Lesson Study Final Report Template

PART I: BACKGROUND Title: Understanding how differences in stratification levels among nations impact the quality of womens lives: Making the connection between theory and experience Authors: Teresa Reinders, Helen Rosenberg, Anne Statham; University of Wisconsin - Parkside Contact: Helen Rosenberg, rosenbeh@[Link] Discipline or Field: Sociology, Gender Studies, Introduction to Population Studies Date: Include the date you posted (or last updated) your final lesson study with KEEP Toolkit. Course Name: Introductory Sociology Course Description: Introductory Sociology examines how global, social structural and interpersonal relationships impact how we understand and act with other nations and groups. We examine society and culture with special attention to the biases which impact how people view our world. This course is a general education course and the entry course for all students taking courses in sociology. Reinders and Rosenberg taught two introductory classes with approximately 65 students in each class. Most were students at the freshmen and sophomore level in a lecture/discussion format classroom. This lesson study was presented at mid-term. At that time, we began to go beyond providing students the basic tools used by sociologists to study society and encouraged students to examine current issues using these tools and consider U.S. society as part of a global system. In sum, we expected students to apply what they learned in the first half of the semester to understand global social structures from a sociological perspective. We instilled the means by which students might view an individual problem (gender inequality) in broader social terms to understand the complexities of globalization and the interconnectedness of other countries to the people living in the United States today. The first iteration of the lesson study was assigned on Thursday, March 29, 2006 and students worked on their projects over the week and presented to the class on Thursday, April 5, 2006. This part of the lesson study required students to learn about a low, middle, or high income th nation on a number of criteria defined by the instructor. On April 10 , we discussed gender differences across nations previously studied and students presented their final report to the class on April 12th. The Lesson Study project lasted over a two-week period. Executive Summary: Learning Goals: The anticipated focus of the lesson study was the challenge of getting students to examine everyday issues through a sociological lens. We wanted to learn ways to enhance students abilities to make the connection between learning theory (factors that impact global stratification) and understanding experience (how the level of stratification of a nation from a global perspective impacts gender stratification on a national level and womens quality of life on a individual level). As part of our lesson study training, we hoped to develop skills to aid students in making the theory-experience connection. Secondly, students worked in groups and were required to develop a poster and report as a team. Therefore, a second goal of the lesson study was developing an organizational strategy for presenting findings through a team effort. Instructional Design: Instructors adapted two iterations of an active learning exercise based on Bradshaw, et al. (2001, pps. 272-273) Gender Inequality with and between Nations: Internet Research. The first iteration was designed to get students to generalize about differences among high, middle, and low income nations. Students compared nations on the following indicators: life expectancy, contraceptive use, educational attainment, women in the military and government, and women in the workforce. The second iteration required students to apply their knowledge from the first iteration to gender stratification from a national and individual perspective. This moved students from understanding indicators that defined the status of a nation globally to applying this status to gender stratification and then speculating about how womens status impacts their everyday lives. Students presented information about different nations they chose to study as part of the first iteration and then discussed gender differences as part of the second iteration. Students were required to study a nation and create a poster (Appendix A) describing that nation on the assigned indicators, discuss the impact of the income level of the nation and gender stratification, make generalizations about the quality of life of women in that nation and compare this to other nations. Students wrote up findings in a final group paper. Findings about student learning: From this assignment, students learned differences among nations, economically, socially, and politically with specific emphasis on gender differences, considering commonalities and differences as a function of survival in a global, interdependent community. They began to see patterns in nations on the basis of income levels, but also noted that middle income

nations varied the most on criteria used to describe them. They gathered information on gender differences across all nations, but these differences were not made explicit until iteration two of the lesson study. Students learned through experience and interaction about differences across nations and how womens lives are impacted. Issues of number of children, contraceptive use, role of religion and tradition, role of women in childrearing versus employment outside the home, and role of women in government were discussed.

