The initial idea for my Action Research Project emerged from my exploration within the Inclusive Practices Unit. In that unit I created an artefact to assess Year 1 students’ sense of belonging with a view to helping them settle in sooner. Through research and feedback, I evolved the artefact to become: A workshop to co-create what belonging looks like as follows:

• Students work in groups discussing their cultural and personal backgrounds to explore a variety of emotions and states that contribute to belonging, such as mattering, safety, inclusion and respect.
• Students self-assess their belonging on a scale from 1-5. Those who feel they belong the least could hear what belonging feels like from those who self-score highly.
• The class co-creates a visual and verbal language, using images, colours and numbers to express what ‘belonging’ looks like for this cohort specifically.

I concluded the Reflective Report by saying:

“I could also work with students to co-create resources generated for and by them, whilst sitting with the uncertainty of what they might create. This process has helped me to reconsider my teaching practice; I can see the differences between being a leader in the classroom and allowing student feedback to dictate what we do. I can allow myself to facilitate as often as I dictate, which could potentially lead to more inclusive practices, benefitting students and improving attainment and retention.” The key part of this is how I could work with students to co-create interventions that would improve their experience.

When thinking about the practicalities of completing the research for ARP, I realised that I would have most contact with a Year 2 cohort at this time of year. Instead of working with Year 1 students on a project about belonging, I thought instead about what this particular Year 2 cohort might need. Having taught them in Year 1, I know that sometimes they can be quiet and disengaged in seminars. I thought maybe there was an opportunity to develop a tool for them to communicate the emotions they are experiencing and to tailor the teaching style to the overriding emotion in the room, for example if students were mostly tired, stressed, energised etc.

When conducting research on this topic, initially I didn’t find many articles that tackled this subject specifically. Instead, I found lots of research on how mood impacts learning. Exploration of mood is extensive and multiple findings have been proposed – some contradictory. Something interesting I found was that positive emotion does not always increase learning,

“if students are in a good mood and the learning topics are of less importance to them, the positive emotion might detach them from learning: It may motivate them to pay only a minimum of attention, to reduce learning effort or to choose tasks with an aspiration level that is much too high for them. Positive emotions, however, do not corrupt school learning if the relevance of the learning content is evident to school students.”

(Hascher, 2010)

Reading this kind of work made me realise that the teacher may not be capable of altering the style of teaching to suit the general mood given ‘mood’ and ‘emotion’ are such complex topics.

Hascher, T. (2010). Learning and Emotion: Perspectives for Theory and Research. European Educational Research Journal, 9(1), 13-28. https://doi.org/10.2304/eerj.2010.9.1.13

• Ask students to take part in the ARP – 13th October
• Complete first draft of Ethics form – 19th October
• Revise Ethics form – 8th November
• Draft activity plan/brief – 8th November
• First meeting with students – 10th November
• Run activity – 17th November
• Second meeting with students – 24th November
• Run activity – 1st December
• Third and final meeting with students – 8th December
• Reflect on sessions – Done
• Collate feedback – Done
• Plan next steps – Done
• Presentation slides – Done

Before starting, I thought that Action Research as a methodology would be more contained, with a beginning, middle and end but instead my project has grown in different directions and has indistinct edges. This has made the research journey exciting but also uncertain. I chose to do Participatory Action Research with a group of Year 2 students who I am familiar with. I explained the project and asked for volunteers to take part in three meetings to explore my research question.

Breaking the hierarchy:

During my first tutorial, we discussed hierarchical risks of PAR. My peer, Kemi, suggested I tell the students about my experience as a student as a way to flatten the hierarchy. Somekh and Zeichner (2009) propose that PAR should be able to dismantle organisational hierarchies. However, in this project the hierarchy was only marginally erased; due to the short timeline, the students did not have full agency over how the research was conducted nor control over how the proposed changes will be implemented.

Session 1:

Initially the students maintained the traditional teacher-student relationship but opened up after I told them some anecdotes about my experience as a student. I asked them to review a questionnaire designed to measure student emotions in class by Pekrun et al. (2011). This led to a lively discussion and helped the students to articulate how their emotions impact their experience in class and how communication could be improved more generally. The students made some suggestions and I agreed to implement some of them immediately rather than waiting until the end of the research journey.

