The research participants occupy a very significant position in the general outcome of the study. In my search to understand the equal partnership between teacher and students, the participants in the study are differentiated into two groups, teachers and students. In the following section, I will introduce each participant represented in the different groups by providing their personal and/or professional information, and my personal reflection about their participation.
4.1.1 Teacher-Participants
This includes Mr. Patrick, the science teacher, and Stanley, the teacher intern who was one of the teacher participants.
a. Mr. Patrick
Mr. Patrick has taught for more than a decade and had been teaching in other schools before his appointment as the Physics and Science 1206 teacher in PUHS 7 years ago. He shared his teaching philosophy with me during the first planning meeting that I had with him and later sent an electronic copy to me through email. It is supportive of rich relationships (see appendix
3). In summary, his teaching pedagogy “focuses on developing a positive teacher/student relationship based on respect.” Therefore, for successful teaching and learning to take place, according to him “students need to feel safe to take risks.” He doesn’t believe in memorization.
He supported this with a quote from Confucius, “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” With this in mind, he always gets students to solve questions after being
shown an example. “Sometimes, I ask them to complete the examples independently while I describe the solution concurrently on the board. I believe students should be taking responsibility for their own success and failures. As teachers, we have to facilitate this transition of students being dependent on the teacher for academic results and behaviours to independent and intrinsically motivated learners. In my experience this is a challenging goal but an essential one.”
The teaching philosophy of Mr. Patrick is really relationally inclined with the goal of developing a positive teacher and student relationship based on respect, but he is still faced with the challenge of holding the students accountable for their learning. However, this study is carried out in response to this common challenge among teachers through the use of the Learning Circle (LC) that dynamically brings about an equal partnership between teacher and students. By so doing the teacher is able to provide the needed support for students to take ownership or responsibility for their learning.
b. Stanley
Stanley is a university undergraduate final year pre-service student and as part of the requirement in fulfilment of his first degree he came to complete his internship with Mr. Patrick. Although he was not in the original plan of my study, and since he would be working under the supervision of Mr. Patrick to learn teaching methodology as a potential physics and mathematics
teacher, I made a slight adjustment for the three of us to work together instead of two. The arrangement with Stanley as with Mr. Patrick is almost the same except that Stanley is not RJ trained. The emergence of the teacher intern affected the study; it led to divided attention from Mr. Patrick, who also complained about the tight timeline and said “the combination of the intern
coming in, I need to learn this new process, there is a lot of learning going on which made it more complicated” (A 27). That is, he felt the complication of accommodating two of us with
different agendas at the same time. The presence of the student intern added more responsibility for him than if I were the only person. Working with someone without the basic knowledge of the LC was also a serious concern for me. Where do I start from when the person trained finds it difficult to practice a circle, let alone of someone without any circle experience?
4.1.2 Student-Participants
There are three student participants, namely Elizabeth, Justine and Becky. The three student participants happened to be friends with different personalities which made them a good representation of the class. Hence, I made the best use of their participation during my class observations, individual interviews and the focus group. Elizabeth is an introvert who can hardly make eye contact; Justine and Becky are extroverts who can easily express themselves freely. I did not have any personal contact with them until I started the study. The three student participants are easygoing, consistent and independent learners. Whenever I move around during observation to check students’ work they are always on task. They have no problem raising their
hand to answer questions or ask for help in class. There was an occasion when I went to check on them while working on scientific notation, a mathematical aspect under the module on motion. While others responded calmly, Becky responded sharply, saying “I am doing my work” (FN p. 36). I perceived she wanted to be left alone, so I moved away to another student. I also notice
that they usually sit with each other in the class, working together as a team. This arrangement seems to be helping them to support each other’s academic needs in one way or another. They enjoy learning, wanting to make use of every learning opportunity as much as possible before starting to pay tuition after high school at a higher institution of learning (F31-32)
I want to acknowledge the respect the students have for me and the study by making themselves available during the LC. They are regular and punctual in class. They are enthusiastic about learning; hence they have a consistent willingness to play their role genuinely throughout the study. I got to know them more during the interview and they related freely, as if we had been together for a long time.