PART II: THE LESSON How to Teach the Lesson Pre-Lesson: Reinders and Rosenberg attended the workshop on developing the lesson study. We found this gave us the time to work together without distractions on campus. It took us about an hour of discussing our goal for the lesson study (seeing experiences from a broad, sociological perspective) and connecting this goal to course content to develop the lesson study. Also, Reinders had materials on global stratification from a previous class that she thought would be appropriate for the experience. Rather than any specific time frame for coming up with this topic, we used materials from previous work that we felt apropos to the lesson study. In this case, Reinders had located two web-sites that had an array of statistics on nations throughout the world for an earlier class she had taught. After our lesson study workshop we met to locate the web-sites and decide on what information about the nations we wanted our class to focus on. Reinders printed off data from the sites and we talked about what statistics would be good indicators of the global status of a nation. The site also provided information on gender stratification for the second iteration of the lesson study. We settled on six indicators that would be used to describe each nation and provided students the links to the web-sites (Appendix B). We did this so that student reports on nations would be consistent. We agreed to assign student groups the income level of a nation, but allowed each group to choose its nation. We agreed that the U.S. could be chosen along with other nations of the world. In addition, we decided on the size of students groups (N=5) and the size of the poster students could use (12 X 18 inches). Finally, we talked about the steps in the project. Determining the project steps indicated that we would need five class periods: 1) divide students into groups, assign students the status levels and have students choose their nations; 2) have students work in their groups to organize materials and discuss and practice presentation; 3) presentations to class; 4) communicate similarities and differences among nations 5) discussion on gender stratification. Lesson Study: We modified the syllabus to include the Lesson Study prior to introducing it to the class. Indeed, during the presentation, students seemed surprised that this assignment was not written somewhere on the syllabus. However, the syllabus states that the instructor reserves the right to make modifications during the semester. We did have to introduce this project as an additional assignment. The class had come to the chapter in the text on global stratification just after the mid-term exam (Macionis, Chapter 9). This chapter defines the characteristics of low, middle, and high income countries. At the beginning of the class period in which we were to discuss global stratification (Thursday, March 29, 2007), instructors passed out the assignment and read it aloud with the class (Appendix B). We divided into groups of five with students selecting friends or people who sat near them to be part of their group. Some groups had fewer than five and people who arrived late to class were assigned to those groups. By the end of class, there were 11 groups in Rosenbergs class, with two that had fewer than five people. Reinders had 12 groups of five students in each. After groups were formed, the instructor assigned each group a status, i.e., a low, middle, or high income nation. Groups then decided on the nation on which they wished to report. Each group was to turn in the names of people in their group, the assigned stratification level, and the nation they chose on which to report. Then, posters were passed out so that students could display their information visually when they made their oral reports. Informed consent forms were passed out and read aloud (Appendix C). All students signed informed consent forms, but those who did not want to be video-taped wrote no next to their names. The students had five days between classes to look up information on their nation and write down what they wanted to report to the class. Questions from individual students were opened up to the class for discussion and some general rules were developed as a result of consensus in the class. For example, we agreed upon a presentation time limit of around 5-10 minutes per group. The next class session (Tuesday, April 3, 2007) was devoted to making posters and talking with group members as to who was to present what information to the class. This was the class period when students asked questions about data interpretation and display and teachers walked around the room answering questions. Also on that day, a grading rubric was distributed specifying how presentations and final papers would be scored (Appendix D). On Thursday, April 5, 2007 groups presented their descriptions of each nation to the class. Presenters stood at their desks, with posters in hand, and described their nations. This class was video-taped and Anne Statham came to the class to take notes on student presentations. After presentations were completed, students were allowed to walk around to each group and view posters and take notes on displayed information. On that day, three students who missed class the week before came to talk to Rosenberg about doing a poster and participating in the class project. Rosenberg said they could not do a poster, but allowed them to write the final report on a high income nation. This brought the number of groups participating

