Matthew's EDUC 450 Inquiry I Blog

 I am doing my inquiry project with Andrew and we are looking at the effect of using a flipped classroom model on student achievement and retention of concepts in a high school physics classroom. Here is our annotated bibliography:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/17z5IrFkha0_8I90NGtUZ3sPK-IyKsNhUHxgEef3kFF4/edit?usp=sharing

Inquiry project progress update: We've made a list of about 25 sources that we could potentially use for our annotated bibliography and now we're just working on sorting through all of them. About half of the sources on the list are academic papers and the rest are a mix of web pages and videos. We need 12 sources for the annotated bibliography, so we will be using half the sources we have on our list. I will also be talking to my SA as well as some students about their thoughts on using a flipped classroom model at my next school visit.

 The Alfie Kohn video we watched in class presents a relatively extreme view of the role of competition in children's lives, and while I agree with some of his points, I disagree with his characterization of competition as entirely negative. I agree that adults often encourage children to take competition too far and push it to the point where it creates unhealthy social dynamics. When children learn that winning is always the most important thing, they will definitely struggle to work with others and develop intrinsic motivation, but I think it is possible to engage in healthy competition when kids can think of winning as one of many goals to strive for during an activity. When students are solely focused on winning, they are likely to get very upset when they don't get the result they want out of a competition, but when they are also focused on learning and social connection and other benefits they can get out of competitive activities, they can have a healthy relationship wi...