Session 2:

In this session, I asked students to respond to the changes I had implemented based on their feedback the previous week. We went into more detail and critiqued some of the feedback to refine the ideas further. We also agreed to a few more techniques I could try to facilitate ease of communication going forward.

Session 3:

I brought some of the thematic analysis to the session to confirm with students that they agreed with the insights that were emerging from the data analysis.

Overall Reflection

Cook (2009) talks about action research as a ‘messy area’, which aligns with my experience of feeling unsure if I was doing the right thing.

 “We saw a gap between our more convoluted practice and published models of neat research. This led to doubts as to whether we were doing ‘proper research’ or whether we were doing ‘research properly’.”

Cook, 2009

While the students were more eager to get involved in the research than I anticipated, it was hard to keep the conversation on track. My research question centred on the possibility to adapt taught sessions to the overriding mood of the class but often the students saw it as an opportunity to give general feedback about the course. At times, they couldn’t remember the previous conversation or what we had agreed. This seems to be a common experience for PAR researchers. McIntyre (2008) talks about a research project where the participants requested the researcher to strongly guide the research pathway, yet the participant roles remained unclear even after much discussion. McIntyre (2008) also notes:

“projects do not always move at the pace the practitioner would like or in ways that satisfy everyone.”

Mcintyre, 2008

While we found ourselves in the ‘messy area’ that Cook (2009) describes, we didn’t reach the ‘messy turn’ which is the clarity that emerges by engaging with the ‘mess.’

Further data analysis and reflection with the students – as well as more time to refine the recommended changes arising from the research – would enable me to draw clearer conclusions and would demonstrate to students that they were part of the decision-making. More time to digest and experiment is required to bring this research to a more satisfactory conclusion.

Cook, T. (2009) ‘The purpose of mess in action research: building rigour though a messy turn’, Educational Action Research, 17:2, pp. 277-291. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09650790902914241

McIntyre, A. (2007) Participatory Action Research. Thousand Oaks: Sage. https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483385679

Pekrun, R., Goetz, T., Frenzel, A.C., Barchfeld, P., Perry, R.P. (2011) Measuring emotions in students’ learning and performance: The Achievement Emotions Questionnaire (AEQ), Contemporary Educational Psychology, 36:1, pp. 36-48 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2010.10.002.

Somekh, S. & Zeichner, K. (2009) Action research for educational reform: remodelling action research theories and practices in local contexts, Educational Action Research, 17:1, pp. 5-21, DOI: 10.1080/09650790802667402

I sent my Ethics form to my tutor on the 19th October

Ethics form v1

Mallika made comments on the form and gave suggestions for ways to make it clearer and more precise.

Changes I made based on the feedback:

• Reduced the number of meetings
• Included that I would ask the students if they felt comfortable revealing their emotions
• Added some references to literature
• Didn’t assume the risks that could emerge

I updated the form below on the 8th November

Ethics form v2

I created an Information Sheet and Consent Form in advance of the first meeting with the students, which took place on 10th November 2023.

The Information Sheet is here

The Consent Form is here

The students signed the Consent Forms but didn’t have any questions or feedback about the documents. They were happy with the information and found it easy to understand and agree to.

My final PowerPoint presentation is linked below.

Key Findings from Readings

At the beginning of ARP, I focussed on reading about mood in the classroom and how it can impact learning. I discovered a questionnaire that was developed to measure mood in the classroom and to assess whether it has an impact on attainment. The Achievement Emotions Questionnaire is a comprehensive set of scales used to “measure students’ multiple achievement emotions” (Pekrun et al, 2011). The study found that achievement emotions are linked to “motivation, strategies, self-regulation and performance” (Pekrun et al. 2011). While the questionnaire has been a developed through comprehensive study, when I showed it to the students, Student 6 said they found it “a clinical and emotionless way to measure emotions”. The students felt that their mood in class was too complex and varied to be measured in any way that would be useful to their learning.