in the lesson study to twelve. In Reinders class, two students, one of whom was overseas in the military, did not do the poster, but were allowed to write the final report. On Tuesday, April 10, 2007, instructors grouped students into same income level nations (low, middle, and high). We created a fish-blow discussion structure in which one person from each group that had the same income level sat in the center and talked about the nation with other group members. This allowed students in the inner circle to talk about what was similar about their nations, while others on the outside of the circle could ask questions of those in the inner circle. In the second half of the class, we grouped people across income level nations and asked them to discuss differences with regard to gender stratification. A template of nations was passed out so that students could summarize information and draw general conclusions about gender stratification (Appendix E).The second iteration was on Thursday, April 12, 2007. Here students answered a number of questions regarding the status of women across nations (Appendix F). We veered off the structured questions, but stayed on topic with issues. On that same day, final papers were to be submitted 1 via D2L drop-box. This second iteration was video-taped and Anne Statham took notes on the discussion (Appendix G). We had some time at the end of the lesson study, so Rosenberg asked students about challenges they faced while doing the project. Students said they needed more time to work on posters and that it would have helped to have had class in a computer lab as they gathered statistics. Details of comments are in Stathams notes. Post-Lesson: The last day of the lesson study, students submitted their papers via drop box into D2L. Students listed the participants in the lesson study and each persons role in the project. Instructors graded the reports and provided two grades as per indicated in the rubric one grade for the poster and a second for the final report. Reinders and Rosenberg met informally to discuss issues that arose during classes. There were problems with the summary table and the fishbowl discussion format. In the case of the summary table, we discovered that students were recording different statistics from the web-site, some of which did not correspond across groups. Therefore, generalizations from the summary tables could not be made. In the fishbowl groups, where students were grouped by income of nation, Reinders insisted that students correct their figures on their own. Thus, when students went into groups of mixed income level nations, each group shared its information with others to complete the tables. In the case of the fishbowl discussion, students in the outer circle did not listen to what those in the inner circle had to say and interjected their own ideas or formed side conversations. Others did not understand the concept of the fishbowl and seemed confused with this process. Student Learning Goals The stated sociological competencies for student learning in this class are summarized in the syllabus (Appendix H). We use these competencies as standards in describing the learning goals for this lesson study. The learning goals of this project were to give students experience with reading statistical information and summarizing it so that they could draw conclusions from the data and make generalizations regarding the status of their own nation in comparison to others. This exercise provided students the opportunity to understand societies and cultures in their own terms, fostering a global perspective. We wanted students to understand stratification on the basis of various indicators and what this meant for the everyday lives of people in the country, and especially women. This addressed the competency of identifying social problems and framing them conceptually, and analyzing the impact of macro-structural factors on personal experience. We wanted students to work in groups to enable active citizenship and effective teamwork and promote civility and civil discourse. In our discussions, we wanted students to understand why various nations had different values regarding contraceptive use, education for women, providing supports for work-force participation for women, including elected positions in the government, and how policies impacted life expectancy and quality of life for the population. Moreover, we sought to move students to understanding how various policies and traditions functioned for nations and challenge them to understand societies values in their own terms. Our goals for student learning included our desire to get students to see themselves in a global context and to begin to understand the logic of why nations act as they do, e.g. with regard to population growth, and the consequences of their policies on their society and women. We wanted to reduce biases about nations and have students see a purpose to the governmental, educational, and social policies of nations at various income levels throughout the world. Given this information, we desired to expose why women are subjugated to a greater extent in some nations over others and we wanted students to connect the relationship between national policy (macro) and personal outcomes (micro). How the Lesson is Intended to Work

D2L, Desire 2 Learn is a web-based course administrative tool which allows for interaction and exchange with and among students.

