew this, I had absolutely no idea why this was occurring. This got me thinking about student motivation and factors that were limiting student interest in the conversation. After reading a number of article and books on student motivation and student discourse I realized that this could become a major part of my study. I also observed a radical difference in the ways in which boys and girls conducted themselves around the Harkness table. I found that the differences in the ways in which the genders behaved was consistent throughout all the classes that I taught and I became very interested in attempting to determine why these differences existed, and how they affected the overall learning of the different genders. I was also interested in the role that the teacher plays in getting students to participate and wanted to see if what I was doing positively affected the desires of students to contribute effectively during classroom discussion. I was also interested in how grades motivated students to share opinion during our discussions. I came upon this idea quite by accident at the beginning of the school year when I randomly announced that our Harkness would be graded. What resulted from this was a marked increase in student participation which made me inquisitive to determine if the quality and complexity of what students were saying improved along with the frequency of their comments.
My early outcomes were encouraging and I collected data, some of which I considered to be worthy of some deep analysis. It was only later that I realized that my classes had consistently become meetings where students debated and discussed history and how it connected to current events around the world. I had always tried to make history relevant to current times but had always attempted to do so by “feeding” students information through lecture or by having them do readings for homework. I now found that students were experiencing significant learning by themselves through our Harkness discussions which I would not have staged had I not been collecting data for this thesis. It was all falling into place nicely and I started to really see that the focus on Harkness teaching for this thesis was improving my teaching and that the students were learning all by themselves. Challenges were common throughout the process. Just when I thought I had found some consistency with my data collection and analysis, the next class that I would engage with using exactly the same Harkness question, would deliver totally different results. I became interested in the differences in the ways in which middle school and high school students participated which made for some confusing data collection and analysis.
My data collection process mostly consisted of exit cards which I distributed to students. I always did this directly after each Harkness discussion and found that the students were mostly honest with their responses. The exit cards gave me most of my data but I wish that I had been more organized to select a focus group of student to interview. I only conducted three interviews of students but always found that these gave me the most information and that it was always much better feedback on a particular Harkness than I got from the exit cards. I regret not doing more interviews of students after each Harkness. I also videoed a few of my classes during our discussions and the viewing of these videos later would allow me to see so much of what I had missed during some of the discussions. As the facilitator of each Harkness discussion I needed to focus mostly on who was speaking and sometimes failed to observe those that were not speaking. The video gave me a more nuanced idea of each discussion as I saw what students were doing while they listened to each speaker as well as their reactions to various student comments.
The impact of what I did for this thesis I believe had far reaching effects on both me and my students. For the students, they were required to involve themselves in far more Harkness discussions than I had previously used in my teaching at PRS. This resulted in many of them bettering their verbal discourse with their peers. I feel like students in my classes were exposed to so many more opinions and ideas through their peers as a result of the increased Harkness discussions that we had. The impact of having done this thesis on me as teacher was also significant. By forcing me to conduct more Harkness discussions in my classes I finally came to see the benefit of what frequent Harkness discussions can have on individual students and on entire classes. This study totally changed my teaching style in order to take advantage of these positives and I now find myself lecturing to students far less. I feel like I have got much closer to achieving educational nirvana where students teach themselves without actually knowing that they are doing this! Many of the Harkness discussions that I had during this study had very little teacher involvement and the students basically worked to find the information out for themselves! The best part about it was that they did it in a fun and interactive way. I realized while listening to them debate the merits of a country occupying another that they were learning about the “workings” of the world while also learning how to be effective communicators. I felt great!
I never did ask students to consider if everything that I saw with regards to their development was something that they realized in themselves. I did ask if students enjoyed the course and they said that they had. Frustratingly many of them mentioned that it was the informative lectures that I gave and not the Harkness discussions that we engaged in that taught them the most. That being said, I do know that many of the students who spent this year with me engaged in our many Harkness discussions will be better prepared for college and the world as they have grown to become effective communicators who can express an opinion.
