Haylie Culp

Action Research: Engaging Low Responding Students in Class Discussion

EDSE 492 Spring 2017

Abstract

This study examines which practices can best improve the engagement of low engaging

students in the classroom. By identifying low engaging students in the control week, the research

analyzes the impacts of three strategies to increase and improve overall participation. The

strategies examined include use of increased wait time, random student generators, and think-

pair-share techniques to select and measure student interaction.

 Introduction

During the first week of the semester in my field placement, I noticed that student led

class discussions were a relatively new introduction to the class. As I began creating spaces for

students to practice leading conversation through activities like Small-Socratic-Smackdowns,

and peer led conversations, it became clear that many of the students didnt feel comfortable

facilitating or leading their peers through even scripted discussion prompts. Since I planned to

primarily use class discussion to propel the lessons through the readings and projects, I needed to

learn to hone the discussion in ways that could be purposeful, yet allowed the students to drive

the discussion. Almost immediately, in all four periods, I recognized the conversation could be

dominated by a select few students. As I began to encourage other students to participate, I

noticed around 5 students in each class who regularly would contribute only a shoulder shrug as

they searched their peers aimlessly for a phone-a-friend opportunity. I needed to identify how

to engage those students in discussion, but after using the techniques I had seen my mentor

implement, I knew I would need some additional techniques to hone in on the low engaging

students effectively. This lead me to identify my action research stem:

What strategies best help engage low responding students in classroom discussions?

Initially, my goal was to identify why these students chose not to participate in

discussion. I thought the students may be shy, or do not know the answers, but after further

research, it seems to have more to do with true engagement. Research suggests that students need

an intrinsic motivation and safe space to share in order to truly engage with content and in class

discussion (Xie, Durrington, & Yen. 2011). I hope to learn how to access that level of motivation

by creating a safe place for student conversation through this inquiry process. Additionally, after
reading about Whole Brain Teaching, I understood that the longer we talk, the more kids we

loose, (Biffle, p6.) I wanted to find a way to decrease teacher talk-time and increase student

interaction, while more closely monitoring five focus students through this process.

To begin my research I took note of my current knowledge base, and what discussion

techniques I have seen in the past. I have seen previous mentors use think, pair share techniques,

class voting and technology tools to aid it equitable class engagement. The technique I was most

comfortable with was think, pair, share. A technique that seemed a little more challenging was

class voting, which allows students to pick one side of an argument and then defend their choice

through peer discussion. This is an activity I wanted to work up to. Since the culture of my

classroom didnt have a strong sense of community, this seemed like a potential obstacle since I

would need to first address the class culture and community before I could begin using this

practice effectively. I inevitably chose not to include the student debate as a tool for

measurement thinking it reflected student culture, rather than student teacher engagement, and in

hindsight feel classroom debates may have actually given the most accurate read of the students

real engagement. Moreover, I knew that students could increase their responses if I improved

my wait time, but I hadnt had much experience or exposure to the literature that supported it.

This started me on my path to looking for research based techniques that might improve my

more reserved students classroom engagement

Ethics

In order to effectively execute an action research project, my subjects should have

informed consent and be able to opt out, but my students do not get to choose to participate or

not, so this should be cited as a potential ethical issue. I do not expect any true ethical concerns

to arise, but am careful to ensure I frequently analyze my implementation to guard against

providing additional considerations to focus students. Furthermore, researchers are warned to

guard against looking at students as test subjects, so to guard for this I will be asking my mentor

to track and count students interactions so that I do not unconsciously begin counting their

engagement towards my statistics rather than their individual learning (Zeni, 1998). If the action

research project proves to be effective, there will be more diverse and equal opportunities for

student engagement among all students.

Methodology

In order to test my question What strategies help engage low responding students in

classroom discussions? I will need be testing three strategies. I will begin by implementing wait

time, using a student randomizer and think, pair, share techniques. The course of action I will

take will begin by counting the current interaction in my third period over three weeks. Third

period contains 26 students: 23 freshman, 1 sophomore and two juniors. I will be counting the

frequency that students respond to teacher posed questions and their responses to their peers.

Then after establishing the control sample, I will begin implementing the first strategy to

increase wait time. The second strategy I will implement on the following week is to call on

students to increase participation through use of a random generator for class discussion

contributions. The final strategy I will be using will be think, pair, share techniques. In order to

measure how effective my strategies are, I will use a tally system to keep track of which students

are speaking and engaging for one week with each strategy.

In order to measure how effective each strategy is I will take a sample of data from the

first week, which I will call the control data, to compare student interaction in the following

weeks. For each day I will have an attendance sheet and each time a student engages with me

during instruction, or their peers during a teach moment, I or my mentor will be recording the
frequency of interaction through use of a tally system. Red tallies will represent contact with me

and blue will be contact with peers. I will know if a system is successful if the number of

student engagements increase beyond the control groups numbers for engagement. I will need

four weeks for this project, one for the initial observation, and one for each strategy tested. I will

also need to download the Random Student app that generates students names to be called on.

Results

Control Week

During the first week, I saw my students for three class periods due to modified

schedules, so I recorded only 3 days per week for the rest of the research. During my control

week to measure average student teacher interaction and pinpoint the low engaging students I

recorded data which indicated over fifty percent of students were engaging in classroom

conversation with me during whole class discussion 6-10 times a week. I made it a point to check

in with students during their teach time at least once per class period with each student, so every

student would have had at least three interactions by the end of the week. My control week

results indicated that six of my students were contributing to classroom discussion only three

additional times that week and 5 students engaged in classroom conversation more than 10 times

per week. This week the students began group projects, so this could partly justify why the count

was rather low for student-teacher interaction all together for classroom discussions.
Week Two: Wait Time

This week I implemented increased wait time with the students. Research suggests that

increasing wait time by three seconds can increase student response by 300% and increases

students ability to develop higher order thinking and questioning (Melder, 2011). When I would

pose a question, I would silently count to three, and then look for focus students to see if this

increased their participation in class. While it did not always improve their raised hands, it did

help ensure that if I asked them specifically a question, they had a response to share with the

class. This strategy may not be most effective for promoting equity in the classroom alone, but it

does offer an opportunity if I am aware of the students who dont always get seen to be

welcomed back to the discussion with typically more substantive answers.

