Real-World Problems                    Lutz Home
​Learn More        Standards        Inspiration        About the Author

Design Process

The Learners

103 Honors Integrated Math 3 students participated in this study during the Spring of 2021.

  • 32% Juniors and 68% Sophomores. 
  • 58% female and 42% males. 
  • 2% percent of these students had a 504 and 0% of the students had an IEP. 
  • English Proficiency:
    • 78% percent of these students were English only proficient.  
    • 20% percent were re-designated students who had shown proficiency on the English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC) test. 
    • 2% percent of these students tested as Initial Fluent English Proficient (IFEP). 
  • Demographics:
    • 1% American Indian/Alaska Native
    • 1% Chinese
    • 1% Japanese
    • 1% Asian Indian
    • 3% Filipino
    • 1% Black or African American
    • 27% Hispanic/Latino
    • 64% white
    • 1% two or more races
  • COVID Specific Statistics: 
    • ​Classes were two days per week on an A-day/B-day rotating schedule with 48 minute classes, and a third day each week for 25 minute classes. 
    • 50% percent were completely virtual and 50% were in-person two days per week and virtual on the third day for the 25 minute periods each week.
The students represented in the researcher’s Honors Integrated Math 3 classes were not representative of the overall school population.  
Design Model:  The SITE Model
The SITE model is a great way to help keep the whole student in mind.  Site combines Sociocultural, Informational and Technical skills all together to form education for the learner.
My action research focused on equitable assessments for all students.  The SITE model played a huge role in leading many of my questions.
Picture
S - Sociocultural.  “Family, peers, role models, mentors, community, employer or enterprise all contribute to and influence the social and cultural context of the individual learner.”  (SITE Model page 5).  As students sit down to take an assessment their sociocultural background has a huge affect on their ability to successfully complete the assessment.  Did the student have a bad morning?  Were there conflicts within their family and/or friends?  These short-term effects can have dramatic effects on their ability to perform well on an assessment.   This will not show their content knowledge to its full capacity.
Picture
I - Informational.  Assessments have the potential to provide a great deal of information about individual students learning & about whole-class learning on a topic.  They are also a great tool to determine how successful I have been in conveying the needed information. 
Picture
T - Technical.  There are some great digital platforms that can help to make tests equitable to students.  The digital platform takes away some of the subjectivity in teacher grading.  It also allows the teacher to spend more time analyzing the data assessments give us & developing appropriate lessons.  
Picture
E - Educational.  “The larger context of education… which almost always implies development of broader perspectives and understandings.”  (SITE Model page 7).  Many assessments are already created for a standard textbook series when a district completes an adoption process.  However, many teachers change these assessments to fit in their classroom.  In the case of the latest NVUSD mathematics adoption, the high school textbook is almost unusable.  The assessment resources that went with this curriculum were also difficult to fit into the curriculum and how I taught.  They used terminology that the students felt was only there to confuse them & I agree.  I am one of the few teachers that even tried to use the textbook & it’s resources in my teaching.  Most of the teachers just create their own and eventually I also went this route.  As each teacher creates their own content and assessments, students may not be learning the same information.  
The best way to create resources and assessments is to keep the context of the learner in mind.  The SITE model is a great way to help keep the whole student in mind when developing such resources. 
Designing my Logo
Picture
When I began thinking about my logo design, I started with focusing on assessments and how I might represent them in a logo.  None of my drawings really spoke to me.  Then I switched my focus to a graph.  Graphs contain a wealth of mathematical information.  I played with the graph shown in a variety of ways.  I also matched the graph to my collar pallet.  My color pallet was developed using the colors in the following picture of me on the beach, but zoomed in around my face.  After feedback in my cohort, I modified the blue color some because it was clashing.  I also eliminated the "Real-World" part of the drawing and instead included the world as part of my graphic, added in a coordinate grid and had my arrow extending outside of the world.  I appreciated the idea of extending my arrow outside of the circle representing how students will continue to grow and learn.

The final element of my logo was the animation.  I wanted a dot following curve that I had drawn.  This represents assessment design and student learning both as a moving process with its ups and downs along the way.  In addition, the research process itself had many ups and downs.  Once again exiting by extending outside of the circle to extend the range of the research in the future.  
Picture
Research
Picture
Support and Next Steps