I. General Information
School Name: Hugh Boyd Secondary School
School District: SD#38 Richmond
Inquiry Team Members: Adam Thorvaldson: athorvaldson@sd38.bc.ca, Pete Erickson: perickson@sd38.bc.ca
Inquiry Team Contact Email: athorvaldson@sd38.bc.ca
II. Inquiry Project Information
Type of Inquiry: NOIIE Case Study
Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Secondary (8-12)
Curricular Areas Addressed: Applied Design, skills & Technology
Focus Addressed: Land, Nature or Place-based learning
In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? What are students’ perspectives on how hands-on project work will prepare them for the future.
III. Spirals of Inquiry Details
Scanning: Students were asked the questions directly at the beginning of the semester & again at the end of the semester. Students were asked to what degree they felt more supported, less supported or the same amount of support by adults with respect to the questions.
Focus: In this course, students learn a little bit about how house framing, electrical, plumbing, roofing & welding is done. Would students feel better served if they explored other areas of hands-on skills? Ultimately, the students only really seem to have an opinion on the skills and trades that they have been exposed to. The students do not have an opinion on trades they have not experienced. This points at the benefit of having hands-on learning.
Hunch: That hands-on learning better equips students to understand how useful these skills are.
New Professional Learning: Looking into availability of industry support, both in-kind and financial, to equip the technology classroom with equipment so that hands-on learning can be realized.
Taking Action: We want more avenues of hands-on learning. Hands-on learning requires specialized equipment. We need more than one welder, so that more students can experience welding. We applied for grant funding to the national welding union to fund three more welders and fume extractors.
Checking: I suppose basically never satisfied. The space provided for the students to expand their learning can always change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. In a Tech Ed classroom it is pretty clear that the more equipment available, the more processes that students can learn about.
Reflections/Advice: What we learned is that students don’t know when they don’t know something. In a Tech Ed context, students are unaware of how things are made unless they are exposed to it. The same thing can be said for teachers. Teachers can’t teach what they don’t know. Advice for other schools would be to hire trades teachers who have a very high understanding of that specific area of skill.