Instructional and Learning Activities to Support Student Thinking The general education competencies for this class include the ability to become comfortable with D2L and in general come to work with current technologies in the discipline. Toward that end, the assignment required that students navigate through two websites containing statistics that they would need for their project. Students would have to locate specific statistics in a website and decide which were pertinent to topic. Students who collected statistics were required to organize the information they obtained so that they could present to the class, both visually (posters) and verbally (presentations). Students worked in groups and had to negotiate roles among themselves. Students had to relate the work of others to their own and make comparisons, coming to conclusions about the nature of stratification and what factors come into play in stratifying nations across the world. As part of this assignment students learned to work within a technological environment to communicate with others, as well as submit assignments. They achieved a global perspective on understanding economic and political systems. They analyzed macro structures and there impact on the individual and small groups such as the family. Materials and learning activities used in this project were computers, the internet, posters, group work, specific discussion designs (the fishbowl interaction) and presentations. Each class had approximately 63 students and had met twice a week, for nine weeks prior to the lesson study. It was a challenge to create community under these conditions and facilitate group work designed to stimulate communication and bring exchange that would enhance student understanding of global social structures and their impact on gender differences. We believe students in large classrooms anticipate an all lecture format, so students were surprised that so much time was allotted to this independent learning exchange project. Students comments after the semester indicated this; with some saying they had not anticipated so much discussion in these classes. Students reported they would have liked more time to do their posters and that we should have had one class session devoted to gathering their statistics and making sure they got the correct information from the web-sites. There was some confusion on how to visually present information. An issue that arose during the second week was the amount of effort some students put into the project relative to others. Several students complained that some members of the group didnt do any work and shouldnt receive credit for the poster and/or paper. Reinders and Rosenberg took this into account and did not give credit to some for parts of the project. Additionally, while students were not penalized for coming late to class during much of the semester, students were marked down if they came late to class during this lesson study period. Overall impressions of this lesson study are that students enjoyed the participatory learning of this project, which offered students more engagement than simply responding to instructor questions or working in groups to problem solve issues.

PART III: THE STUDY Approach No evidence was collected before the lesson study as this exercise was part of a two chapter sequence on global stratification and gender stratification. The lesson study was part of the course material to be covered in the class. During each iteration, Anne Statham observed and took notes on presentations and student questions and interactions. Each iteration was tape recorded. Posters were collected from student groups. At the end of the lesson study, students were required to write a short group paper summarizing the conclusions drawn from the lesson study. Statham attempted to contact students by phone from four groups, two who did a good job and two who did not, to learn about their assessment of the exercise. Of the 20 students to be contacted, 8 interviews were completed. In sum, collected evidence includes the video-taped classes, observational notes, posters, phone interviews, and final papers. Findings Each group did a commendable job learning about the country it chose. Groups presented population information, information about technological advances, birth and death rates, educational levels of women compared to men, and political/military participation of women. Some groups had problems with reporting statistics. In some cases, raw numbers required conversion to percentages and students had trouble converting this. There was more variability in trends in middle income countries and students had to consider some exceptions which added to the discussion, but may have been difficult to understand unless one knew something about the history of the country. One example is the impact on the birth rate in China of the one-child rule. A greater challenge was comparing rates among different income level countries and drawing conclusions about the culture of each nation from differences among nations. Observational notes from the second iteration indicate the following learning outcomes: Low income countries dont encourage education and not a lot of the population knows how to read because they need children to work, mostly to farm Low income counties dont have affordable, easily accessible means of contraception; cultural and religious beliefs, as well as high infant mortality impede the desire for contraception Low income nations tend to be agrarian, more traditional, less likely to change and adopt technology Children are considered economic liabilities in high income countries; its very expensive to raise a child Differences in life expectancy are due to wars Women outlive men in most income categories Women are considered primary caretakers even in high income countries where women get advanced degrees Women are better off in middle and high income countries It is not natural for men to be primary caretakers of young children At the end of the second iteration, students commented that they learned a lot from the project. Students learned how much cultural beliefs affect the world in general political views, womens position, seeing women as weak or powerful. Some weaknesses were that parts of the study were repetitive, more time should have been devoted to doing posters in class, and going to the computer lab would have been helpful. We placed so much emphasis on getting groups together for each nation that we failed to emphasize the uniformity we desired in reporting statistics across nations. Therefore, students had difficulty identifying the specific statistics and presenting information that was normalized for a cross-national comparison. This was revealed when students had to obtain information from others for the final paper. Discussion This was an introductory sociology class in which most students were freshmen. Many had never discussed political and economic issues and the first half of the class was devoted to learning basic concepts and definitions of terms. This exercise created a learning environment which was unfamiliar to most. Thus, there was great benefit to students who moved from relative ignorance about various nations in the world to learning basic facts about each nation. Secondly, the exercise addressed some prejudices that students may have had about low income nations. From a theoretical perspective, students had to think about why particular trends functioned for the nation, even though at face they may seem dysfunctional. The lesson forced students to take the role of the other to understand how nations function in our global economy. It made them aware of the U.S. interdependence on other nations (for agricultural goods and oil) and how the U.S. contributes to the development (or exploitation) of low and middle income nations throughout the world. Teachers learned that students have difficulty understanding statistics. Some students reported numbers that made no sense and seemed to gloss over inconsistencies. For some, this was an

