Author(s): Smith, Thomas Richard, Anne Lesley Knowles
Published: 2017 in International Journal of Christianity and Education
URL to article
Research Focus Area: Strategies for using questioning and discussion techniques to deepen student understanding
Abstract:
This article explores the cognitive processes by which Year 7 students (aged 11 to 13 years) use personal viewpoints to interpret and resolve life-issues. A Christian school located in the North West of Sydney wanted to find out if the proportionally higher occurrence of discipline issues in newly enrolled Year 7 students could be explained by those students having a more diverse range of personal viewpoints than Year 7 students who had been enrolled for a longer time. To address this question, we conducted a survey of Year 7 students at the school in early 2015. The survey consisted of five open-ended questions related to a hypothetical school bullying situation. The students’ answers were coded according to the various types of personal viewpoints they used to form an interpretation of the scenario event and to resolve the issue. The students’ responses reflected 18 personal viewpoints across the five questions. Their answers varied in their use of complex personal viewpoints – that is, answers consisting of two or more simple personal viewpoints. A pattern was discerned from the varying proportions of complex viewpoints each question elicited, some questions drawing a high proportion of complex viewpoints. The differing proportions of complex personal viewpoints used in answering each of the five questions suggested that a higher proportion of complex personal viewpoints indicated the occurrence of enhanced complex thinking. A further finding was that students used a higher proportion of complex personal viewpoints when answering questions that challenged them to take a third-person perspective on the protagonists in the narrative.
Research Question(s):
Did students who enrolled beginning in Year 7 have a higher diversity in personal viewpoints, leading to disciplinary situations? Did the personal values of those students who enrolled in the school in Year 7 affect their attitudes toward the well-being of other students and staff? How do students use their personal viewpoints to navigate life-issues?
Methods:
Survey, Interview
Setting:
Middle school students (focused on Year 7 students (11-13 years old)) at a Christian school in australia
Key Findings:
- Year 7 students demonstrated greater diversity of personal viewpoints, which could suggest that those who enrolled in Year 7 have broader, less entrenched worldviews than those who have been at the school longer.
- The question ‘did students who enrolled beginning in Year 7 have a higher diversity in personal viewpoints, leading to disciplinary situations?’ was not able to be answered, as the Year 7 enrollees’ answers did not indicate personal viewpoints that approved of bullying-type behavior.
- The use of the concept of complex personal viewpoints for coding became necessary to explain the results of the survey. An overview of the student answers revealed that students tended to use two or more personal viewpoints, that is, complex personal viewpoints, in their answers.
- The life-issues questions differed in their ability to engender complex thinking (explained by the different task each question asked the students to perform).
- Questions that asked students what they would do in a difficult life-situation appeared to engage them in deeper thinking.
- Although this point may not be novel, it needs to be noted by teachers who focus on obtaining ‘closed answers’, such as Bible teaching.
- There authors found support for the theory that when students take the third-person perspective in considering a life-issue there is an increase in their use of complex personal viewpoints, and it is speculated that this indicates deeper thinking.
Implications:
- The use of a Personal Viewpoint vocabulary has merit as a way of indicating the thinking processes Year 7 students use when seeking to resolve life-issues relevant to their current life situation. It allows the students’ answers to be more accurately assessed.
- Teachers who provide students with opportunities to consciously use their personal viewpoints when undertaking new work, especially in life-issues topics, may see an increase in the students’ understanding of the material.
- To maximize the benefits of incorporating the students’ personal viewpoints into a lesson, teachers could pre-test their students’ personal viewpoints on the pertinent issue before introducing a life-issues subject. This would identify entrenched student thinking that already exists with regard to any life-issues being considered.
- Asking students questions that require them to take the third-person perspective would encourage many of them to access further personal viewpoints when considering a life-issue, especially from all the protagonists’ perspectives.
- Christian teachers could stimulate their students’ Christian (or other) spiritual life by inviting them to take Jesus’ perspective as the third-person perspective when considering a life-issue.
Limitations:
- The small number of personal viewpoint choices (18) used across the five questions appeared to suggest that life-issues have a limited number of moral resolutions. This may be partly due to life-issues containing a moral dimension, because society values and expects adolescents and adults to live by internalized moral norms to enable them to flourish in their relationships.