From 27 to 29 October 2015, 37 subject advisors and their coordinators of the Free State Department of Education participated in the second workshop in a learning trajectory to foster research skills. Facilitators of the workshop were Prof. Vincent Donche and Prof. Sven de Maeyer from Edubron, a research group of the University of Antwerp, Belgium.
Research learning trajectory
The case study for the learning trajectory is a longitudinal research project from the University of Antwerp in collaboration with Free State Department of Education and VVOB. The central research question is whether there is a relation between participation in teacher professional development, learning outcomes, attitudes towards learning and teaching and aspects of the class and school environments.
During the first workshop in February 2015, participants learnt the nuts and bolts of survey design. In April 2015, the subject advisors collected data from 1757 learners and 121 teachers in 40 schools in Free State province, South Africa. Exploring this extremely rich dataset formed the main objective of the workshop.
Mean, median and mode
During the first session, participants got acquainted with descriptive statistics using a spreadsheet. They learnt how to input data, interpret variables and their parameters, use statistical functions to analyse data, convert data into graphs and interpret preliminary results.
The Edubron professors emphasised to interpret results carefully, to adopt appropriate parameters to summarise variables and to complement research results with additional information. For example, average values can be misleading when there are values that lie outside most of the other values in the sample, also called ‘outliers’. In that case, it is preferable to use the median value. Similarly, standard deviations are often easier to interpret than variations and can be used to calculate confidence intervals.
The participants acknowledged the power of spreadsheet software and seemed not yet saturated. "Please keep on empowering us with more exercises", they stated.
Preliminary results
First insights in the research results were discussed with the participants. The drafted a pivot table with a sample of the research data. The participants identified that almost a third of the learners indicate that they are confident that they will do well in Maths next year. Comparing this information with their Annual National Assessments scores from last year, it turns out that many learners are not very self-conscious about their performance. One suggestion was that teachers and subject advisors should provide learners with useful feedback about their performance.
These research findings will feed into lessons learnt on the impact of the current programme on teacher development and primary education pupils. Moreover, they can serve as a needs analysis for the formulation of the next VVOB programme. The next steps are to continue with the data analysis and identify areas for in-depth research. A follow-up visit is planned for mid-2016.