exercise to be completed, while others seemed to make connections between the macro and micro. The lesson was designed, discussed, and modified with each iteration. It was successful because of this, although students seemed to need more hands on attention than was provided. Teachers learned that it is vital to discuss each step of the lesson study and be prepared to modify the lesson. With regard to the practice of teaching and learning, Reinders and Rosenberg learned that student learning is dependent on experiential work with the teacher as a guide and that participation among all is vital to learning. Statham attempted to interview students from four groups two strong groups and two weak groups - after final grades were turned in after the spring semester. She found phone numbers were disconnected and students had left campus. However, Statham reached eight students, some from both strong and weak groups. Future attempts at this might be conducted somewhere between the projects grading and the final exam. One student who did well on the project said, I learned a lot from the project. We had a third world country. I learned that a lot of different countries have poor economies, they rely on culture and helping each other out, less than in the first world, like the U.S. Another student who also did well stated, The project put more perspective on it. Have taken classes like this before, but the project made it more obvious, seeing all the information and how people did it. Didnt necessarily help with the learning, but got a different understanding of it. That was the most helpful part. Finally, another student who did well on the project said, I didnt really get anything out of the poster project. One student who did poorly on the project said, Through the project, I learned about the differences between the low, medium, and high income countries. It was effective in helping learn about that. Another student in this category states, Thought the class went very well. Didnt get too much out of the project. It seemed it was thrown out at the last minute, there was a lack of work or something. It needed more substance, maybe an individual project. Dont get much learning from group projects; learn a lot about how to deal with other people, but not much about the content of courses. The general assignments given in the course were far better in helping with learning. Wouldnt change the course, it was a good intro course. Finally, a third student said, Nothing much learned from the project. We spent five class periods talking about the same posters. There were some things that helped better with learning. Could put more into the poster project. We just talked about the same facts over and over. Could watch a video or something on the topic. References Bradshaw, Y., Healey, J. F., and Smith, R. 2001. Sociology for a new century. Pine Forge Press: Thousand Oaks, CA. Central Intelligence Agency. World Fact Book, 2007. Accessed March 9, 2007. [Link] Macionis, J. J. 2007. Society: the basics. Pearson/Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle, NJ. World Bank. GenderStats. Accessed March 9, 2007. [Link]

APPENDIX Include

materials used to teach the lesson including student handouts, instructors notes, etc. Please annotate each item with a brief description. materials used to study the lesson including observation guidelines, written questions, prompts, checklists, etc. Please annotate each item with a brief description. evidence and data not included in the text of the report such as observers notes, examples of student work, results of data analysis, etc.