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THE GOOD PROJECT (GP)

Measuring the growth in student Reflective Judgement

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A JOB AT RISK

Mimi lives in a small town where the main industry is oil (petrol) production. She is a journalist for her school newspaper and is known for her impartial and very fair reports on local events for the interest of her readers.

Her family has lived in the area for generations. Her father and mother are managers at a large oil company, Oil Gas Limited (OGL). Recently, the news media reported that OGL has been polluting a river on the edge of Mimi’s town. The locals are demanding that the oil company stop drilling in the town and are organizing a peaceful protest on the oil company’s land.

Her newspaper’s editor asks her to report on the event as it is very important and the news must spread. Mimi really wants to go because she cares about the environment and believes the people should know about this.

But she worries that someone from OGL might recognize her and it could also affect her parents’ job if she reports on the event. Mimi is unsure.

Should she take a risk with her job or put her parents’ jobs at risk?

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A JOB AT RISK – ACTIVITY 1

Which of the following actions do you think Mimi should take?

Mimi should not put her parents’ jobs at risk by reporting on the protest 
Mimi should boldly report on the event as the environment is important. 
Mimi should report on the event but use sunglasses and a scarf to cover her head so no one from OGL recognizes her. 
Mimi should report on the event and write the article under a ‘pen’ name. 
Mimi should report on the event against the oil company but ask that the report be published under another student journalist’s name in the school newspaper
Mimi should research ways to reduce the pollution in the river and write an article about that instead
Mimi should encourage the protesters to move their protest online instead of ‘live’ media attention.
Mimi should encourage her parents to find new jobs before the protest and continue with her reporting.

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A JOB AT RISK – ACTIVITY 2

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A JOB AT RISK – ACTIVITY 1 v/s 2

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EVALUATING GROWTH IN STUDENT THINKING

Pre-dilemma – before the start of Y2
Post-dilemma – after the completion of Y2
Reflective Judgement Model by King and Kitchener

Pre-reflective
Quasi-reflective
Reflective thinking

Developed a rubric to measure the growth in student thinking

Title - Background on the pre-post dilemma activity –

At Podar, we have a network of over 150 schools. And based on the feedback we gathered from teachers and students on their experience in the Good Project in the first year of the study research, we agreed that this was a great program to go ahead with and we wanted all our schools (and students) to benefit from it.

So in order to put that proposal forward to our management, we wanted to present a strong case to our management, and hence we decided to conduct a pre- and post- dilemma activity in the 2^nd year of the research that would hopefully show us the growth in student thinking under the influence of the Good Project.

This worked very well because we had a new cohort of students who had no prior knowledge of the GP framework.

Pre-Dilemma would be conducted before we started with the Y2 of the study research
Post-Dilemma would be done after students completed the program. The difference in data would help us measure and understand how students’ thinking has been influenced by the GP framework of 3E’s and other tools like the value sort, rings of responsibility, 3Ms, etc. to help them analyze a dilemma and decide on a suitable response for it.
We did some research and found the King and Kitchener’s model of reflective thinking which describes how individuals (including adolescents) develop their ability to make reflective judgements on complex issues or problems. It talks about 3 major stages through which cognitive and moral/ethical thinking progresses as it matures and is influenced by knowledge and life experiences. Each stage is broken down into multiple sub-stages to provide deeper insights on the development of reflective thinking.
Using this model, we developed our own rubric to measure the growth in student thinking. Of course, we simplified the model to make it less technical and simpler for teachers to evaluate student thinking.

Let me share the rubric with you

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EVALUATING GROWTH IN STUDENT THINKING

Criteria	Self-Interest (SI)	Pre-reflective thinking (PR)	Mock Reflective (MR)	Reflective (R)
Intellectual and Ethical Framework used to view the dilemma	Response shows concern only with self (or self-image)	There are clear right and wrong answers. There is always only 1 right answer.	Acknowledges that there can be multiple perspectives on an issue	Understands multiple valid perspectives on an issue. Evaluates complex information to consider and assess the validity of multiple viewpoints
Intellectual and Ethical Framework used to view the dilemma	Focuses on self only or at least on how the action affects immediate family	Knowledge is absolute and unchanging. Unable to understand and accept a different opinion.	Struggles with understanding these different viewpoints	Reasoning shows reflection and supports the understanding of the 3E’s with valid reasoning.
Action evaluation	Chooses actions involving ambition, self-protection, self-importance, self-glory, etc.	Tends to follow authorities’ views without questioning	Unable to evaluate the credibility of these opinions or to judge their validity	Learns to tolerate ambiguity and complexity in moral and ethical matters.