The Harkness style of teaching can be extremely rewarding for all learners in a classroom. While it is challenging to successfully make it a consistently useful and enjoyable teaching method for students, it is a frustrating craft for teachers to find success with. The practice is dependent on so many variables, none as variable as the students themselves. I found that what worked beautifully for one group of students was deemed to be a complete failure for others. Even more challenging was that what worked well for my focus group of students at the beginning this study eventually became “old hat” for many of them. As they became jaded with my methods of facilitation our discussions lost some of the vibrancy that they had earlier on in the school year. What it meant for me was that I had to constantly be developing different methods and that those new methods were not necessarily transferable to my other 10th grade classes. I found that Harkness teaching in some form is very easy to accomplish in a classroom. It was, and still is very difficult to consistently deliver high level, thought provoking lessons for my students. There are no real patterns with Harkness and it is such a changing discipline that the fact that it is not easily quantifiable is in itself a finding. As a teacher there is not much that you can do wrong when using Harkness teaching. However, in order to ensure that it consistently takes the place of other methods of instruction I feel that teachers should do it often and carefully consider the impact that it is having on their students.
This study has changed my teaching style for the better. The data collection process forced me to develop new strategies and ways of implementing Harkness teaching in my classes. I would have not tried most of them without the need to collect data for this study. While these strategies were not all successful, I do believe that I have gained significant confidence as a Harkness facilitator to be able to confidently teach at Pacific Ridge using this style of teaching. I also would like to share the successes associated with this study with my colleagues to encourage others to also use some of the strategies that I found successful in their classes. This study has also allowed me to think about my practice beyond the participation of students in my classes. I feel like I have gained considerable insight into what motivates young people to learn in my classes. I feel like the findings that I made with regards to student motivation go beyond just verbal participation and can be applied to other aspects of my teaching. I also gained excellent insight into how the different genders function in my classroom and this I feel will also make me a more successful teacher.
The research question itself evolved quite a bit in the initial stages of this project. Initially I wanted it to be focused on Harkness teaching but I was advised to make the topic broader to allow for wider audience appeal. Pacific Ridge School is the only school in the Western United states that uses Harkness teaching in its classrooms and I wanted teachers other than my own colleagues to be able to benefit from having read the completed thesis. I initially wanted to make Harkness teaching more equitable for all who engaged in the practice. The minor change that I made to the research question was really only in the wording. What was initially something that would focus on Harkness teaching became something that would focus on classroom participation and student discourse. I was worried that if I used the word Harkness, that it would limit readership as it is quite obscure to those that don’t know about the practice. Interestingly I had a change of mind quite late in the data collection process regarding the research question and the focus for the thesis. I realized that if this thesis was going to be something that benefited me as a teacher it had to be more focused on the Harkness method of teaching because that was what I was trying to improve in my own practice. I narrowed the focus again to be very Harkness centric, but actually kept the research question unchanged. I found that it actually still applied well to what I was doing with regards to my research. The final question became: "How can I structure classroom discussions to ensure equitable participation?"
My early research proved difficult initially to determine where students were not experiencing equitable participation. After staging a few early discussions I found that many of my planned Harkness discussions resulted in some students not speaking at all, while some dominating conversations in class. While I already knew this, I had absolutely no idea why this was occurring. This got me thinking about student motivation and factors that were limiting student interest in the conversation. After reading a number of article and books on student motivation and student discourse I realized that this could become a major part of my study. I also observed a radical difference in the ways in which boys and girls conducted themselves around the Harkness table. I found that the differences in the ways in which the genders behaved was consistent throughout all the classes that I taught and I became very interested in attempting to determine why these differences existed, and how they affected the overall learning of the different genders. I was also interested in the role that the teacher plays in getting students to participate and wanted to see if what I was doing positively affected the desires of students to contribute effectively during classroom discussion. I was also interested in how grades motivated students to share opinion during our discussions. I came upon this idea quite by accident at the beginning of the school year when I randomly announced that our Harkness would be graded. What resulted from this was a marked increase in student participation which made me inquisitive to determine if the quality and complexity of what students were saying improved along with the frequency of their comments.
My early outcomes were encouraging and I collected data, some of which I considered to be worthy of some deep analysis. It was only later that I realized that my classes had consistently become meetings where students debated and discussed history and how it connected to current events around the world. I had always tried to make history relevant to current times but had always attempted to do so by “feeding” students information through lecture or by having them do readings for homework. I now found that students were experiencing significant learning by themselves through our Harkness discussions which I would not have staged had I not been collecting data for this thesis. It was all falling into place nicely and I started to really see that the focus on Harkness teaching for this thesis was improving my teaching and that the students were learning all by themselves. Challenges were common throughout the process. Just when I thought I had found some consistency with my data collection and analysis, the next class that I would engage with using exactly the same Harkness question, would deliver totally different results. I became interested in the differences in the ways in which middle school and high school students participated which made for some confusing data collection and analysis.
