Bibliographic record
Abstract
Object of study. My research revolves around Socratic Circle Seminars (SCSs) which are intellectual conversations and democratic discussions carried out between students and centered on exploring and interpreting common texts (Adler, 1982; Lambright, 1995; Copeland, 2005). This form of qualitative research and practitioner inquiry (Samaras, 2015) draws upon my 15 years of experience in implementing SCSs in Enriched English as a Second-Language (EESL) classrooms at the Académie Ste-Thérèse in Québec (2001-2017). Specifically, this Self-Study focuses on how I conducted three SCSs in my EESL classes in Secondary 5 (94 learners) in June 2017. Problem. Despite all my classroom experience with SCSs, my recalibration of practice, my production of resources as well as my outreach to the teaching and research community (Nelson, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2015a, 2015b), I still face the recurrent problem of uneven student participation as well as the unbalanced expression of viewpoints. This situation is explored from the vantage point of “living educational theory” (McNiff, Lomax, & Whitehead, 2003; McNiff & Whitehead, 2006; Samaras, 2011) by framing and reframing typical problems as disjunctions or discrepancies between practice and belief. General and Specific Research Objectives & Hypothesis. Generally, I seek to identify what needs to be done to get all learners to participate more actively in Socratic Circle Seminars so that the process of meaningful and democratic dialogue includes more voices and balances more views. Specifically, I will be looking to better align my practice with my belief by identifying “avoidable obstacles” through more strategic teaching. Research Design and Methodology. This research corresponds to “Reflexive Analysis of One’s Professional Practice” (Paillé, 2007). In terms of underlying methodological guidelines, I am applying the “Five Foci” framework of Self-Study Teacher Research (Samaras, 2011, p.94): 1) personal situated inquiry; 2) critical collaborative inquiry; 3) improved learning; 4) transparent and systemic research process; 5) knowledge generation and presentation. Data Analysis, Interpretation & Assessment. I collected and catalogued three types of data (Hendricks, 2006) from a variety of sources and in a variety of formats: 1) teacher-produced artefacts; 2) observational data; and 3) inquiry data. I employed “constant comparative method” (Creswell, 2007), presented the evidence into emerging and converging themes and later conducted a categorical analysis of the evidence. The data analysis and interpretation as well as my methodology was assessed by my Critical Friend Team to increase validity, ensure transparency and secure trustworthiness of findings. Summary conclusions. My findings show that I had been unintentionally short-circuiting my own better intentions about using SCSs to implement student-centered learning and participation. The most significant finding of my research shows the necessity of adopting a more pro-active coaching role as a teacher and developing very flexible and differentiated coaching skills. Originality of contribution. Beyond this specific educational context of second-cycle high-school EESL teaching in Québec, this study would be of special interest for those who wish to implement SCSs in their own classrooms in a more systematic way. Novice and seasoned teachers alike who read this study would be better prepared to understand tested practices that shape stronger participation in student-centered, democratic and academic conversations.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.032 | 0.062 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.016 | 0.018 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.013 | 0.010 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.011 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".