Stone & Thompson, 2014, p.312 cited in Canovi et al, 2019 suggest that “to capture mood, researchers must develop methods that go beyond descriptions of individuals’ emotional states and are able to describe the collective emotional experience in terms of ‘a dialectical and mutually constitutive relation between individual and social context.” This was echoed in the primary research; students spoke about how nuanced moments in class could alter their mood and how the interaction with teachers and peers could have a big impact on their mood. Student 1 said, “a lot of us don’t really know each other that well. And I feel like that’s where a lot of anxiety happens and like because like if I don’t know someone, just by looking at them I won’t know if they are feeling the same way I am.”

This suggests that ‘mood’ in the classroom is co-constructed. Christopher M. Bache (2008) discusses how the classroom becomes a space for collective consciousness and that this is when the best teaching and learning occurs. “I came to see that the circle of learning between student and teacher is a flow that has no clearly defined beginning. My students’ desire to understand and my capacity to articulate were two sides of a synaptic bridge in a larger mind, and only when we came together and combined our resources did we fulfil our respective roles in this larger dance.” The students referred to this relationship with their tutors a lot, with Student 6 saying, “I think it goes two ways with emotions in classrooms.” They felt that ‘humanising’ the lecturer was key to enable them to feel more comfortable to learn. Student 9 said, “I think also seeing that, like, your lecturers make mistakes… it humanises somebody.” Student 4 said “I think being friendly and having some kind of some kind of rapport with people… it does change the whole attitude of the class.”

Bache, C.M (2008) The Living Classroom: Teaching and Collective Consciousness. State University of NY Press: Albany.

Canovi, A. G., Rajala, A., Kumpulainen, K., & Molinari, L. (2019). The Dynamics of Class Mood and Student Agency in Classroom Interactions. The Journal of Classroom Interaction, 54(1), 4–25. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45442287

Pekrun, R., Goetz, T., Frenzel, A.C., Barchfeld, P., Perry, R.P. (2011) Measuring emotions in students’ learning and performance: The Achievement Emotions Questionnaire (AEQ), Contemporary Educational Psychology, 36:1, pp. 36-48 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2010.10.002.

Key Findings from Primary Research

Using the recordings from the three primary research sessions, I conducted thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2012). Some clear themes as well as actions emerged from the data as follows:

Main themes:

• Communication matters more than mood-responsive teaching
• Students build confidence through reassurance from peers and tutors
• Specific and nuanced class interactions could improve engagement

Theme 1: Communication matters more than mood-responsive teaching

Codes:

• moods influenced by external factors
• need for reset to motivate class engagement
• staff need to read students’ feelings
• better communication required

The students quickly dismissed the research question, feeling doubtful that adapting the teaching to their individual moods would improve the learning experience. Student 6 said, “It’s kind of hard to base how you’re teaching when there’s so many people in the class and they’re all feeling different ways.” They said that that multiple simultaneous emotions can exist which are largely driven by external experiences, but that these should not be dwelled upon. They also looked for a distraction from their emotions and an activity to start the class on a positive note. Student 2 said, “instead of like letting the emotion get to you so bad it’s better to think of implementing activities that let you focus on another emotion that gets you ready for other activities.” The students confessed that they wanted greater understanding between teachers and students; they want lecturers to interpret how they feel so the learning can be facilitated. Student 9 said, “I think it could be based on like their understanding of the students and how they feel and if they feel understood and validated and then understanding the work is also important as well as the person’s teaching style.” I summarised this part of the conversation by saying, “maybe it’s a communication issue, rather than an emotion issue, like the emotion is part of it, but maybe it’s actually a communication tool for you to be able to say, we all feel like this,” which the students agreed with.

