Student work detail – see workbook
CP803: Memory Catchers
Abstract
Student work detail – see workbook
Reference: Case Study CP803
Classroom Practice: Year 11
Title: Memory Catchers
Overview:
Two teachers, from nearby schools, collaborate to develop a Year 11 generic unit that was equally applicable to both a Materials and a Food Technology context. The unit actively fosters more authentic practice by their students, offering a wide range of activities at the beginning of the course before focussing on an individual external client-based project.
Focus Points:
Background
Annie McCreary is co-HOD Technology at Nayland College, Nelson. She has a Diploma in Home Science from Otago University, and a Diploma in Teaching from Christchurch Teachers College. Annie spent several years teaching in Japan, and, when her family was young, spent and three-and-a-half years working as a kitchen designer, which, she says, gave her a good appreciation for the needs for stakeholders and understanding of the manufacturing process. Annie has taught at Nayland College since 2000, where her main teaching area is Materials Technology. Nayland College is a decile 7, co-ed secondary school (Years 9-13), with a roll of about 1500 students.
Jo Calt is HOD Technology at Garin College, Nelson. Jo has a Bachelor of Education (Hons) in Home Economics from Manchester Metropolitan University (1993) and taught Technology in the UK before coming to New Zealand in 2001. She has been at Garin College for six years and her primary teaching area is Food Technology. Garin College is a decile 8, co-ed secondary school (Years 9-13), with a roll of about 400 students.
Traditionally, Year 11 students at Garin have had two full years of Technology, which has included experiences in a range of areas. Up until 2007, Technology was compulsory at Year 11. At Nayland College, Technology is compulsory at Year 9 and 80% opt to continue in Year 10. The focus in the department has been on 'getting it right' at Year 9 and ensuring the students have had an opportunity to progress rather than merely having a range of similar level experiences.
The two teachers often met to talk through developments and issues effecting Technology Education, establishing a professional learning relationship that supported and challenged each other to improve their programmes. For 2007, the teachers decided to collaborate to develop a generic unit that focussed on good technological practice and was equally successful in both a Materials and a Food Technology context.
Pre-planning
Jess's final solution – see workbook
Annie and Jo had both become concerned that Technology teaching, especially in the senior school in their schools, had become too driven by the needs of the assessment system rather than the learning needs of their students. Much student practice appeared to be a contrived exercise in disjointed 'hoop jumping' that did little to encourage real understanding or appreciation of the technological process.
The 'Tell us what we are making' approach, as Annie describes it, had several drawbacks: "There was no real understanding of the links between key factors and specifications, as there was not a lot of time to explore issues in any real depth. Students were being asked to identify needs and opportunities without the necessary foundation knowledge."
Students seemed to have little idea of how to go about locating stakeholders and working with them to achieve the best possible results. Solutions were often produced that had only a tenuous connection with the initial issue. This meant that the student practice was frequently misaligned with needs of stakeholders.
Jo and Annie both believe learning cannot be forced, but should occur through a process of "doing, experimenting and evaluating". They wanted the acquisition of technological skill and knowledge to be a natural result of good technological practice so that students discovered things for themselves, rather than through formal lessons where students were hampered by a lack of context or experience.
Despite the different focus of their teaching – Annie's main teaching area is Materials Technology and Jo's is Food Technology – they reasoned they could combine their experience and ideas to design a generic unit that that would address their common concerns. The differences in teaching focus are less important than the underlying pedagogy, technological practice and philosophy, Jo and Annie say. "We are teaching a process."
Jo and Annie planned the unit so that a predetermined set of learning outcomes would reveal themselves naturally as a result of student activity, as would the evidence required for assessment. The challenge was to identify the knowledge and skills students needed, and to build these into the structure of the unit as learning objectives. Jo and Annie then planned a series of activities that aligned with their desired learning outcomes.
After planning the unit, they overlaid the learning outcomes (brief development, ODE, and PP) and identified the assessment evidence required. As a result, says Jo, the requirements of the achievement standards were there "without having to drag them out".
Annie and Jo wanted to structure their unit so it provided a lot of broad knowledge and experience up-front. By doing this they hoped to improve student understanding of technological practice by slowing what they saw as the usual rush to define project briefs.
