End of Year Blog Reflection

My Inquiry Project Presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1roY4vRCNx9tNYrPfTFQDUasNYXjJJT_ThpRFyB9sLfg/edit?usp=sharing

I enjoyed the inquiry project a lot. I thought that it helped me reflect on assessment practices as a teacher. It allowed me to examine what assessment practices work and what not and how to engage students through effective assessment. The project also allowed me to reflect on my past experiences, both good and bad, as a student and a teacher. As a result, I am able to pick out the positive aspects I have seen teachers implement in the past, while shunning the negative ones. 

In my inquiry project, I forgot to incorperate the connections to the real world aspect. I had a conversation with Kevin, our 441 instructor, about cheating and student motivation behind it. He mentioned that as a teacher, it is important to remove the mindset of marks that students often think about. He said that when students focus on learning, they are often more engaged and perform better on assessments. To get student mindset off of marks, he uses proficiency scales instead of letter grades or percentages. By removing the "mark" on a test and telling students the areas they need to improve on instead, their focus immediately switches from fishing for marks to "how can I improve and best learn the material." I thought that this was very insightful and something I can take away for my future classroom.

Overall, I thought that the course content could have been more applicable and related to the inquiry projects. I am finding it hard to understand the practicality of rope-making and braiding in high school secondary mathematics without it looking extremely forced into the curriculum. Similarly, the blog post about climate change felt as if I had to force word problems about climate change into my homework and tests. Climate change would be applicable in a statistics class, but not so much for other classes. Lastly, I disliked the Alfie Kohn video and thought that it was very biased. I felt like he only addressed the positive aspects of cooperative learning without addressing the downsides. As a person who enjoys competitive learning and activities, I felt attacked. All in all, I appreciated the work periods given for the inquiry project and thought that the inquiry projects were the highlights of the class, but with this being our inquiry class, I am finding it hard to see the relevance of the rest of the class content to the inquiry project.

Annotated Bibliography Inquiry Project

Why Students Cheat: Motivations Behind Cheating

For annotations, see this link: Annotations & Notes

Works Cited

Beatty, J. E. (2004). Grades as money and the role of the market metaphor in management education. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 3(2), 187–196. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2004.13500516

Capoferri, R. (Director). (2017, January 6). The Truth About Cheating in High School [Video essay]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRtwL0ceR8s&ab_channel=RyanCapoferri

Dueck, M. (2011, November). How I broke my own rules and learned to retest. Education Leadership 69 No. 3. https://njctl-media.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/How%20I%20Broke%20My%20Own%20Rules%20and%20Learned%20to%20Retest%20Article.pdf

Pavlin-Bernardić, N., Rovan, D., & Pavlović, J. (2016). Academic cheating in mathematics classes: A motivational perspective. Ethics & Behavior, 27(6), 486–501. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508422.2016.1265891

McCoy, B. (2021). Why Students Cheat (It’s not them— it’s us). Liberal Education, 107(1), 46–51.

Murdock, T. B. (1999). Discouraging cheating in your classroom. The Mathematics Teacher, 92(7), 587–591. https://doi.org/10.5951/mt.92.7.0587

Strom, P. S., & Strom, R. D. (2007). Cheating in Middle School and High School. The Educational Forum, 71(2), 104–116. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131720708984924

Waltzer, T., & Dahl, A. (2022). Why do students cheat? perceptions, evaluations, and motivations. Ethics & Behavior, 33(2), 130–150. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508422.2022.2026775

2023-11-09 Inquiry Project Exit Slip

Today was a work period in class. I was doing research on the topic of why students cheat and their motivations behind cheating. By far, I have found 6 very interesting academic articles/journals I will be using as sources for my project. The articles were a very interesting read. They discussed student motivation behind cheating and the fact that it is not entirely the students' fault. They shifted the focus onto educational institutions and the societal & competitive pressure from peers and parents. Today, educational institutions have made marks a currency and have both given and taken them away for reasons that do not demonstrate student comprehension. As a result, students are now "fishing" for marks and trying to squeeze every ounce of them into their report cards. Some of the articles suggest that this is one of the main reasons that students cheat. On the other hand, because academics has turned into a competition, students also feel shameful if they underperform and as a result, turn to cheating to level out the playing field. Overall, the articles were interesting to read, and I look forward to further my understanding regarding this topic of interest.

