for my spiral of inquiry question, I chose to look at phone use in the classroom and how it affects student engagement. I like using the spiral for this inquiry question because in many ways I think I will be continuously scanning, observing, forming hypotheses, and adjusting my actions based on what I am seeing in the classroom and how it’s affecting our students.

“The Spiral of Inquiry has six key stages: scanning, focusing, developing a hunch, new professional learning, taking action and checking that a big enough difference has been made. At each stage in the spiral, three questions are asked: What is going on for our learners? How do we know? and Why does this matter?”

Networks of Inquiry and Indigenous Education

SCAN:

I started my scan during observational practicum; looking at what different teachers had going on in their classrooms, what the different policies were, and trying to see if I could see a trend between phone usage and engagement. I can’t say if there was a trend based on phone usage but I did see a couple of different things including one of the little phone hotels with slots that students could put their phones in (although it wasn’t used strictly; some students were opting to put phones in that some were not). I also saw classes where phones appeared to be completely banned.

My scan continued when I started my first practicum. I didn’t want to try out anything at this point because I hadn’t seen enough and I wanted to be able to observe a classroom consistently before I made any conclusions or developed any hunches. The classroom I was in for most of the day was a math classroom and in both math 10 and precalculus 11 phones were banned except for listening to music during independent working time. With this rule in place I did find student engagement was good. Math is a subject where phones were not necessary for the work that they were doing and so having them away just kept the distraction away from them while they were doing their work. The students were able to use their phones however to listen to music and again I found that in this classroom students were using this well they were respectful and were only using their music during working time. There was clearly an established routine of when it was allowed and when it was not that appeared to work well for the students in that classroom.

The other classroom I was in was an art class and I found phones were much more present in these classes. The usage and how it affected student engagement varied a lot based on the student, the day and what was going on. I saw some students who were actively using their phones for their work (researching, finding inspiration, etc.). However, I also saw students who appeared to be very distracted and did not progress in their work throughout the class.

FOCUSING:

The focus space for me was predominantly looking at the rules that were set in place in classrooms by teachers. I was able to attend a meeting with all of the different math teachers of the school and one of the topics that came up was phone use and the rules surrounding phone use. Similar to what I saw in my general scan looking at phone use in classrooms I found that different teachers had different preferences, different advice and different ways that they handled phone use in their classrooms. Some teachers liked the idea of the phone hotel and the fact that students were able to see their phones still. This helps with the issue of phone security and also there is some level of control for the teacher to be able to see who was handing in their phones and who weren’t. Other teachers found that they preferred to allow students to use music which sparked a debate and some excellent brainstorming for solutions. Students who can handle having their phones and using music can find a lot of benefits in doing this, especially students who have different learning needs so some teachers prefer to allow students to have their phones for that option. Other teachers felt that phone control was outside of their directive as teachers; they felt that it was up to parents and students to find a way to manage phone use in schools themselves and the teacher’s role was to simply control the outcome as a result of any student distraction. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to observe some of these different ideas and methods of phone management in the classroom but it was really good to hear different opinions and take a look at what was working in different classrooms for teachers.

DEVELOPING A HUNCH:

When I reached the point of actually developing a hunch I found that I tended to be quite broad with my hunch in general. I think that phone use and student engagement vary a lot and some of the variables that can affect phone use and student engagement include what kind of class it is, the teacher, the student’s age and the students individually. I think the setup of the class and whether or not the material is engaging or not in the class can also determine whether students want to engage or spend time on their phones. To kind of sum up what my hunch was I suspected that classrooms where phones were away if they weren’t necessary had better student engagement overall. Despite this, I also wrestled with the contrasting idea that student engagement in classrooms where phones were allowed for music or in certain situations where phones were allowed for the course material student engagement could also be good.

LEARN:

My learning phase was focused during my first two teaching practicums. I wanted to see what my coaching teachers had put in place in the classroom and adhere to the regimes that were already in place. It was during this phase that I was also doing some more of the scanning and developing my hunch as well because this was the time when I attended the meetings, heard input from different teachers and continued to observe what was happening in different classrooms.

I felt that for my first practicum having phones away as a general rule helped improve student engagement in the material. However, I also felt that allowing students to use phones to listen to music was beneficial for those who worked very well under these guidelines which were already established with my coaching teacher. It seemed like a good balance between allowing students what they needed for the proper environment for them to be doing their math work and then also removing phones during instructional time and times when other audio is not an option.

I wanted to continue to follow along with what my coaching teachers had set in place for practicums so for my second teaching practicum I adhered to the rules that were already in place just to maintain some of that classroom management and make it easier for the transition back to my coaching teacher taking over the class. I did test out allowing phone use in a couple of my classes which aligned with the rules in place by my CT. During one class my students were working on a project in which they were researching the life cycle of stars and I provided all the materials that were needed for their research. However, I had a couple of students who were interested in looking up photos for reference because they were doing artwork as part of their project and I had some other students who had genuine curiosity about the material and wanted to do some deeper research. I decided to do a little bit of testing and allow the students who asked me direct permission to use their phones.

CHECK:

With trying out a couple of different things my check was not quite a traditional check phase that would happen in a spiral of inquiry. Overall my spiral of inquiry question and the phases in which it happened was not super defined, organized and structured. I’m still working on the scanning phase in many ways and I know that a lot of my hunches, testing and checks will continue throughout my next practicum and my teaching career as a whole. My ability to follow more structured inquiry questions will also improve with time and practice.

My initial check was happening as I was trying out new things and it happened also in reflection afterwards. I found that some students who asked permission to use their phones for a specific reason utilized their phones well when I was walking around and checking for engagement. However, I also found that some students who had not addressed the phone use directly with me tended to fall into distraction and had their phones out for reasons other than school work and their engagement was dropped in the class as a result. In many ways, this test led me to a lot more questions than I originally anticipated. Moving forward I would like to continue seeing if there are ways to find consistency within the class. It is always my goal to allow students to use tools that are available to them to increase their learning and education however I also want to try and reduce the distractions that would hinder learning. I found in the math class that I taught during my first practicum it was pretty simple to maintain a general rule of the phones stay away unless you need them for music during work time specifically. A lot of math teachers are working to reduce the need for graphing calculators in the curriculum so that students are not relying on their phones for that. I found more of the complexities came up in the science classroom where there was more research happening and students provided good reasons for having their phones out and using them as tools. It was also in this classroom that I found students were becoming distracted and had a little bit of a harder time using their phones effectively. Another difference between these two classes to consider is that the pre-calculus 11 class had older students and the science 10 class had younger students so some of that similar skills may have been developed in that year. If it wasn’t an age thing it could simply be that the students in pre-calculus 11 were more familiar with the routine of phone management.

In summary, I am continuing to work through this line of inquiry and I imagine I will continue to be working through it as long as phones continue to be in classrooms. Every classroom is different and the needs and uses for phones will continue to change. The ways that phone use is affecting our students are also changing and dependency on phones is increasing. As I have said before this spiral of inquiry post is not a very clear-cut and research-level look at how the spiral of inquiry is used in specific situations. However, I really liked the step-by-step process of looking at phone use, developing a hunch, learning more from my mentors and peers, and then trying out some things in my classroom. I hope to use the spiral of inquiry more effectively in the future when I am faced with different problems or unique challenges in the classroom.