"We felt that often there was no real understanding of the links between key factors and specifications as there wasn't a lot of time to explore issues," says Annie. "Students were being asked to find needs and opportunities without the necessary knowledge."
Their aim was to have students moving from a wide range of introductory experiences through to a focus on the development of a specific project brief. They figured the wide front end of the unit should consist of a broad, but relevant, range of activities, including trips to local industries and school visits by local experts.
Carefully planned learning experiences with a broad group of activities are a good way to begin a unit, Annie says. This is because under the conventional approach students often didn't have the appropriate experiences to know what to research. They could not see the relevance or see how things fitted in with their own practice. Offering a broad range of activities up-front serves to widen students' experience of their own backyards and increase the stock of experience they could call on as their projects progressed.
Jo and Annie figured that like any other teaching challenge, an important key to making the unit a success would be to make it engaging. And the key to doing that, they believed, was to set the unit in an authentic rather than contrived context, and one to which students could relate. After discussing a range of possibilities, including the agriculture and horticultural industries, Jo and Annie decided to set the unit in the context of the local tourism industry. Tourism is a major contributor to the local economy and is a big employer both directly and indirectly in the region.
The unit is based around the concept of 'memory catchers' – mementos of time and place and people. Because they range from simple souvenirs (a pebble lifted from a beach) to the more complex (food and beverage and art and craft), 'memory catchers' as a concept is ripe with possibilities for both Materials and Food Technology projects.
Both Annie and Jo provided a course overview at the beginning of the year and planned checkpoints along the way for self-assessment and time management purposes. They agreed that time is an essential part of the learning process, "ideas have to steep for a while and this needs to be planned for," they say.
The two teachers took slightly different approaches to delivery of the unit, reflecting their differences in teaching styles.
Delivery - Annie's Class
Some of Jess's research into currently available items, plus commentary – see workbook
After introducing the concept of 'memory catchers', Annie had her students explore the idea of a permanent memento of some event or place. Then she introduced them to the context of the unit:
"Tourism is an expanding industry in Nelson and New Zealand. Takeaway items are often purchased to capture the memory of a Nelson experience, culture, or adventure. Local tourist outlets are always looking for innovative memory catchers that will be good sellers – both economically and of the region."
The class brainstormed where they thought tourists came from and some of the likely key factors that would be important to this diverse group of souvenir buyers when making buying decisions.
The class visited the local museum and made a brief (45-minute) 'tiki tour' of Nelson to familiarise themselves with their home city as a tourist destination. While at the museum, the class visited the museum's shop and learnt about the goods for sale and the different types of customers who bought them. The class also visited the World of Wearable Art venue, which introduced the idea of serving an international market.
Internet research and material from the local tourist office gave the students a good feel for the local tourist industry and what it offered visitors. Students were also directed to ponder some of the wider issues involved in global tourism, such as its societal and environmental impacts.
Jo and Annie invited a number of guests to come and talk to the class. One of Annie's guests was a renowned local artist who creates high-end products from wood and bone for both the local and international market. Jo used local companies who specialise in using locally grown produce in their food products.
Annie explained the concept of 'key factors' to the guests ahead of their classroom appearance. In this way the speakers could consciously align their addresses with Annie's desired learning outcomes, and key factors would "suggest themselves" to students, in an apparently natural way. "Otherwise they [the guests] do not really know what is required, what the kids need," she says.
A visiting expert from the World of Wearable Art discussed details about the end-user needs and the cultural differences in their customers. An expert from Simply New Zealand, a nation-wide chain of tourist shops, stressed to students in Jo's class the importance of marketing, packaging, and display.
These identified factors gave the Jo and Annie points to teach to. For example, one of Jo's guests spoke about biosecurity and the food safety requirements her company faced. Jo later had her class examine these in some depth.
"'Directing' the guests [who went on to be clients] in this way and actively involving them in the teaching process helps build the teacher-client relationship," Annie says.
Following each visit, the class discussed the insights they had gained. In Annie's class ideas were written on a whiteboard and later photographed with a digital camera: printouts become class handouts. Acutely sensitive about the amount of written work required of her students, Annie reckons handouts like these save on tedious work for everybody.