My data collection process mostly consisted of exit cards which I distributed to students. I always did this directly after each Harkness discussion and found that the students were mostly honest with their responses. The exit cards gave me most of my data but I wish that I had been more organized to select a focus group of student to interview. I only conducted three interviews of students but always found that these gave me the most information and that it was always much better feedback on a particular Harkness than I got from the exit cards. I regret not doing more interviews of students after each Harkness. I also videoed a few of my classes during our discussions and the viewing of these videos later would allow me to see so much of what I had missed during some of the discussions. As the facilitator of each Harkness discussion I needed to focus mostly on who was speaking and sometimes failed to observe those that were not speaking. The video gave me a more nuanced idea of each discussion as I saw what students were doing while they listened to each speaker as well as their reactions to various student comments.
The impact of what I did for this thesis I believe had far reaching effects on both me and my students. For the students, they were required to involve themselves in far more Harkness discussions than I had previously used in my teaching at PRS. This resulted in many of them bettering their verbal discourse with their peers. I feel like students in my classes were exposed to so many more opinions and ideas through their peers as a result of the increased Harkness discussions that we had. The impact of having done this thesis on me as teacher was also significant. By forcing me to conduct more Harkness discussions in my classes I finally came to see the benefit of what frequent Harkness discussions can have on individual students and on entire classes. This study totally changed my teaching style in order to take advantage of these positives and I now find myself lecturing to students far less. I feel like I have got much closer to achieving educational nirvana where students teach themselves without actually knowing that they are doing this! Many of the Harkness discussions that I had during this study had very little teacher involvement and the students basically worked to find the information out for themselves! The best part about it was that they did it in a fun and interactive way. I realized while listening to them debate the merits of a country occupying another that they were learning about the “workings” of the world while also learning how to be effective communicators. I felt great!
I never did ask students to consider if everything that I saw with regards to their development was something that they realized in themselves. I did ask if students enjoyed the course and they said that they had. Frustratingly many of them mentioned that it was the informative lectures that I gave and not the Harkness discussions that we engaged in that taught them the most. That being said, I do know that many of the students who spent this year with me engaged in our many Harkness discussions will be better prepared for college and the world as they have grown to become effective communicators who can express an opinion.
The Harkness style of teaching can be extremely rewarding for all learners in a classroom. While it is challenging to successfully make it a consistently useful and enjoyable teaching method for students, it is a frustrating craft for teachers to find success with. The practice is dependent on so many variables, none as variable as the students themselves. I found that what worked beautifully for one group of students was deemed to be a complete failure for others. Even more challenging was that what worked well for my focus group of students at the beginning this study eventually became “old hat” for many of them. As they became jaded with my methods of facilitation our discussions lost some of the vibrancy that they had earlier on in the school year. What it meant for me was that I had to constantly be developing different methods and that those new methods were not necessarily transferable to my other 10th grade classes. I found that Harkness teaching in some form is very easy to accomplish in a classroom. It was, and still is very difficult to consistently deliver high level, thought provoking lessons for my students. There are no real patterns with Harkness and it is such a changing discipline that the fact that it is not easily quantifiable is in itself a finding. As a teacher there is not much that you can do wrong when using Harkness teaching. However, in order to ensure that it consistently takes the place of other methods of instruction I feel that teachers should do it often and carefully consider the impact that it is having on their students.
This study has changed my teaching style for the better. The data collection process forced me to develop new strategies and ways of implementing Harkness teaching in my classes. I would have not tried most of them without the need to collect data for this study. While these strategies were not all successful, I do believe that I have gained significant confidence as a Harkness facilitator to be able to confidently teach at Pacific Ridge using this style of teaching. I also would like to share the successes associated with this study with my colleagues to encourage others to also use some of the strategies that I found successful in their classes. This study has also allowed me to think about my practice beyond the participation of students in my classes. I feel like I have gained considerable insight into what motivates young people to learn in my classes. I feel like the findings that I made with regards to student motivation go beyond just verbal participation and can be applied to other aspects of my teaching. I also gained excellent insight into how the different genders function in my classroom and this I feel will also make me a more successful teacher.