Theme 2: Students build confidence through reassurance from peers and tutors

Codes:

• isolation and loneliness
• reassurance needed from peers
• positive tutor attitudes motivate learning

Students feel isolated and paranoid that they know less than their peers. They want to spend more time discussing content with their peers, to get to know them better and to feel assured in their subject knowledge. Student 9 said, “I think also asking a question I think to your peers, is maybe easier than to your lecturers because you know that there’s no standard that you’re meant to be like, there’s no wrong answer with your peers because everyone is on the same level. There’s no concern about feeling stupid.” Spending a significant amount of time on a task in a small group helped to build confidence to then speak in front of the larger group. Student 4 said, “Normally a presentation like in front of the whole class would be one of my worst nightmares but, we’ve already had someone to backup what I was thinking, and like even if we weren’t necessarily right, there was two of us getting it wrong. It didn’t feel as stressful to have to stand up in front of people like it wasn’t as like nerve-wrecking.” Positivity from tutors and remembering students’ vulnerability is also helpful in building reassurance and encouraging engagement. Student 7 said, “sometimes we feel very negative. My tutor always says, ah you are a good person, maybe you can do something and in the future you will be better. And maybe that doesn’t make any difference in my life but once I hear that I will feel the energy and I will follow the lesson.” Student 9 said, “It’s kind of remembering that the majority of the people in the class are like 19-20, like people aren’t that sure of themselves.”

Theme 3: Specific and nuanced class interactions could improve engagement

Codes:

• fear of asking questions
• using Padlet to ensure anonymity
• mixing in a larger group

Students requested greater connection with lecturers and peers through facilitated communication – both human and technological. Students need some time to formulate questions and prefer the anonymity of using a tool like Padlet. Student 1 said, “I think it’s just straight after a session sometimes people can’t really articulate their thoughts that quickly, so no one really knows what to say.” Student 9 said, “I think also people feel validated if they see what they are thinking said on the board, which would just probably encourage them to be more open.” Padlet was the preferred channel for students to ask questions during the lecture, which can then be answered in the seminar. The students also enjoyed mixing with the full course cohort rather than being split into separate seminar groups, Student 4 said, “I think for me like the big the biggest change and most positive one has been mixing the groups again. I think that’s been the best, like that’s been the most helpful out of everything because like we spoke to each other like at the start of first year and we just didn’t see each other again.”

Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2012) ‘Thematic analysis’, in : H. Cooper, P. M. Camic, D. L. Long, A. T. Panter, D. Rindskopf, K. J. Sher (eds.) APA handbook of research methods in psychology, Vol. 2: Research designs: Quantitative, qualitative, neuropsychological, and biological. APA, (pp.57-71) Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269930410_Thematic_analysis

Saunders, M., Lewis, P., and Thornhill, A. (2019) Research methods for business students. 8th Edition. Essex: Pearson Education

Bache, C.M (2008) The Living Classroom: Teaching and Collective Consciousness. State University of NY Press: Albany.  

Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2012) ‘Thematic analysis’, in : H. Cooper, P. M. Camic, D. L. Long, A. T. Panter, D. Rindskopf, K. J. Sher (eds.) APA handbook of research methods in psychology, Vol. 2: Research designs: Quantitative, qualitative, neuropsychological, and biological. APA, (pp.57-71)

Canovi, A. G., Rajala, A., Kumpulainen, K., & Molinari, L. (2019). The Dynamics of Class Mood and Student Agency in Classroom Interactions. The Journal of Classroom Interaction, 54(1), 4–25. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45442287

Hascher, T. (2010). Learning and Emotion: Perspectives for Theory and Research. European Educational Research Journal, 9(1), 13-28. https://doi.org/10.2304/eerj.2010.9.1.13

Cook, T. (2009) ‘The purpose of mess in action research: building rigour though a messy turn’, Educational Action Research, 17:2, pp. 277-291. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09650790902914241

McIntyre, A. (2007) Participatory Action Research. Thousand Oaks: Sage. https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483385679

Pekrun, R., Goetz, T., Frenzel, A.C., Barchfeld, P., Perry, R.P. (2011) Measuring emotions in students’ learning and performance: The Achievement Emotions Questionnaire (AEQ), Contemporary Educational Psychology, 36:1, pp. 36-48 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2010.10.002.

Somekh, S. & Zeichner, K. (2009) Action research for educational reform: remodelling action research theories and practices in local contexts, Educational Action Research, 17:1, pp. 5-21, DOI: 10.1080/09650790802667402