How does Student-Centered Learning affect Student’s Level of Engagement in my 9th Grade Physical Science?

Jeremy Grant


Seminar Title


How does Student-Centered Learning affect Student’s Level of Engagement in my 9th Grade Physical Science?


Concept/Strategy

Focus of the Research


Student Centered Learning


Grade Level

Research Was Applied


9th Grade


Relevant Grade Level

Connections


High School


Discipline

Where Research Was Applied


Science


Additional Discipline Areas

I see Application to


All Disciplines


Invitation/Commercial


“Why do we need to learn this?” This common question is a tiresome and hurtful comment that many students make to teachers. It’s a hard one to avoid. A student gets frustrated at a concept so takes it out on the class by claiming “This is so stupid. I don’t even need to know this. I’m going to go be a fishing guide.” Need a way to avoid this question? That’s exactly what I set out to do by making the classroom engaging and keeping lessons differentiated. My research started with finding ways to engage students and I came across student-centered learning where we put the students in charge of their own learning with me as a facilitator. 9th grade physical science is a slap in the face for students as we take intense concepts and simplify it to simpler algebraic problems that they have not experienced before. Through my research and implementation, I believe that I was able to create a more engaging section of 9th grade science this year. If you would like to learn about different ways to engage students, this is the session for you.


Abstract


(INTRO TO AR)The question leading this Review of Literature is how does student-centered learning affect student’s level of engagement in my 9th grade physical science? The main focus was to see if raised engagement would increase the success level in 9th graders. In order to understand engagement, I had to learn that there are three types of engagement: behavioral, cognitive, and affective. Knowing these, I focused on three main strategies to implementing student-centered learning which were environmental, collaboration, and differentiation. Through my research, I discovered that a healthy, safe environment is beneficial for engaging students. If students feel that the teacher cares for them and if the students care for them, they are more motivated and therefore more engaged. Collaboration helps students begin to understand how life continues after school. Collaboration by definition does not just mean “group-work.” Total collaboration is when students are working together towards a common goal where they all benefit from the experience. Differentiation is providing many different teaching styles, different assessments, and different levels of assessments. (METHOD AND DATA) Through my research I have found and combined multiple ways to increase levels of engagement in my classroom. With this increased level of engagement, the levels of success in the students should also increase. By using journals and surveys, I got feedback about how engaged the students are with certain activities and by comparing their semester final to the semester final from the students of last year, I can see if my students had a better understanding of physical science. The main takeaway I got from my data collection is that each student has a different aspect of the class that they will remember doing. Through the journal entries, I had many different answers about what their favorite part of the two week period was. (CONCLUSION) In a result of seeing how incorporating student-centered learning, I saw that my students have started to get a greater sense of independence. Because the lessons revolved around them and with my incorporation of a safe learning environment, students were able to hold their own when presented something new with little background information.