After the visit of a representative from the WOW (World of Wearable Art) tourist centre, Annie's class identified two apparent gaps in the market, noting that the centre offered very little for teenagers and babies. They went on to discuss what gives the gallery its uniqueness and its place in the market, the philosophy of the gallery (to celebrate Nelson artists) and the laws and regulations it operates under.
They also considered the practical aspects of the souvenir market, such as the likely point of export for most items. It quickly became clear that large items would have little appeal for most tourists because they would rather not accumulate bulky items on their travels.
Annie presented her students with a choice of four potential stakeholders
Students were asked to identify and profile at least two end user groups, outlining their age, gender, interests and what sort of products they could use. Students were also asked to identify a range of memories they would like to explore. Geographical starter points were suggested to get the exercise going, e.g. coastal landscapes.
Annie is passionate about products that are both well designed and of high quality. She firmly believes that Technology must involve hands-on activity and students must be allowed to experience the excitement of working with different materials and processes. "Sometimes ideas emerge out of working with materials," she says.
At the beginning of the unit, Annie had her class experiment with felting, appliqué, free-hand embroidery and quilting. The class also watched demonstrations of some potentially useful processes and skills for their projects, including wood turning, pewter casting and resin casting.
Describing the approach, Annie uses the terms 'play' and 'exposure to materials' frequently. She plans a range of activities aimed at getting students to explore the properties of materials and how the materials can be manipulated and transformed. Experimenting in this way helps students understand the changing properties of materials as they are manipulated. The exploration also challenges and inspires students to think about how some more 'traditional' materials can be used in alternative ways and how some 'non-traditional' materials can be used in place of traditional materials.
When an artist visited Annie's class, he spoke about his working philosophy and the importance of respecting one's materials and, by association, oneself.
After narrowing down their choice of target markets, the students went on to write an initial brief, defining their stakeholder and outlining the specifications for their project. To refine this brief, students sought stakeholder feedback on their proposed project. From this feedback, a final brief conceptual statement was created and, in turn, a final design developed.
Some projects were highly personal and this is no bad thing, says Annie: "Students have to own a project." One student embedded some old coins belonging to her father in resin and made them into pendants. Another used resin to embed the golden sand from her sister's favourite beach. A student from overseas embedded 'cats' eyes' in resin and made them into hair bobbles.
Delivery - Jo's Class
Around the time Jo first began developing the new unit, she arranged to work three days every term with food technologist Carol Pound to develop the food science side of her teaching. The pair worked on food testing techniques, regimes and protocols, and incorporated these aspects into a series of lessons involving a range of food products.
Jo laid the knowledge she gained from working with Carol (a process she describes as "intense but brilliant") over the framework of the generic memory catchers unit. The result was more tightly structured than Annie's course. While she presented her students with a range of activities and visits at the beginning of the course, Jo wanted to focus quickly on the specifics of the year's project.
Using the tourism/memory catcher as a context, Jo had her students design, make and test a chutney or a jam using local, in-season produce for a stakeholder running a retail operation in the Nelson tourism market.
For their individual projects, students were to develop a unique food gift for a local tourist operation Simply New Zealand, using local materials/ingredients. The product thad to be packaged in a jar or bottle and have a shelf life of 12 months.
Before beginning to work on their individual projects, students made three different chutneys, sauces and jams. These were subject to a range of sensory and material evaluations. Besides taste, the students tested for consistency and chunkiness, pH level and colour. Colour testing used Resene colour charts as a reference against which products were benchmarked for consistency and desired outcome on a 1-5 scale. Testing was done at a series of workstations set up around the classroom. "Teachers should trial tests beforehand," Jo suggests.
The class discussed batch production and product positioning:
The class considered what practical requirements must be met to ensure a product is best suited for its target market. They learnt that if a product is sold at the site of its manufacture, labeling requirements are less onerous than otherwise would be the case.
