The Effects of the Use of Stories in High School World Geography Classrooms on Feelings of Restlessness and Levels of Student Interest in the Subject Matter

1
The Effects of the Use of Stories in High School
World Geography Classrooms on Feelings of
Restlessness and Levels of Student Interest in
the Subject Matter

• A research project conducted by Kelly Edward
  Garner
• March 2008

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Summary of the Study

• This study was conducted to better understand the
  way that students feel about the use of stories
  in their world geography classroom.
• I wanted to know if students find stories helpful
  and to determine if there is a connection between
  the use of stories and student interest in the
  subject.
• Additionally, I wanted to find out if there is a
  connection between the use of stories and student
  feelings of restlessness during class.

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How I Decided on this Topic

• This study emerged from my frustration with the
  way that the current world geography curriculum
  is structured.
• The material that we are required to teach seems
  to lack a connecting theme which provides 9th
  grade students with an adequate schema to
  interpret current events.

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Topic (continued)

• At first, I wanted to rearrange the sequence in
  which the world regions are taught, to begin with
  Europe and then to connect each world region to
  the theme of colonialism as we studied colonial
  expansion around the globe, then to compare their
  improvement with students taught the curriculum
  in the traditional way.

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Topic (continued)

• I wanted to do this for two reasons.
• -- It was my intuition, based on
  learning from my graduate studies, that students
  would retain more information if they had a
  narrative framework to connect their new learning
  to.
• -- I perceived colonialist expansion
  as an adequate framework for interpreting current
  events.

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Topic (continued)

• I abandoned this approach for two reasons.
• Firstly, I discovered that I was not allowed to
  deviate from the proscribed sequence of the
  curriculum pacing guide due to standardized
  quarterly assessments.
• Secondly, while colonialism provides a useful
  framework for understanding the cultural
  distribution of the modern world, the narratives
  associated with globalization provide one of
  critical import to the decisions and policies
  affecting all nations and international
  alliances, and should therefore be taught along
  side, if not in lieu of, the narrative of
  colonialism.
• Which brings us to the current study.

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Topic (continued)

• The affective domain seemed more accessible due
  to the restrictions and limitations of the
  district mandated curriculum pacing.
• The compromise was to design a study which would
  determine student and teacher perceptions of the
  frequency and efficacy of the use of narratives
  to teach world geography. While this study would
  not show me if using stories works, it was my
  hope was that it would show me if students and
  teachers perceive stories to be helpful and if
  there are any significant correlations with their
  use and levels of interest or restlessness.

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Topic (conclusion)

• It is my hope that this study will provide a
  basis for conducting further study into the
  usefulness of narrative frameworks for teaching
  world geography.

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Procedures

• After deciding on a topic, I reviewed the
  existing literature on the subject, stated my
  research questions, and consulted the school
  principal to determine the feasibility of the
  study. After obtaining the necessary approval, I
  designed a survey to administer to students and
  to teachers which would help me to obtain the
  needed data. I decided on mostly closed-ended
  questions with a few open-ended questions for the
  students. For the teachers, I created several
  open-ended questions. The information for these
  initial steps is found in chapters one, two, and
  three of my research paper.

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Procedures

• After sending out permission letters to parents,
  I administered 159 surveys to students divided
  into 7 world geography classes taught by 4
  different geography teachers. The teachers were
  sent an email with the open-ended questions.

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Procedures

• The data from the student surveys was entered in
  to the Statistical Package for the Social Studies
  (SPSS) program and then analyzed using a variety
  of tests which will be explained in more detail
  in the next section. This data was presented in
  chapter four of my research paper.

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Procedures

• The open ended questions were grouped and
  categorized according to the student responses
  and were taken into consideration while
  interpreting the results of the statistical
  analysis but were not entered into the SPSS
  program.

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Procedures

• I then analyzed the results of the tests
  performed as they related to my research
  questions, interpreted the significance of the
  tests that I performed, discussed how my study
  contributed to the base of knowledge, and
  reflected on changes that I would make for
  conducting further study. The results of these
  procedures can be found in chapter five of my
  research paper.

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Tests Performed

• Using the SPSS program I analyzed the data to
  determine relationships between variables.

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Tests Performed

• The test that I used most frequently was the test
  to determine bi-variate correlations. This
  allowed me to see how, if at all, two variables
  change in relation to one another. I found this
  test extremely useful because I could compare
  many variables with each other and the output was
  in table form which was ideal for comparing
  variables.

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Tests Performed

• The independent sample t- test helped me to
  determine if there was a statistically
  significant relationship between two variables. A
  particularly useful part of this analysis was
  that it would analyze the level of variance among
  responses. This is called Levenes test of level
  of variance. If the variance was too great then
  the results would not be considered statistically
  significant. This helped me to compare the data
  between males and females and to understand that
  there was a wide range of responses within each
  group.

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Tests Performed

• I also utilized the graphing features to compare
  information in a visual format. I made bar graphs
  and in the preparation stage I also used line
  graphs. I did not find the output of these tests
  as useful as the output that was in table form
  because the tables would indicate if a
  statistically significant correlation existed.

