• << eFellows
• Introduction
  • Background & Context
  • Personal Significance
  • Research Questions
  • Theoretical Perspectives
  • The Process of Education
  • The Learning Environment
  • The Physical Environment
  • Different Learning Styles
• Methodology for a case study
  • Quantitative data
  • Qualitative data
  • Standards for validation
• Data Collection
• Data Sources & Analysis
  • Quantitive data sources
  • Standardized test results
  • Qualitative data sources
  • Data Analysis and Interpretation
• Creating a user friendly classroom environment
  • Teacher Training
  • Lifelong learning
  • The learning journey
  • Fitting policy into practice
• Conclusion
• References
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Appendix 3

Data Analysis and Interpretation

The results from the WIHIC

1. Do the SLD students perceive their classroom environment differently to their peers? How do the two sample groups compare with the whole class?

The SLD group

• On all but two scales, teacher support and equity, the SLD group scored themselves lower than the class as a whole.
• Thought that they were getting more teacher support than did the rest of the class.
• The biggest difference between the SLD and class groups was for cooperation.
• Agreed with the rest of the class about equity.

The random group:

• Agreed with the class about their peers, their teacher, their involvement and equity.
• Saw themselves using investigation more, being on task more but working cooperatively with the other students less.

Both sample groups:

• Were below the class for cooperation.
• Agreed with the class about equity.

2a. What is the difference between what the Year 7 group perceive is happening and what they would like to happen in their classroom environment?

The Year 7 group:

• As a group across the two classes, (one of 29 and another 9 in with a Year 6 class), the Year 7's preferred profile followed above their actual profile fairly closely.
• The biggest difference between actual and preferred within the year group was in teacher support, involvement and equity (i.e. the students want to see more of these happening in their classroom).
• They seemed to have a good idea of their task orientation and my observations supported the fact that overall, most students were on task most of the time, whenever I went into the classrooms.
• Investigation was the lowest scoring scale on the preferred form, as they were unsure of what it involved, even though they actually did quite a bit if investigative learning.

2b. What is the difference between what the SLD students perceive to be happening and what they would prefer to happen within their classroom?

The SLD group:

• Their preferred profile followed the actual profile closely in all but involvement which had a significant gap between actual and preferred
• They would prefer slightly more equity
• They want more involvement than they actually have.
• They were happy with their teacher support
• They appeared confident about their task orientation (on task behaviour), similar to the rest of the class but scored themselves much lower

3a. In what ways do their peers see their classroom environment?

The random group's actual and preferred profile showed:

• They wanted more student cohesiveness, teacher support, involvement, a lot more cooperation and equity - the big gap in cooperation shows they would prefer more team work, sharing ideas and resources and learning from each other, rather than competing against each other
• They wanted less investigation and task orientation, which implies that they would prefer more freedom to work how and where they want to, but need encouragement to use investigative methods more often.

3b. How does each group prefer their classroom environment to be?

• The SLD group were considerably below their peers in expectations about their classroom environment, especially student cohesiveness, task orientation and cooperation - all the things that SLD students find difficult.
• The random group followed the class profiles closely except for higher expectations in student cohesiveness and cooperation
• The lowest scoring scale for all students was investigation both in their actual and preferred scores
• The only scale that the SLD group agreed with the class on was equity but the random group wanted more equity - this was possibly an indication of the more academically capable students wanting more chance to share their ideas.

4. Have things changed over the previous two terms? How does each group perceive their classroom environment at the end of term 3?

In a comparison of Figure 1 (the actual profile from term 1) and Figure 4 (the actual profile from term 3):

• The random group's term 3 profile followed the year group more closely than the Term 1 survey, except for student cohesion, which was considerably higher than the class norm.
• The SLD group consistently scored themselves lower than the year group on all scales, and were below their original score in Term 1 for student cohesion, teacher involvement, cooperation and equity, even though all class scales for term 3 were above the term 1 survey. This implies that they have got despondent about their classroom environment
• Teacher support had dropped noticeably for the SLD group, whereas the random group agreed with the class on the level of teacher support.
• The random group were below the class level in involvement but matched them on teacher support and on task behaviour.

© Karen Newbrook 2004