According to the report from OECD (Ramos and Schliecher, 2016), students explored the world from being a mature individual, understanding the community, and then understanding the whole society and the world. Therefore, the topic of the
present study was to engage students in understanding themselves and the school neighborhood community.
In order to investigate the effect of students’ sense of social participation, pre- and post-questionnaires were conducted before and after the intervention. The
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questionnaires were adapted from Li’s (2008) index to meet the conditions of the junior high school participants. The post-questionnaire also consisted of some open-ended questions to collect concrete thoughts from students. According to the answers in the questionnaires, the teacher-researcher then selected some participants with different answers to receive semi-structured interviews. The descriptive statistics in Table 4 showed the pair-sampled t-test results of the questionnaires.
Table 4
Paired-sample T-test results of the Students’ Scores of Social Participation Before and After the Intervention
N=27 Pre-test Post-test
Dimension M SD M SD t df p
Awareness of Social
Participation 2.87 0.32 3.06 0.50 -2.04 26 *.05
Identification and
Belongingness 3.31 0.54 3.19 0.72 .78 26 .44
Feelings toward
Community 2.95 0.60 2.94 0.59 .85 26 .93
Total score 2.98 0.33 3.07 0.45 -.99 26 .33
* Statistically significant difference (p < .05)
As seen in Table 4, there is significant difference between the pre- and post- questionnaires in Awareness of Social Participation. The mean scores rose from 2.87 to 3.06 points along with p-value (0.050 < 0.05). The other two dimensions don’t show much difference between pre- and post-questionnaires, and the total score also stays unchanged. The data showed that there is no significant difference in
Identification and Belongingness and Feelings toward Community.
However, the open-ended answers of the participants revealed some possible
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reasons why the intervention changed the participants’ changes in Awareness of Social Participation. Among the 27 students, 14 of them live in the school neighborhood while the other 13 people don’t live near the school. A student even wrote “I enjoyed the lesson, but I understood this area near school better instead of my own community.
After I knew more about the school neighborhood, I started to sense the importance of my own community.” (S10, Liu) Another student also mentioned that “I found the task difficult because I don’t live here and I knew little about here.” (S14, Wang) Therefore, another paired-sample t-test needed to be developed to compare the data between residents in the community and non-residents in the community. The results were displayed as Table 5 and Table 6 below.
Table 5
Paired-sample T-test results of the Students’ Scores of Social Participation before and after the Intervention (Residents in the Community)
N=13 Pre-test Post-test
Dimension M SD M SD t df p
Awareness of Social
Participation 3.03 .24 3.14 .49 -.81 13 .43
Identification and
Belongingness 3.40 .46 3.32 .70 .48 13 .64
Feelings toward
Community 3.05 .43 2.95 .43 .623 13 .54
Total score 3.16 .25 3.13 .48 .15 13 .88
* Statistically significant difference (p < .05)
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Table 6
Paired-sample T-test results of the Students’ Scores of Social Participation before and after the Intervention (Non-residents in the Community)
N=14 Pre-test Post-test
Dimension M SD M SD t df p
Awareness of Social
Participation 2.70 .33 2.98 .51 -2.14 12 *.053
Identification and
Belongingness 3.23 .62 3.06 .75 .61 12 .56
Feelings toward
Community 2.85 .74 2.93 .47 -3.47 12 .73
Total score 2.93 .47 2.99 .46 -4.06 12 .69
* Statistically significant difference (p < .05) Data from Table 4 revealed significant difference in Awareness of Social
Participation when the students were analyzed as a whole group. While the whole group was divided into two groups, residents and non-residents, and the data of paired-sample T-tests were showed in Table 5 and 6. Although no significant difference was found from the results, the p-value (0.053) of Awareness of Social Participation of Non-residents was close to statistically significant difference (0.05).
The teacher-researcher had informal interviews with the non-residents of the participants and found out possible reasons. A non-resident student who has
developed awareness of social participation stated that, “After I learned more about this school community and made a comparison with my own community, I found that I liked my community more than before.” (S10, Liu) The qualitative data showed that students, especially non-residents, started to develop their awareness of social
participation.
The results of qualitative data supported the results shown in Table 5 and 6. A student found that “After I walked into the community, I found that there were some
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people making efforts for the community. We also made a poster to tell people not to throw trash on the ground.” (S8, Ho) Another resident who lived near the school also mentioned that “I found something interesting in the boring route that I passed by every day. The pattern of the building is like a square! Cool!” (S10, Tsai) A student who didn’t live near the school said that “This was the first time that I spent time hanging out in this area. I found many interesting things.” (S27, Cheng)
Though the quantitative data showed no differences after the intervention, the qualitative data revealed positive changes in students’ attitude and awareness. The study could be considered helpful to arouse students’ sense of social participation.
In the future, to engage the students more in the community, maybe more contacts and interaction with the locals will be needed. At the end of the course, besides reporting their work to the whole class, they could invite the local residents as listeners to join their presentation. The final presentation was held in the classroom in the present study, and the listeners were limited to classmates only. In fact, the most available listeners for them might be their family members and neighbors. In the future, the students could invite their family and friends to join the presentation, and even invite other residents to engage in the activity. In this way, the students could have a chance to interact with more residents and could gain more feeling and identifications toward the community. The teacher could help students rent a public place such as
Neighborhood Assembly Center in the neighborhood for them to have a big sharing event. The residents might give these participants some concrete suggestions and comments.