Methods

Procedures

            Since this action research study aims to measure students’ behavioral engagement, I will rely on a mixed methods approach, using classroom observations and student surveys. Seeing that I cannot teach and observe at the same time I will videotape my lessons with my focus class. As I am testing to see if storytelling engages more students than TPR and songs, I will teach and videotape two separate lessons with the same class. For the control lesson, I will use more traditional methods and introduce body parts using gestures and a song. In the experimental lesson, I will use the familiar story of Little Red Riding Hood using the same target vocabulary. In both lessons, students will be encouraged to participate by answering questions, talking with partners, and either singing or acting out the story.

Since feelings of competence influence how students engage behaviorally during classroom instruction, I will have students will fill out a short Likert item survey after each lesson to determine how they felt about their comprehension and their participation during the lesson.

Measures

            Teachers and researchers agree that there are many potential benefits to student engagement, but accurate measurement is necessary (Carter, et al., 2012). With that in mind, I will review the videos of the two different lessons and describe each students’ behavior during the instruction. This qualitative data will then be coded and analyzed for specific patterns, using constant comparative coding.

In addition to describing the student behavior in the videos, I will also try to quantify their behavior using interaction analysis. The study, “Scaffolding for student engagement in Elementary School Reading Instruction” (2006) conducted by Lutz, Guthrie, and Davis also tried to measure student engagement in class. In this study, the researchers took efforts to decide what engagement looked like before watching the videos of instruction. They created a protocol whereby they assigned a point value to each reaction (Lutz, Guthrie, and Davis, 2006).    Malloy, Parsons, and Parsons (2013) took this instrument and adapted it for their study on student engagement (appendix A). Students’ body language and their behavior during class express unconscious thoughts (Marshall, 2010). A kinesic analysis of their body language and participation in class will allow me to see which types of activities engage their interest.  By using the preset rubric with the different reactions will allow me as their teacher to assess my students’ behavior in a more neutral manner.  I will view the videos and score each students’ behavior according to the rubric in appendix A every 30 seconds. This microanalysis of their behavior will give me a more detailed picture.  The scores will be tallied and using descriptive statistics, I will analyze the results.

Immediately after each lesson, students will also fill out a short survey with Likert items on how they performed during class that day. These questions come from the Classroom Engagement Inventory devised by Ze, Bergin, and Bergin (2014) for their study “Measuring Engagement in Fourth to Twelfth Grade Classrooms: The Classroom Engagement Inventory” (appendix B). Since this study focuses primarily on behavioral engagement I have only included those questions relating to behaviors in class. I discarded questions that relate to affective and cognitive engagement from the survey and I added one additional question about how much they comprehended what was going on during class since I conduct classes mostly in Spanish with very little English. Combined with the nonverbal analysis of the students’ behavior during class, these surveys will allow students to express their feelings regarding the lessons and how well they paid attention and focused during the class.

References

Carter, C. P., Reschly, A. L., Lovelace, M. D., Appleton, J. J., & Thompson, D. (2012). Measuring Student Engagement among Elementary Students: Pilot of the Student Engagement Instrument--Elementary Version. School Psychology Quarterly, 27(2), 61-73.

Lutz, S. L., Guthrie, J. T., & Davis, M. H. (2006). Scaffolding for Engagement in Elementary School Reading Instruction. Journal Of Educational Research, 100(1), 3-20.

Malloy, J. A., Parsons, S. A., & Parsons, A. W. (2013). Methods for Evaluating Literacy Engagement as a Fluid Construct. Literacy Research Association Yearbook, 62124-139.

Marshall, C. (2010). Data collection methods. In Designing qualitative research (pp. 97–150). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Retrieved from http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/10985_Chapter_4.pdf

Ze, W., Bergin, C., & Bergin, D. A. (2014). Measuring Engagement in Fourth to Twelfth Grade Classrooms: The Classroom Engagement Inventory. School Psychology Quarterly, 29(4), 517-535. doi:10.1037/spq0000050

Appendix A: Behavioral Engagement Rating Scale (Taken from Malloy, Parsons, & Parsons, 2013)

Rating	Description	Behavior
1	Clearly not engaged	Sighs, looks bored, yawns, head down, distracted by something unrelated to the task, not participating, not paying attention, off task
2	Difficult to tell	Bland expression, monotone, not off task but not particularly involved, wavering attention to teacher/classmate/task, flipping pages without looking, attention but partial
3	Engaged	Maintains attention, appears interested, clearly on task, posture toward speaker (does this for an entire minute); other evidence: writing, speaking, clearly listening, brief response
4	Highly engaged	Posture or tone reflects enthusiasm or excitement, eagerness to participate, response reveals deep or critical thinking, makes connections, response is extensive, elaborates

Appendix B: Behavioral Engagement Survey Questions (Adapted from Ze, Bergin, & Bergin, 2014).

Question	1-Strongly disagree	2-Disagree	3-Neutral	4-Agree	5-Strongly Agree
I get really involved in class activities.
I actively participate in class discussions.
I form new questions in my mind as I join in class activities.
I compare things I am learning with things I already knew.
I work with other students and we learn from each other.
I can understand the meaning of the lesson even though it’s in Spanish.