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Significant Results

• Q11 Does a teachers usage of stories to teach
  correlate with student feelings of restlessness?
• Yes. The data indicates a negative correlation
  between students feelings of restlessness in
  class and their claim that their teacher uses
  stories to teach the subject. The results
  indicate a -.186 Pearson correlation which is
  significant at the 0.05 level.
• This means that as students perceive teachers to
  be using stories to teach there is a decrease in
  their feelings of restlessness.

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Significant Results

• Q8 Does a teachers usage of stories correlate
  with student interest in world geography?
• Yes, significantly for average students, slightly
  less so for honors students.
• Tests indicate that a positive Pearson
  correlation of .356, with significance at the
  0.01 level, exists between teachers use of big
  stories to teach and average level students
  finding world geography interesting.
• Tests indicate that a positive Pearson
  correlation of .345, with significance at the
  0.01 level, exists between student perception
  that stories help them to learn and honors
  students finding world geography interesting
• Finally, tests indicates that a positive Pearson
  correlation of .311, with significance at the
  0.01 level, exists between student perception
  that stories help them to learn and students
  finding world geography interesting.

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Significant Results

• Q16 Does student ethnicity correlate with how
  helpful they find teachers use of stories to
  teach?
• Yes, Black students (especially in the honors
  level classes) showed statistically significant
  correlations with a decrease in feelings of
  restlessness and an increase in interest when
  they perceived that their teacher used stories to
  teach the material.
• White, Latino, and Asian students also showed
  some correlations but the results were most
  significant for Black students.

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Significant Results

• Students perceive stories to be helpful.
• Tests also indicate that a positive Pearson
  correlation of .464, with significance at the
  0.01 level, exists between teachers use of big
  stories to teach and students perception that
  stories help them learn.

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Significant Results

• One last side note, this studys results indicate
  that among the various preferred learning styles
  surveyed that students who prefer listening to
  explanations found stories least helpful and that
  students who preferred doing experiments found
  stories most helpful. This connection between
  story telling and interpretation, and active and
  passive learning, should be explored in more
  detail

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How has this study added to the bank of knowledge
in this field?

• Many research studies have investigated the
  effects of background knowledge on student
  comprehension, reading, and writing but this
  study narrows the focus to examine how world
  geography students and teachers feel about one
  method that students use to develop a context for
  learning, namely stories.

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How has this study added to the bank of knowledge
in this field?

• I was unable to find any research from Virginia
  about the use of stories in teaching the Virginia
  SOL curriculum framework or on student and
  teacher perceptions of the use of stories. This
  study may serve as a gateway to other teacher
  researchers seeking to improve their knowledge of
  this topic and as a reference to those who
  continue to investigate this topic.

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Changes to expand the value of the study

• In future versions of this study I would create
  several questions for the teachers and the
  students which probe the extent to which they
  practice connecting events in the news to the
  information that they are studying in class. This
  would help with analyzing the data and
  potentially work towards a rationale for
  including more emphasis on this practice in the
  classroom.

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Changes to expand the value of the study

• I would also create more questions about
  students preferred learning styles. I would
  expand it to include reading about a subject,
  writing about a subject, reading independently,
  and using computers. This is important to note
  because the use of narrative frameworks can be
  applied to a variety of learning modalities. .

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Changes to expand the value of the study

• I would also like to compare student responses
  with their actual performance in the class. I
  would have them identify their grade on their
  last report card, interim, and test to see how
  this compares with their stated preferences.

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Changes to expand the value of the study

• Finally, It might also be useful to have the
  students try to communicate their understanding
  of several narratives by relating current events
  to one of several different themes. This could be
  compared with the way that teachers are
  presenting the information and provide a way for
  us to see how they may use these stories in the
  future.

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Future implications of this study

• This study may serve as a basis for putting more
  thought into how stories are used to teach world
  geography. This study shows that black students
  show an increase in interest in the subject and a
  decrease in restlessness when their teacher uses
  stories to teach the material. Utilizing this
  interest in stories could help to decrease the
  achievement gap and improve the quality of world
  geography instruction for all students.

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Future implications of this study

• Additionally, since many Virginia students will
  not receive any higher level training in social
  studies, enhanced world geography instruction
  could be an important factor in increasing
  interest in civic responsibility and activity. If
  people are given adequate training to make sense
  of social issues then they will be less dependent
  on other to make informed decisions about the
  issues that affect them.

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Future implications of this study

• Lastly, the results of this study, and future
  studies on this topic, could be applied to other
  fields of study, such as science or mathematics.
  While these fields require that students learn
  specific kinds of non-narrative processes,
  stories could help to provide a context that
  students can relate to which would serve as an
  organizational schema for incorporating new
  information. Many students complain that they do
  not see how math and science are useful to them
  in their everyday life. Stories have the ability,
  known as mythopoeia, to construct worlds. If
  students can practice by finding their value
  within this constructed world then they may be
  able to find some connection to the way that
  these fields of study apply to the world as they
  perceive it.