Market gardening parents helped out in Jo's class, and the Nelson area presented a number of opportunities for class visits. Students established questions before they made visits or received visitors, but they were also encouraged to come up with questions on the day. Arranging visits was a lot of work, but the results made it well worthwhile, Jo says. "When planning these sort activities, good use should be made of parents – they are really quite an amazing resource".
Jo says she used more of a template approach to workbooks than Annie. It was a pragmatic approach, differentiated by the needs of the students. "Templates can be used to improve the focus on what evidence and reflective comments are necessary for qualification success."
One student solution involved producing a multi-layered jam featured in a student showcase.
Outcomes
The units were successful in that they resulted in high level learning outcomes for students and satisfying professional practice for their teachers.
Jo and Annie are satisfied the aims they had in mind when designing the generic unit were achieved:
Success in meeting these goals was reflected in the authentic technological practice of their students, the outcomes produced, and the high levels of achievement in internal and external assessments. Two-thirds achieved Merit or better, with over a third achieving Excellence. These results compared favourably with the previous years.
Other important benefits flowed from the units, largely as a result, Annie believes, of making the context of the unit authentic and successfully embedding the learning within this context. The students showed:
One measure of success of the unit was the higher level of student engagement and effort. "Students like having a teacher in front of the blackboard," says Jo. "It requires little or no effort on their part. We asked them to participate more actively in their own learning rather than passively absorb crumbs from above."
This increased engagement translated into a longer-term buy-in into Technology as a whole. Many, if not all the students, went on to do Technology the following year. The students used the Year 11 unit to springboard into more challenging learning.
Jo says teachers have to accept constraints will always be present and must be allowed for on a flexible basis: "We planned lessons but sometimes negotiated outcomes." The approach in Technology is about anticipating problems and having time to for student to explore them as they arise, Annie says, and differs from what she calls "the old build and fix approach". Time is important – students need time to fully explore the context of a unit and key factors surrounding it, as well as time for the development and trialling stages.
A key point, Jo and Annie stress, is the need to embed the learning in a unit so it appears to emerge naturally through the process of technological practice. For example stakeholders in a project should, after being primed-up ahead of time, allude to or even directly suggest key factors of a potential project when speaking to the students. As a result, the key factors will 'suggest' themselves to the students and in some cases, order themselves in terms of priority. Students were able to justify their selection of key factors and the way they prioritised them, by citing the evidence presented to them by visiting experts.
For example, Jo asked some of her students why they had chosen to use a 250ml quantity for their product and they said because their stakeholder had told them they should because of the size restriction of packing them for overseas."
Both Annie and Jo observed that students responded well to the authenticity of stakeholders and the constructive, honest 'real-world' feedback they provided on student work. "They felt important; their work was real and valued outside of school."
Student's technological practice and understanding of the technological process seemed to flow from the lessons. By way of an example of this and the improved understanding it produced, Annie says she fielded less "why are we doing this?" queries from her students. In a well planned lesson set in an authentic, meaningful context that students relate to, the answer is obvious to the students, because it's part of a process, a means to an end and needn't be asked.
Similarly, the evidence required for assessment was a natural consequence of student practice not as an end point in itself.
The structure of the lessons resulted in a learning momentum, which lasted through out the year. A good classroom culture was established early in the year and maintained.
For their part, Jo and Annie say their teaching became more intentional, more planned and directed and less assessment focussed. It's a good feeling, they say, as is the confidence that comes from knowing your students have done good technological practice.
What next?
Jo and Annie both plan to extend the unit for the whole year by including more planned learning about modelling, experimenting with materials and exploring the effects of new materials and products on both target markets and unforeseen alternative markets.
Exactly how the unit is delivered depends to a great extent on the incoming class. Each year is different, Jo says. Each group of student varies in its creativity, as does its cohesiveness and interests. The design of the course allows for a good balance to be struck between breadth and depth, depending on circumstances.
Annie and Jo say they are keeping an eye on developments at Katikati College and Hillcrest High School. They are interested in the work being done with alternative assessment schedules aimed at aligning key questions, with student oral evidence and assessment criteria. See case studies BP 604 Teaching ICT; BP 628: Year 10 Junior Programme; BP629: Year 11 ICT – Programming; and BP 630: Year 12 Multimedia CD-ROMs.