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EVALUATING GROWTH IN STUDENT THINKING

Mimi should not put her parents’ jobs at risk by reporting on the protest (pre-)
Mimi should boldly report on the event as the environment is important. (ref-) 
Mimi should report on the event but use sunglasses and a scarf to cover her head so no one from OGL recognizes her. (Self-) 
Mimi should report on the event and write the article under a ‘pen’ name. (self-) 
Mimi should report on the event against the oil company but ask that the report be published under another student journalist’s name in the school newspaper (self-)
Mimi should research ways to reduce the pollution in the river and write an article about that instead (mock-)
Mimi should encourage the protesters to move their protest online instead of ‘live’ media attention. (mock-)
Mimi should encourage her parents to find new jobs before the protest and continue with her reporting. (ref-)

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EVALUATING GROWTH IN STUDENT THINKING�HYPOTHESIS

MOCK REFLECTIVE

PRE-REFLECTIVE

REFLECTIVE

SELF-INTEREST

There will be a growth in student perspective about ‘Good Work’ from the pre- to the post-dilemma activity.

PRE-

POST-

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EVALUATING GROWTH IN STUDENT THINKING - THE RESULTS…

660 students
Gr 7, 8 and 11
3 schools

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PRE- / POST-DILEMMA �TEACHER OBSERVATIONS

OBSERVATION	PRE-DILEMMA	POST-DILEMMA
Choices	preferred choice and intuitive reasoning	informed choices and supported reasoning with GP concepts
Writing	One-liners, brief descriptions, general thoughts	Well articulated with references to GP concepts like rings of responsibilities, values, 3E’s, etc.
Ethical Perspectives	Focused on self-interest and self-benefits, or on what others would expect	Assesses validity of multiple viewpoints, tolerates ambiguity in ethical matters

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GOOD PROJECT�THE ROAD TO EXCELLENCE

Ethics

Engagement

Excellence

From student testimonials and teacher anecdotes, it is clear that the goal to raise consciousness about how to produce ‘Good Work’ was successfully met.

GP served well as a model of ‘what can be achieved’ – not just as a student but in any future domain they may move into.

However some students mistook the framework of ‘Good Work’ to be a guarantee for success. This created some confusion or unresolved areas w.r.t the 3E’s in the minds of students –

For Example –

Ethics – With evidences of non-ethical practices leading to successful outcomes are everywhere around them, the scales are tipped w.r.t the benefits of ethical practices and non-ethical shortcuts to do work. A simple example was quoted by a student about the ‘meaning of grades’ when students who cheat get more marks or how ‘money’ or ‘power’ guarantee a seat in a highly reputed university

Engagement – Which is better – being a ‘Jack-of-all’ or ‘being an expert’? Because in a career, organizations want the former. Would being ‘engaged’ lead me to be an expert or an all-rounder?

Excellence – ‘Good Work’ relies on a commitment to stay focused and on task in order to achieve Excellence. The bar of expectations is raised in the corporate world where new recruits are evaluated not just for their high scores but also their active pursuit of extra-curricular interests to build an all-round profile. How then is Excellence measured when you have multiple factors influencing the evaluation? How does one know that one has attained ‘Excellence’?

Ultimately, students were made to realize that GP does not provide a single correct answer – but it will help students bring more clarity into a situation by looking at different perspectives.

The ‘Good Project’ goal is to build a support system that students can use to help them through dilemmas that may arise in the future pertaining to their work and form a reflective resolution to the dilemma.

These questions remain and we can rely on only one teacher for the answers – the best teacher there is – Life!

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“The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.”

—Elbert Hubbard

Reflections

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THANK YOU