Although students’ life experiences are closely connected to their neighborhood community, they might not know the histories of the community or knowledge of the place they live in. In addition, one of the aspects of new 12-year curriculum
guidelines is social participation. The study thus aimed at designing situational writing activities to enhance students’ awareness or even actions of social participation. Additionally, one of the principles of the new 12-year curriculum guidelines is to activate students’ curiosity toward their everyday life (Directions Governing for the 12-year Basic Education Curricula, 2016). The report of OECD (Ramos and Schleicher, 2016) also shows that students will learn how to be a mature individual first, understand the environment they live in, and expand to the whole society and world. As a result, the present study guided students to understand their neighborhood community first, and expanded the idea and attitude to social
participation in the society.
Bakhtin (1986) stated that students’ writing products reveal the context they are in and show the combination of their background experiences. Within the familiar context, students’ writing abilities can be improved. Accordingly, the way teachers designed courses and led students have to include students’ life experiences. For junior high school students in Taipei City, they spend almost ten hours at school and the rest of the time staying in their own neighborhood. Their life experiences are
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closely connected to their school and the community they live in. Moreover,
Anderman (2003) mentioned that the curriculum designed by teachers was influential to students’ learning experiences and motivation. Also, Directions Governing for the 12-year Basic Education Curricula (2016) puts more emphasis on taking actions under learners’ everyday life context. What’s more, according to Lin’s study (2017),
assessments and learning materials should connect to students’ real-life experiences and apply local resources into course design. Therefore, this proposal aimed at designing school-based situational writing activities relating students’ learning experiences to their own neighborhood community.
The above teacher’s guidelines and situational writing activities allow teachers to guide students to spot the unique features of each school and to integrate students’
visions of school and community. In order to meet the trend of 12-year curriculum guidelines, teachers could create the curriculum based on the school activities or the neighborhood issues to arouse students’ awareness of social participation. The teacher-researcher in this proposal designed serial situational writing activities including topics of school and neighborhood events to arouse students’ awareness of the neighborhood community. Accordingly, the present study aimed at analyzing the data of students’ writing process and products in order to understand more about the changes of their awareness of social participation.
Awareness of the neighborhood community is defined as sense of community in McMillan and Chavis’ study (1986). Sense of community has four elements:
Membership, Influence, Integration and Fulfillment of needs, and Shared Emotional Connection. Membership is the boundary between people and the place they live in.
As the residents feel emotionally safety, they grow a sense of belonging and identification of the certain place. The residents share a common symbol system which helps maintain the positive and interactive nature of the living place. Influence
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refers to the power status of a person in the community that he is thought to have influential power toward the community. Integration and Fulfillment of Needs indicate that the positive relationship between individuals and the community is reinforced through interactions. When members of the community could serve as effective reinforcers to fit others’ needs, they will foster the beliefs of the community.
Shared Emotional Connection means that the residents cultivate sense of belonging to the community through successful interactions in shared events that might facilitate the growth of the community. McMillan and Chavis’ study (1986) described the concrete examples of the dynamics environments including neighborhood community.
Obst, Smith and Zinkiewicz (2002) adapted McMillan’s revised version in 1996 and created the fifth dimension of the sense of the community, Identification. The authors pointed out that the more residents feel identified with a particular community, the stronger sense of community they would have. The above researchers also mentioned that when residents have more connections with the community such as raising children and involving in community organization, they would be more dependent on the community they live in (Obst, Smith, and Zinkiewicz, 2002). When students become more familiar and more engaged in social events, students’ awareness of social participation might be increased.
Besides the above studies in other countries, some classic studies had also been conducted in Taiwan. In Taiwan, Li (2008) applied J. Buckner’s neighboring index to measure neighborhood cohesion in rural areas with questions through telephone interviews. In Li’s study, Buckner’s Neighborhood Cohesion Instrument is conducted in remote areas in Taiwan and participants showed positive attitude toward their neighborhood. In this present study, the teacher-researcher adapted and modified Li’s index in order to suit the participants, since the participants changed from adults to junior high school students.
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Applying the above ideas, the present study used the elements of McMillan and Chavis’ study (1986) as classic principles and modified the existing Liu’s and Li’s (2008) questionnaire. Since the participants of their studies were adults while the present study focused on teenagers, some of the questions were modified to meet the background of teenagers.
In conclusion, the teacher-researcher intended to design situational writing tasks to enhance students’ awareness of social participation. After conducting the activities, the teacher-researcher would observe students’ performance to investigate the extent of their writing improvement. Also, the data of whether students’ awareness of social participation was increased would be collected through questionnaires and interviews.
The present study aimed at investigating to what extent school-based situational writing tasks improve students’ writing ability, and enhance students’ awareness of social participation. In this section, the background, 12-year curriculum guidelines, was first discussed. Second, the theoretical background of the study situational writing was further introduced and elaborated. Last, studies about how situational writing tasks affected students’ awareness of social participation were discussed.
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CHAPTER THREE METHODOLOGY
The study was to investigate the effect of situational writing tasks to enhance students’ awareness of social participation and English writing abilities. The study also helped collect students’ feedback toward the course design as the
teacher-researcher’s references to design a better course in the future. Three research questions were addressed in this study, which were writing ability, social participation, and course design.
The chapter started with the background information of the participants and the application of the instruments. Next, the research design and procedure were
introduced. Finally, how the teacher-researcher analyzed the data in both qualitative and quantitative ways were addressed.