First, consider the data for the entire classs participation. Student participation increased

significantly, with only one student who increased engagement by only one more time than the

previous week. He ultimately remained in the first interaction group, but he did improve
nonetheless.

Next, consider the focus student group. The students identified as low engaging students

all improved their class discussion contribution. Some were less significant improvements

quantitatively, but qualitatively most of the replies to the discussion were significant in the depth
of the answers.

Week Three: Random Student

For the third week, use of a student randomizer was implemented. The research suggests

that randomizing the order and making that known to students can decrease student anxiety and

increase student contributions during class discussion (Goodrich, 2012). I still conducted daily

check-ins with each student, so typically I would hear from each student 2 times per class period.
This technique seemed to level the playing field for the students interactions, but it also seemed

to limit discussion. While I like that each of my students had the opportunity to contribute

equally, there were certainly times other students may have lost the opportunity to share more in-

depth responses. If I used this again, I would virtually draw names first then ask other students

to add onto that response, without using the Randomizer App to propel more insightful

discussion. Overall this was effective in promoting equality in class discussion, but did not

necessarily increase the focus students interactions from the previous week, but it did limit the

other students responses.

Week Four: Think, Pair, Share

In the last week of research, I implemented a think, pair, share technique to increase the

low engaging students in class discussions. This technique yields itself to offering a safe place

for low engaging students to share ideas first, then get validation or support through peers before

sharing the answer out with the class (Brown, 2016). This technique again was more effective
than the first week, but allowed for students to pull ahead of others. In order make this technique

more equitable, I used the randomizer app to start the conversations and asked different groups to

add on to the discussion with their answers. Methodologically, this was probably not the most

appropriate move but I felt ethically, the students deserved the chance to be allowed to lead

discussion, so I made the necessary adjustments.

Overall I feel this may have been the best technique to increasing quality answers among the

students, and provided a better foundation for class discussion questions. When evaluating the
effectiveness of this strategy with low engaging students I didnt notice a drastic difference from

the first strategy though. The table below compares the Wait Time, and Think, Pair, Share results.

Conclusions

Each strategy increased student-teacher interaction during class discussion. While each

strategy was effective, there are clear times when using the different strategies would be most

effective. In my future practice the strategy I intend to regularly implement is increased wait

time. I feel that my answers and analysis of student engagement and learning is most effective

when my students and myself have time to really digest the discussion to create thoughtful and

purposeful answers. For the other strategies I could have made for better use of the student

responses by encouraging more follow up questioning to continue to the build the community I
was striving for that could encourage more student-teacher interactions (Saphier, Haley-Speca,

Gower, 279).

Implications

This study prompted several questions for me after looking at the data. First, why did I

classify my low engaging students as students who didnt directly engage with me? When I later

gave student developed projects there was more student to student and substantial discussion

taking place, so I think if I wanted to do this project again I would concentrate on the same focus

students, but look more closely at their peer interactions. Since several of the focus students

cultures tend not to speak up in school, I could have made better use of their time by having them

talk to a peer and develop ideas together and listening into those peer to peer conversations

(Smith, Saklofske, Yan, & Sherry, 2016). Additionally, I noticed the same high engaging

students were recorded each weeks without the randomizer, so I should look more closely at my

instruction and how I engage the class to identify why I am subconsciously or unknowingly

recognizing those students so I can make the learning more equitable for their peers who were

not recorded as often as having participated.

Regarding methodology, I set goals too high for my ability to record student and teacher

interactions. I could effectively count student interactions with me during instruction or check

ins, but I was unable to record the student's peer to peer interactions with any real success. My

data was rather spotty and did not accurately represent the student engagement during their peer

teach times. Initial measurements would have generated results for potentially two separate

studies, one regarding teacher-student engagement and another to increase peer to peer
engagement. While I was able to test my strategies, I was not able to accurately measure them to

the desired capacity. I should have I recorded each class with a camera for the duration of the

study for the most accurate results.

In order to use my research to maximize student learning outcomes, I need to shift my

thinking to be more student focused. I spent a lot of time measuring and identifying how students

engaged with me, but didnt ensure all students had an equal chance to share, their ideas or

develop them in a way that may have been more effective and required more higher order

thinking. In the future, I want to build curriculum that allows for more student communication

and interaction as a means for providing more safe areas for low engaging students to share.

Building class identify and belonging may be the greatest asset in creating a classroom that

allows for the kinds of interaction I was striving for, so incorporating more practices that allow

students to first feel a sense of identify may be critical to finding long lasting success (Sturtevant,

2016). In addition to using more appropriate methods of classroom discussion so that there is

more equity in who gets to share and when. While the strategies I used did work to increase the

low engaging students discussion in class, I dont have a way to measure if it was truly

engagement, for some it may have been more compliance answering. I would want to look

back at my questioning and how I may have phrased discussion topics differently to ensure the

discussion was truly a discussion rather than a call and response type of environment.
 Bibliography

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Melder, Logan, "Wait time in the classroom" (2011). Theses and Dissertations. 72.

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