Limitations
Time
The most obvious limitation of my Learning Inquiry Project is time. I was only able to spend one semester, fifteen weeks in my classroom, and only 6 of these weeks were actually spent implementing community-building strategies. The results of this project proved that, in my classroom, with limited time, a successful collaborative community could lead to increased academic success, but six weeks of lessons is hardly conclusive of the success of the life long impact I dream of.
Personal Limitations and Consistency in Recording Results
Yet again, here is that word “consistency”. Some days, I was more in to documenting my observations than others. On busy days, when I was the only teacher in the classroom, I had less time to run over to my behavior chart and document every little thing that happened in the classroom. Other days, I was observing a Master Teacher, and was able to write down all of the little interactions I observed. Some days, even if I was not busy, I would be so engaged in a specific lesson or caught up helping a student that my observations were inconclusive and I did not notice important interactions that may have changed my results.
Small Sample Size
The number of students in my sample totaled just 24, in a school with over 500 students. Thus, the small sample size is a given limitation of my research. I knew this limitation going into the research, and actually find the small, manageable, sample size to be one of the reasons my community building was successful. The research and lessons were specifically catered to this particular class, and in future lessons would need to be altered to meet specific needs of individuals and classes as a whole.
Frequent Absences
One limitation that I did not anticipate was the frequent absences of students, particularly the ones who would have benefited most from learning community building skills. As a result, I would often have to review the lessons, more than I would have if frequent absences did not occur, and students would miss out on the valuable class input of original lessons.
Outside Intervention
Additionally, during my research, the school rolled out a social intervention program, and worked with our 4 most in need students, socially. These students received intervention on how to interact with one another, socially accepted and socially frowned upon behaviors as well as intervention with hygiene. These interventions greatly helped the community building in our classroom, as the correlation between the four students receiving intervention and the students who were constantly in need of community skill redirection was high.
The most obvious limitation of my Learning Inquiry Project is time. I was only able to spend one semester, fifteen weeks in my classroom, and only 6 of these weeks were actually spent implementing community-building strategies. The results of this project proved that, in my classroom, with limited time, a successful collaborative community could lead to increased academic success, but six weeks of lessons is hardly conclusive of the success of the life long impact I dream of.
Personal Limitations and Consistency in Recording Results
Yet again, here is that word “consistency”. Some days, I was more in to documenting my observations than others. On busy days, when I was the only teacher in the classroom, I had less time to run over to my behavior chart and document every little thing that happened in the classroom. Other days, I was observing a Master Teacher, and was able to write down all of the little interactions I observed. Some days, even if I was not busy, I would be so engaged in a specific lesson or caught up helping a student that my observations were inconclusive and I did not notice important interactions that may have changed my results.
Small Sample Size
The number of students in my sample totaled just 24, in a school with over 500 students. Thus, the small sample size is a given limitation of my research. I knew this limitation going into the research, and actually find the small, manageable, sample size to be one of the reasons my community building was successful. The research and lessons were specifically catered to this particular class, and in future lessons would need to be altered to meet specific needs of individuals and classes as a whole.
Frequent Absences
One limitation that I did not anticipate was the frequent absences of students, particularly the ones who would have benefited most from learning community building skills. As a result, I would often have to review the lessons, more than I would have if frequent absences did not occur, and students would miss out on the valuable class input of original lessons.
Outside Intervention
Additionally, during my research, the school rolled out a social intervention program, and worked with our 4 most in need students, socially. These students received intervention on how to interact with one another, socially accepted and socially frowned upon behaviors as well as intervention with hygiene. These interventions greatly helped the community building in our classroom, as the correlation between the four students receiving intervention and the students who were constantly in need of community skill redirection was high.