D uring my inquiry into the use of robotics in maths to increase engagement in maths learning, and subsequently to improve learner outcomes, I have made changes in my practice. My plan is for this change to filter down through my team to other Year 5 teachers at my school. Here I will critically reflect on my wider audiences using Rolfe’s Model of Reflection . S tep 1 - W hat L ooking at my practice within a wider, national, context I need to consider the future of education and the role of new technologies within this. Bolstad et al (2012) suggest that 21st-century learning is ‘an emerging cluster of new ideas, beliefs, knowledge, theories and practices”. Whilst their research project is now 7 years old, one of Core Educations 10 trends for 2019 is Human Capital which states that “we must keep learning and changing to acquire skills and dispositions that meet the needs of different contexts and emerging opportunities.” Essentially 21st Century Learning for 2019. S tep 2 - S o
S tep 1 : D escribe the data you have collected A s part of my inquiry, I collected data during the “Scan” phase of the Spiral of Inquiry, the aim of which was to find out how my students-to-be felt about learning particularly maths and robotics. This data was used to refine my area of further research. S ince then all of my data collection has been during the “Take Action” phase as per my Action Plan . O n a daily basis, I have been collecting quantitative data on student collaboration and engagement using tally marks on interval behaviour logs, to see if students were actively collaborating and engaged in their learning when using the Bee-bots. Qualitative data has been collected daily in the form of post-observation interviews with each of the four target students, in order to clarify the findings from the interval behaviour logs. N umber Knowledge tests were carried out before and after the teaching intervention to obtain before and after quantitative d
S tep 1 : W hat is the observed impact after the ‘Take Action’ phase? T he evidence from the ‘Take Action’ phase is that students were engaged in their learning (as long as the activities were pitched at the right level) which resulted in positive student learning outcomes. H owever, there is no evidence that it was actually the robotics that has improved outcomes and not other factors. I needed to have a control group, that I taught without the use of robotics, to compare with, in order to obtain evidence that robotics increased engagement and therefore student outcomes. W hen researching for the ‘Learn’ phase it was evident that there is no research around teaching maths using robotics, only information on using robotics to teach technology such as coding. This research, if conducted again with a control group, could provide valuable information in this field. F inally, my inquiry did not provide evidence for collaborative groups improving student outcomes as I focuse
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