Evaluating teaching styles: a different approach to bench-marking zoo education? Andy Moss, Chester Zoo

Introduction We wanted to increase the amount of student-led ‘activity’ in our teaching sessions. We wanted to measure the success (or not) of this.

Baseline data collection (spring 2010) Teaching sessions changed – more activities added (summer 2010) Further data collection after changes were made (Autumn 2010) Evaluation of success! Research Design

Method Range of teaching sessions observed by me. Each session was divided into 5 main teaching ‘components’: Chalk and Talk Question and Answer (Q&A) Activity Artefact use (by Education Officer) Animal Encounter

The ‘components’ Chalk and talk: Solely educator-led content, with or without the use of other media (such as photographs or video). Tropical Rainforests Capybara!

Question and answer: Educator-led questioning with one student (at a time) answering

Activity: Either whole class or smaller group investigative activities where all students participate.

Artefact use: Demonstration by educator in whole- class situations. Does not include artefact use in activity components.

Animal encounter: Educator-led, whole class encounter

Resu lts

Baseline data - Spring mins 10mins 11mins 1mins 3mins

Lots of changes made to sessions during the summer!

11mins 1mins 3mins 25mins 11mins Data after changes - Autumn 2010 No difference!!

Spring 2010 Comparison 26mins 10mins 11mins 1mins 3mins Autumn mins 1mins 3mins 25mins 11mins

‘Explanation time’ From 2010 data…A Discovery!

So, we had another look in 2011…

Data from 2011…. 6% of each session is spent on explaining activities

Explanation time average = 1 min 12 secs So every time we add a new activity, we automatically add another bit of explanation time.

An average session… Note that certain component types are intrinsically linked to others – Chalk and Talk with Q+A for example

Summary We have to be careful not to assume that changing what we do will have the effect we want! We wouldn’t have known this if we hadn’t evaluated it. Teacher feedback stayed the same throughout this study – so don’t just rely on teachers for your evaluation.

Andy Moss