Step 1 Description (What?)
The most difficult part of the inquiry is feeling let down by the digital app that was chosen to assist students improve the quick recall of their basic facts. Whilst the students loved playing the game and were clearly hooked by the incentives and rewards in the game, they were clearly spending too much time on building their virtual world instead of doing the math basic fact questions. This became counter productive to student progress on some of the student’s basic fact knowledge and to the evidence I require to convince other teachers that digital can produce more engaged students and produce high levels of achievement too when personalizing their learning digitally. Figure 3: Rolfe’s Model of Reflection (Otago Polytechnic, n.d. )
Step 2 Theory and knowledge (So what?)
It’s important to acknowledge the failure of the digital tool to meet the required learning objectives, however it is equally important to acknowledge that it would be false logic to apply this failure to all digital tools. It would not be a complete inquiry without asking, “So what?” The inquiry would not be complete without researching further to find better digital tools by collaborating with other teachers to find out what has worked for them. I found this process helpful and re-assuring to have another credible math app recommended to me by another teacher on social media and have also have this recommendation endorsed by other teachers online too. This taught me the power and importance of collaboration to improve learning for students. Figure 3: Rolfe’s Model of Reflection (Otago Polytechnic, n.d. )
Step 3 Action (Now what?) Without reflecting on the progress of the Action Plan, I would not have learnt the power of collaboration in this instance and value of reformulating ideas and plans to find successful solutions that would affect the outcomes of the overall inquiry. This finding is based on the quantitative data has provided the opportunity to affect the overall outcome of the inquiry towards improving student achievement. Not only will this knowledge change the course of planning, it will also change the action that I take on the Action Plan, affecting the final outcome of the Inquiry altogether and influence the opinions of other teachers that may be watching to see if digital tools do provide improvements to learning outcomes. Figure 3: Rolfe’s Model of Reflection (Otago Polytechnic, n.d. )
Who knew that three very simple questions could produce such a powerful change to the next steps of an Action Plan when the most common forms of logic would most often be to give up? This emphasizes the importance of using critical reflection to enhance learning for students and pedagogy for teachers.
References
Igoe, J. (2017, June 17). Gibbs’ Cycle of Reflection. [video file] Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_acUWM3co8
Otago Polytechnic. (n.d). Reflective Writing. Retrieved from: https://www.op.ac.nz/assets/LearningAdvice/d0a1fac268/Reflective-writing.pdf