Títulos de Deuda: Para cada título de deuda, describa brevemente

When the students were asked to draw what learning looks like in their science lessons, they had to make choices about what to draw in their pictures. They made choices about people they would omit or include. The first point here is that most of the students (114 out of 117 drawings) portrayed classmates in their drawings. This suggests the significance of the students drawing the social world around them as learners and perhaps the suggestion of their peers contributing to discussions about the learning taking place in the science activity. No student displayed the full complement of classmates in their drawing.

The Student Negotiation scale described in the CLES as the opportunity to discuss ideas with others and justify to other students their developing ideas is particularly linked to this emerging pattern in the drawings. The preference for Student Negotiation has the highest mean value of 3.74 out of 5.00 compared to all other scales and this suggests how highly students rate the importance of being able to communicate with others. There is also statistical significance of the Student Negotiation scale between actual and preferred in 2009. This shows the importance that the students place on the interactions and relationships with their peers.

A general impression of most of the drawings is how the students have put such care and thought into the details of the people in the science lessons. Most drawings (87 out of 117) had specific details of classmates and/or teacher. Very quickly we sense the magnitude of the influence of peers and friends in the immediate learning world of the student. Many of the drawings show speech bubbles, which describe the particular science activity taking place or comment on student attitudes to science.

The second feature of the learning drawings is some of the drawings show the individual student as central to the learning and other drawings represent the student as being merely part of the scene. There is no overwhelming evidence from the drawings to suggest there is more of one or the other. However, most of the drawings represent the degree of the individual or group of individuals being able to talk in class or to think in class about the science lesson. Many of the drawings represent some form of speech or thought using speech bubbles or gestures situated next to the image of the individual. Many drew speech bubbles and words connected with speech- this may depict a degree of critical voice (69 out of 117). There was only one drawing that had neither people nor the individual in the picture, out of the 117 drawings. Critical Voice is described as learning to speak out and express an opinion in class. The Critical Voice scale has a preferred mean value of 3.47 and 3.58 in the years 2009 and 2010, respectively. This again is evidence of the importance that students place on the opportunity to be involved in the lessons and have a say in what is going on. Student interaction, discussion and freedom to express opinion are suggested to be important to the students.

We must now consider how students perceive the role of the teacher. The learning drawings reveal some interesting ideas. The students have made a choice about whether they will draw or not draw their teacher in the picture. The interaction between themselves as learners and their teacher is dramatically portrayed in some of the pictures. The size and position of the teacher in the drawings are significant as to how the individuals sense themselves as independent or dependent of the teacher for their learning. What is somewhat unsurprising is that most of the drawings (83 out of 117) had an image of the teacher somewhere in the picture. This could suggest the dominance of the teacher in the physical space and/or perhaps the learning space of the individual. In some of the drawings, the teacher is positioned at the front of the class, close to the whiteboard and in some of the drawings the teacher is either larger or taller in size compared with the relative size and height of the students. Some drawings presented the teacher as the central figure in the room and in larger proportions compared to the size of the student images (16 out of 117).

The CLES results show preference for greater student control in the classroom with preferred mean values of 3.08 and 3.09 out of 5.00 in the years 2009 and 2010,

respectively. The actual mean values were 2.23 and 2.19 out of 5.00 in the years 2009 and 2010. There is also the highest statistical significance in the Shared Control scale between actual and preferred. This shows a shift in student perception between what happens in class and what they would prefer to happen. It is difficult to identify the act of planning or co-construction between the learner and the teacher in the drawings; however there is an overall sense in most pictures that the classroom climate is an interaction between the individuals and the teacher. Many students portray activity and the conversations around the activity with regard to teacher decisions rather than student decisions.

In some of the drawings, there are a choice of activities and tasks where the students are represented as moving from one to the other. However, this does not indicate the opportunity that the students were given to help the teacher decide on those activities. As discussed earlier in this chapter, a large proportion of students (39% of the sample) chose the response of “Almost Never” in the CLES item 16 under the Shared Control scale, when they were asked about the ability to plan what they are going to learn with the teacher. In conclusion, many of the drawings do not depict an environment where there is a strong sense of co-construction occurring; however there is interaction between the teacher and the individual.