Gathering Data

 To inform my inquiry I need to gather data from my students regarding their level of achievement in maths, but also their prior experiences and disposition towards the subject.

Gathering Academic Data:

I will use the PAT Maths test results, Gloss test data and e-asTTle maths test data. Greene (2007) purports that it is vital to triangulate test data in order to ensure validity of the results. It could be that one of my students was ill or having an 'off day' when they took the PAT test for example. Or they could have had a great time selecting random answers which can pay off in a multi-choice test like PAT. I know that by using three different testing methods, I will have a more accurate picture of my students current achievement and have more opportunity to identify results that might be inaccurate. 

I am interested to see if there are any patterns in the data. For example, so far from my gloss testing, I have found a large group of students who have a weakness in ratio and proportion. Having this academic data may point towards other common 'gaps' in my students learning. This in turn, may point to areas of the curriculum that our teachers need more support with.

I also need to collect this data in order to assess the affect that my intervention has on my students learning. 

Survey Data

I will get my class to fill in a survey regarding their experiences and feelings towards mathematics. This is the same survey that will be used with Hannah and Clarelle's students, so we can look for wider trends across different year levels. 

It will be interesting to see the areas of maths that our learners will find the most challenging and whether they can identify their strengths and weaknesses. I would also be interested to see what the students attitudes are to maths; if lower achieving students also have low self efficacy. 

Something that I often notice in my learners who make shift is they come to me with maths anxiety. These learners may freeze when they see a problem involving large numbers and generally have low self efficacy in maths. These learners tend to perform below their expected curriculum level, but it is hard to say whether they are low because they are anxious, or anxious because they are low (Carey, Hill, Devine and Szücs, 2016). I wonder what percentage of my lower learners will have low self-efficacy in maths.

We are also surveying different teachers at our school (and ourselves) to look for trends across our teaching. We might find that teachers follow similar lesson structure, or we may learn that different syndicates or teams of teachers use different approaches. I have previously shared about the surveys here.

Interview

In the past I have conducted interviews alongside surveys as I have found that some students answer questions far more in depth orally. This could be because they are reluctant writers or because in person I can probe further and ask follow up questions to clarify my understanding.

While a survey used across multiple classes and year levels will enable us to find trends across the school, an interview will give me deeper insight into the minds of my target students. Driscoll (2011) suggests: "use interviews to gain details from a few people, and surveys to learn general patterns from many people." As such, it makes sense for me to use the interview to learn more from my target learners and to use this data to more richly inform my intervention.

Hannah, Clarelle and I intend to use interventions that best suit our year level of the school and the learners in front of us; to come at the same problem from different angles. As such, I do need to have a firm knowledge of my learners and the interviews will be created to best suit their needs.

References:

Carey, E., Hill, F., Devine, A., and Szücs, D. (2016). The chicken or the egg? The direction of the relationship between mathematics anxiety and mathematics performance. Front. Psychol. 6:1987. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01987

Driscoll, D, L. (2011). Introduction to primary research: Observations, surveys, and interviews.  Writing spaces: Readings on writing 2, 153-174, 2011.

Greene J. C. (2007). Mixed methods in social inquiry. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley.