Page 147 - The SpeakTeach method - Esther de Vrind

to what extent changes occurred in student self-regulation in improving their own speaking skills after four iterations of the self-evaluation procedure, and to what extent the students perceived the self-evaluation procedure as motivating and the received feedback and support as adaptive to their needs.
The results of this study showed that during the self-evaluation procedure students' perceptions of their learning needs did indeed change. An important goal of the self- evaluation procedure was to support secondary school students to become more and more independent in fulfilling all of the different parts of the process of self-regulation. It was found that the perceived need for teachers’ assistance did indeed decrease and the preference for independence increased over the course of a number of iterations of the self-evaluation procedure. Moreover, shifts in diagnoses and foci of plans were also found. It seemed that students expanded the focus of their diagnoses and plans. The study also showed that students perceived the self-evaluation procedure as motivating. Speaking anxiety did not decrease.
When asked in a post-test about adaptivity of feedback and improvement activities, students in the experimental group generally found the activities during speaking lessons tailored to their needs to the same extent as the control group, and they found feedback less tailored to their needs compared to the control group. However, when asked about a specific self-evaluation cycle during the intervention, most students of the experimental group perceived the feedback and improvement activities as adaptive. It can be concluded from this that the lessons in speaking skills over a whole period had not been considered by the students of the experimental group as more adaptive than usual, but the specific periods of working on the self-evaluation procedure had been experienced by them as adaptive.
Main findings chapter 5
This chapter also examined the practicality of the adaptive teaching approach, but from the perspective of individual teachers with the focus on their professional development. The question was posed as to how teachers can be supported to gradually expand their teaching repertoire with variants of the SpeakTeach method. For teachers’ professional development it is important to take both teachers’ goals and their current teaching practice into account. The ecology of the classroom demands that teachers realize several goals simultaneously in limited time and with limited resources. A new teaching approach has to fit in with these
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