Oct 19th Exit Slip

One of the questions we discussed in class today was "are marks accurate." Our group's discussion revolved around the fact that percentage marks are not accurate per se, but we still thought marks are necessary both for student motivation and for post-secondary institutions. If not percentage marks, then how do we grade then? We were discussing how we cannot differentiate an 80% student from an 81% student. That 1% different could be the result of one careless mistake or a small disceptancy in the marking. As a group, we decided that percentage marks are not accurate, but categorical marking might be a better way. By categorical marking, we were talking about proficiency rubrics. When we look at a percentage grade, sometimes it is hard for us teachers, and even the students and their parents to determine what that 81% means. However, if we use proficiency rubrics, teachers, students, and parents have a better grasp of what the student can improve on (i.e. student is in the developing category for substitution but in the extending category for elimination, so the student can work on solving systems using substituion).

For the second half of class, we watched a video by Alfie Kohn that highlighted the cooperative versus competitive nature of things. Personally, I thought that he was extremely biased towards everything being cooperative, as he only talked about the pros of a cooperative system and the cons of a competitive system. As a competitive individual myself, I enjoy the competitive aspect of things, like sports and games. Competitiveness drives me to be better and allows me to have something to look forward to, not to mention the adrenaline rush in an intense and close competition. I acknowledge that there are cons to the competitive aspect to things and some truth to Alfie's main arguments, but I felt like his perspective was very utopistic. Competition is a motivator for many, including myself. All in all, I believe that there are some grey areas that can incoorperate both competition and coorperation, like team competitiion (team sports). They involve a group of individuals working toward a common goal, to beat the other team. It incooperates both teamwork and competition, which is my cup of tea. 

Sections 1 & 2 of the Database Search Plan for the Inquiry Project

Title: Students' Incentive to Cheat

My Question: Why do students cheat? (motives, incentives, educational practices)

Analysing my topic into concepts:

Student motivations and thoughts on cheating. 

External factors to consider (psychological, environmental, etc.)

Our education system and cheating prevention

Challenges in preventing cheating.

Grades as an incentive.

Oct 19th Entrance Slip - Option 2

In our society, marks have become a form of currency where students will get rewarded and punished with by giving or taking them away. So what do grades mean and what are they for? Grades should indicate the students' comprehension of a subject material. If a student receives an A, it means they are exceeding in their understanding of the material. A B would mean that the student is profficient in the material, a C meaning satisfactory/developing, and an F/D would mean that students have little understanding of the material and are still emerging.  That being said, giving a student a 0 on a test for getting caught cheating or helping someone cheat would mean that they have absolutely no understanding of the subject material. Is that really true though? And if not, how would we fairly deal with issues like cheating? Although that would be a discussion for another time (my inquiry project), I would like to mention that grades can have benefits as well. Grades can serve as a motivator for some students and allows for feedback, accountability, standardization, and preparation for the real world. It allows students to see their strengths and weaknesses and from there, choose a career path.

Personally, I would teach math and science outside of the context of school without giving grades. Learning should be fun. Students learn best when they are interested and should not be solely motivated by grades. There is nothing better than a student wanting to learn math out of pure interest. That students would learn a lot more than a student studying just to maintain their A. As Bill Gates put it, "curiosity is the best teacher." However, post-secondary institutions and parents both need a method of checking in on how students are doing, and grades are a standardized way to do so. It allows for a better juedgement of where students are in terms of the class content.

Sept 28 Exit Slip

In class, we discussed about gender in society. Our group talked about how in hgih school, gender segregation was not as evident in our classes, but when we went to university, it became much more obvious. For example, classes like computer science, physics, and math had a high guy to girl ratio and classes like English, marketing and Education had a high girl to guy ratio. We talked about why this may be the case and concluded that it is most likely due to the societal and peer pressures we are surrounded with. Our parents and peers have a set list of jobs only females can work as and another ones for males. Hence, it is hard and sometimes demotivating to go against the norm.

Taking this to an educational context, what can we do as teachers to break this societal norm? As teachers, it is our role to challenge stereotypes and make students think beyond the scope of the classroom to why things are the way they are. It is our job to encourage students to pursue their dreams and provide examples of successful individuals who pursued their dreams despite going against societal norms.

In class, we also discussed about the upcoming inquiry project. I chose the topic "Why students cheat?" I feel like this is a very interesting topic because I believe that students cheat mostly because our education systems are flawed. Our educational systems treat marks as some sort of currency and use it to both reward and punish students behavior. I want to research more into this topic and explore different ways we as educators can implement strategies to minimize cheating. What should educators do when students cheat? What has society told us about cheating? I will explore these questions more as I further research into the topic.