The Power Behind Project Choice

By Julie Gilbert 

Professor O’Connor

EFN 520

May 11, 2007

A wise, little green teacher once gravely told his frustrated student, “Do or do not, there is no try.”  Although Yoda’s statement sounds great, there is no doing without first trying.  In other words, nothing gets accomplished so long as students remain unwilling to put forth effort.  More cryptic, yet perhaps more enlightening, is Bill Engel’s statement that “a teacher teaches most when not teaching” (2001).  The key to how this happens lies in motivation.

For this inquiry assignment, I knew I wanted to study motivation, but the sheer number of possibilities overwhelmed me for a time.  Eventually, I decided to assume that projects could accomplish the goal of motivating students, but the question of “how” still haunted me.  To be more specific, I wished to know what type of project best engages high school students. 

The question may seem overtly simple, but understanding which type of project best motivates will help me design better projects, which by definition will be the ones which best help my students become active learners.

Literature Review:

The first question to deal with is why motivation is so important.  Linda Darling Hammond summarizes the challenge facing modern American schools when she speaks of the need for strategies that will lead to success for diverse learners.  In the chapter entitled The Right to Learn, Darling-Hammond describes in detail how schools function as a bureaucracy.  Bureaucracies are very good at turning out products, but since we wish to form people, not products, we must find a way to break this bureaucracy.  Engaging each student individually is part of breaking the bureaucracy.  Newmann (1992) defines engagement as “the student’s psychological investment in and effort to master the knowledge, skills, and crafts that academic work is intended to procure.” 

The technical-functional theory of education further explains why the American educational system needs to be modified to break the bureaucracy.  This theory says that technological changes cause the skill requirements to go up, which leads to a need for workers with a higher skill level.  Because formal education is the source of highly skilled workers, a larger percent of the population must stay in the education system longer (Collins, 1971).  Simply put, American society has moved away from strictly mechanical ways of doing things, so schools need to modify how they work to reflect this change.  Most job search websites say that employers look for candidates with transferable skills, such as communication, team work, leadership, initiative, problem solving, flexibility, and commitment. 

How motivation works could be an entire paper on its own.  According to Deci (1975), autonomy is a central facet of intrinsic motivation.  Extrinsic rewards, intrinsic interest, and sense of ownership are also motivating factors (Newmann, 1992).  Ownership is the notion that students internalize knowledge better when they “own” it.  Mitchell (1993) says that students enjoy activities they can actively participate in, as opposed to activities involving passive listening.  Michael (2006) reports that critiques of biology education at both the high school and undergraduate levels say that there is a need for new teaching methods, which actively involve the learner.  All these things point to active learning as part of an environment favorable to student success. 

Methods:

Conducting inquiry research is akin to only going through a choose your own adventure book once.  Many possible paths exist, but the outcomes are unknown and varied, depending on the choices you make.  Though I knew I wanted to study projects and motivation, coming to one question was difficult.  Eventually, the trail of questions led me to the main question: what type of project best engages high school students.  Therefore, I gave my students a wide variety of projects. 

Each project was designed to be unique and demand something different from the students.  The Six Kingdoms project involved groups of three to four students creating a poster representing members of each of the six kingdoms.  The Algae Flashcards project asked the students to design a set of twenty-five flashcards using their algae and protist notes.  The Plant Pick-a-Project gave students the choice to work alone or with one partner to complete one of four projects: a children’s book, making six fun homeworks, researching a plant product, or making a 3-D flower model.  The Great HW Swap involved four groups of five to six students designing two homeworks, creating n + 2 copies of the homework where n represents the number of people in the group, and then evaluating both another group’s homeworks and one’s own group members.

To answer the question, I needed to define what would indicate student engagement.  I based student engagement on student satisfaction, as indicated by answers to a questionnaire.  I gave each of my classes a questionnaire with fourteen questions. (See Appendix I)  Next, I took each of the sixty-seven questionnaires at random and sorted them with regards to two specific questions: three and seven.  Question three was: which project did you like best?  Question seven asked the students to indicate their agreement with the statement: I like choosing my own group.  This question was selected on the assumption that choice makes a project more attractive to a student.

Findings:

Sixty-seven questionnaires were selected at random and analyzed for student response to the statement: I like choosing my own group.  As indicated in TABLE 1, forty-seven students responded that they always like choosing their own group.  Eight said they almost always like choosing their own group.  An additional eight said they sometimes like to choose who they work with.  Two said they never wish to have that choice, and two did not respond to the question.

TABLE 1: Student response to the statement: I like choosing my own group.

FIGURE 1 shows the same information in TABLE 1.

FIGURE 1: Student response to the statement: I like choosing my own group.

