The Cambridge University Press Teacher Research Programme was launched in 2014 with the aim of inspiring and supporting English language teachers worldwide to better understand their own practice and foster learning among their students and fellow teachers. In this 3-part series of posts, Cindy James, a teacher in the 2015 programme, explains how she got started on her project, what she learned and how she adapted her research plans along the way, and how she finally drew together her findings and learnings from the whole project.
I started teaching in National Primary School of Gudon in Sabah, Malaysia in January 2015. Gudon is a small school located in a suburban area not far from the capital city. Before moving to Gudon, I had taught for 10 years in a small school in a semi-rural area called Kunak. Transitioning from a semi-rural school to a suburban school is quite an interesting experience for me. My former students lived in a fishing village by the sea. They did a variety of exciting activities like fishing, swimming in the sea, and roaming around the village. Everything was an adventure for them. Playing was an adventure. Going to school every day was an adventure. My students in Gudon, on the other hand, lead a slightly different life. School is never an adventure; it is serious business. Passing the examination with flying colours is a matter of utmost importance. Parents have high expectations of their children. Living in a suburban area does not give them much freedom to get out of the house and do exciting stuff. Safety is a big issue. My students spend most of their time after school at home, playing with their smart phones.
One of the classes assigned to me was the Year 6 class. This class had to sit for a big examination at the end of the year. One of the most difficult items in the English examination paper, according to the students, was the story-writing part. Students were required to write a short story based on some picture stimuli. My students worked hard on it, but they were not doing it because they liked it. They just wanted to pass the examination. These children were so engrossed in wanting to do well that to some extent, I think they had forgotten how to have fun.
I thought about my former students in Kunak and how joyful they were. I wanted to make learning enjoyable for my current students, too. I looked at the students’ smart phones lying on the desks beside their books and thought: if I can’t bring the students to the sea, perhaps I can make the sea come to them.
My students loved smart phones, computers and the internet. Technology made them excited. The examination writing paper requires the students to be good story-writers. I planned to start a project that revolves around using technology to engage my students in story-creating activities. All the students in the class used WhatsApp. They loved sharing images and videos with one another. Some students were very good at using video and photo-editing software. My idea was to get my students to create their own adventures using these technology tools. I wanted my students to write the stories of the adventures down and to share them with their friends. Through this project, I hoped to be able to change my students’ attitudes towards writing and learning. I wanted them to have more fun with writing and to fall in love with it. I hoped they would come to find language learning and writing enjoyable activities in themselves and not just ways of passing an examination.
Featured image courtesy of Hanafi Latif / Shutterstock.com