As indicated in TABLE 2, students were asked which project did you like best.  Fourteen students indicated that the 6 Kingdom Poster project was their favorite.  Twelve students marked the Algae Flashcards project as their favorite.  Twenty-seven liked the Plant Pick-a-Project the best.  Eight students favored the Great HW Swap, and eight did not answer the question.

TABLE 2: Student response to question: Which project did you like best? 

FIGURE 2 shows the same data as TABLE 2.

FIGURE 2: Student response to question: Which project did you like best? 

Conclusions and Implications:

Students seem to favor projects which gave them the most freedom, as indicated by TABLE 2 and FIGURE 2.  Twenty-seven students chose the Plant Pick-a-Project as their favorite.  Although twenty-seven student responses indicating the Pick-a-Project as their favorite is only about 40% of the sixty-seven total responses polled, it is still almost 50% more than the Six Kingdom Poster project, which had the next highest number of favorite votes. 

The Plant Pick-a-Project offered the most choices.  The student was free to work alone or with a partner, and in some rare cases, I allowed a threesome to work together.  The students were encouraged to pick one of four projects.  One of the project choices, the essay, was designed to cater to those who prefer straight-forward research.  The six fun homeworks choice was designed to appeal to those who wanted to get the most out of their notes.  Another choice, the 3D model, was designed for those who prefer working with their hands.  The children’s book was also meant to appeal to creative students who like drawing better than building.  The vast majority of students picked either the 3D model or the six fun homeworks, as they were the “easiest” or “most useful.”  Nevertheless, two students chose the essay and one pair chose the children’s book. 

FIGURE 1 and TABLE 1 emphasize the notion that students like choices with regard to their project partner(s).  This is important to know when designing any project for two reasons.  One, if I want the students to learn social skills, I have only to pick their groups for them to cause mild strain.  Two, if I want students to function within their comfort zones, I have only to allow them to choose their own partners and be flexible about the number of students per group.  In this way, my goal will determine the type of project I choose. 

The data in this inquiry project shows that if I want to engage the most students I must give them many choices.  Further research in this area could involve looking at which “type” of student picks which type of project, so that the individual projects may be designed to drawl the best work from each student.  Engaged students are harder workers than unengaged students; it is therefore beneficial to me as a teacher to know how to design projects which engage the most students. 

References:

Collins, R. (1971). Functional and Conflict Theories of Educational Stratification.

American Sociological Review. 36: 1002-1019.

Darling-Hammond, L. The Limits of the Education Bureaucracy.

Deci, E (1975). Intrinsic Motivation. New York : Plenum Press.

Engel, B. (2001). Education & Anarchy. University Press of America, Inc. New York .

Michael, J. (2006). Where’s the evidence that active learning works?  Adv. Physiol.

Educ. 30: 159-167.

Mitchell, M. (1993). Situational interest: Its multifaceted structure in the secondary

school mathematics classroom. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85, 424-436.

Newmann, F. M. (1992). Student Engagement and Achievement in American Secondary

Schools.  Teachers College Press. New York .

Other References:

http://www.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/Applications__CVs_and_interviews/Applica

tions/What_do_employers_look_for_/Transferable_skills/p!ecLbaf

Appendix I:

Miss Gilbert’s Nosy Feedback Questionnaire (no name necessary, just period #)

Directions: Read the question/ statement, Read all possible responses, Circle your response

1. Which Unit did you like best?                       

Classification, Bacteria/ Viruses, Protists, Fungi, Plants, Plant Quest

2. Which Unit did you do best on? (highest test score)

Classification, Bacteria/ Viruses, Protists, Fungi, Plants, Plant Quest

3. Which project did you like best?                  

6 Kingdoms, Algae flash cards, Pick-a-Project, Great HW Swap

4. Which project was the “easiest?                   

6 Kingdoms, Algae flash cards, Pick-a-Project, Great HW Swap

5. Which project was “most useful”?                   

6 Kingdoms, Algae flash cards, Pick-a-Project, Great HW Swap

6. I like being assigned a group.                        Always, Almost always, Sometimes, Never

7. I like choosing my own group.                        Always, Almost always, Sometimes, Never

8. Which is your favorite section of a unit?       Lecture, Homework, Quiz, Review Game, Project, Test

9. Which role did you draw in the Great HW Swap project?

Leader, Recorder, Materials Master, Scribe(s), Details Expert

10. Which role did you want to have in the project?

                                                Leader, Recorder, Materials Master, Scribe(s), Details Expert

11. Which type of HW are you most likely to return?

                                                Word search; matching; section review; paragraph, other (specify)

12.  Which type of HW are you most likely to enjoy?

                                                Word search; matching; section review; paragraph, other (specify)

Directions: Please, answer honestly.

13. What’s one thing you don’t like about Miss Gilbert’s teaching?

14. What’s one thing you like about Miss Gilbert’s teaching?

Quotes Index