情境式寫作任務對於提升學生寫作表現及社會參與意識之探討:以國中校本課程為例

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(1)國立臺灣師範大學英語學系碩. 士. 技. 術. 報. 告. Technical Report of the Degree of Master Department of English National Taiwan Normal University. 情境式寫作任務對於提升學生寫作表現及社會參與意識之探討:以國中校本課程為例. A Study of Situational Writing Tasks for Enhancing Writing Performances and Awareness of Social Participation in a School-based Curriculum for Junior High School Students 指導教授：許月貴教授 Advisor: Dr. Yueh-Kuei Hsu 研究生：蔡欣樺. 中華民國一百零八年二月 February, 2019.

(2) 摘要本研究旨在探究在國中校本課程架構下，學生是否能透過情境式寫作任務來提高其社會參與動機及英語寫作能力。教師研究者亦可觀察省思課程設計理念、教學方法、及教材的設計。藉由實施質性及量化研究的資料收集和分析方法，可以了解以下三個研究問題：（一）情境式寫作任務如何改善學生的英語寫作能力？（二）情境式寫作任務如何提升學生的社會參與認知？（三）學生對情境式寫作任務的反應如何？教師未來如何設計相關課程並且加以改善？此後續研究使用的工具包括前後測的問卷、前後測寫作表現比較分析、半結構性訪談、教師觀察反思紀錄。本研究有以下發現：（一）透過學生的寫作表現前後測比較分析指出，情境式寫作任務有助於改善學生的英語寫作能力，學生也對英語寫作及此類課程設計持有正向的回饋。（二）學生在社會參與部分，僅在社會參與認知有顯著進步，代表對社區有進一步的理解，在另外兩方面(社區認同及社區疏遠)並無顯著進步，進一步將學生再區分為該學區居民或跨區就讀進行分析，發現亦無顯著進步，推測原因為樣本數不足。但透過質性資料仍可以證明學生對社區參與有正向的態度及更深入的了解。（三）此研究之教師研究者同時是課程的設計者，透過此行動研究亦不斷反思，並歸類出情境式寫作之課程設計的原則及應用方法。最後，本研究針對國中英語教師在英語寫作教學層面、社會參與層面及未來相關研究提出良善之建議。. 關鍵詞：情境式寫作任務、英語寫作、社會參與、12 年國教新課綱 i.

(3) ABSTRACT This study aimed at enhancing students’ awareness of social participation and sharpening students’ English writing abilities by providing students with situational writing tasks through school-based curriculum. Also, the teacher-researcher observed and reflected on the teaching methods, course designing principles, and learning materials. By conducting both quantitative and qualitative research method, the study addressed three research questions: (1) How do situational writing tasks in the school-based curriculum help students improve their writing ability? (2) How do situational writing tasks in the school-based curriculum help students enhance their awareness of social participation? (3) How do students respond to the situational writing tasks? How can teachers design and improve the situational writing tasks? The data of the study were collected with multiple instruments, including preand post-questionnaires, pre- and post- tests, informal interviews, and teacher-researcher’s observation and reflections. The findings of the study were discussed in three sections. First, after comparing the scores of students’ pre- and post-writing tests, the teacher-researcher found situational writing activities helpful for students’ English writing ability in Reasoning. These students also showed positive feedback toward English writing and the writing activities. Second, students’ results showed significant differences only in Awareness of Social Participation but not in the other two dimensions. The teacher-researcher then analyzed further by dividing students into two sub-groups, which were residents and non-residents of the school neighborhood community. Students’ qualitative data still indicated positive thoughts and better understanding of the community. Last, this pedagogical research offered implications and principles for designing course toward junior high school teachers in Taiwan. Suggestions for future research were also provided.. Keywords: situational writing tasks, English writing skills, social participation, 12-year new curriculum guidelines ii.

(4) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This technical report was completed because of the assistance, guidance, suggestions and company of many people. I would like to express my appreciation to all of them. My sincerest thanks and deepest gratitude are extended to my advisor, Professor Yueh-Kuei Hsu. During the writing process, she offered many suggestions, guidance, and reminders. With her assistance, I have cultivated a more logical way to organize my thoughts into complete paragraphs. I have learned many experiences with this habit, which benefited me a lot both in teaching at school and in writing my technical report. With her thorough revision and kind support, I could improve my writing into a better work. I would never forget the time and efforts she spent on revising my writing. I would never finish my technical report without her. I would next like to express my gratitude for my committee members, Professor Hsi-Chin Chu and Professor Chin-Kuei Cheng. They had finished reading my technical report within a very short period of time. Despite the limitation of reading time, they still read my work very thoroughly and gave me professional suggestions. With their kind assistance, my study could be more completed. I would like to give my special thanks to the participants, who are also my students at school. They have always been engaged in the activities I designed for them. With their contribution and engagement, this technical report can be accomplished. I am also thankful for the colleague who helped me with the data analysis. His professional assistance led me to overcome the difficulties when analyzing the data. Finally, my special thanks to my classmates and my partner, Cece. With her company, it was never boring to attend the classes on weekends. It was really nice to have Cece as my writing partner who always gave me lots of encouragement and suggestions. To be each other’s proofreaders and partners was a wonderful experience. Last but not least, I am blessed with the support from my family, friends, and colleagues. iii.

(5) TABLE OF CONTENTS CHINESE ABSTRACT………………………………………….…………………….i ENGLISH ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………….ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT……………………………………………....……………iii TABLE OF CONTENTS………………………………………………..........………iv LIST OF TABLES……………………………………………………….…………….v LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………….……………...v CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION…………………………….……………………1 CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW…………………….…………………….4 2.1 12-year Curriculum Guidelines…………….…………...…………….…...…4 2.2 12-year Curriculum Guidelines and Situational Writing……………….…….8 2.2.1 Definition of Situational Writing………………………………….…..8 2.2.2 Principles of Situational Writing………………………………….…..9 2.2.3 Situational Writing Model…………………………………………...11 2.2.4 Situational Writing Rubrics………………………………………….12 2.3 Situational Writing Tasks and Social Participation……………………...….13 CHAPTER THREE METHODOLOGY………………………...…………………...17 3.1 Participants……………………………………………………………….…17 3.2 Instruments……………………………………………………………….....18 3.2.1 Pre- and Post-questionnaires………………………………………...18 3.2.2 A Writing Rating Scale……………………………………………....20 3.2.3 Semi-structured Interview………………………………………,.….21 3.2.4 Teaching Materials…………………………………………………..22 3.3 Research Design and Procedure…………………………………………….22 3.4 Data Analysis………………………………………………………………..27 CHAPTER FOUR RESULTS AND DISCUSSION…….…………………………...29 4.1 Analysis of Writing Ability……………...…………………………………..29 4.2 Analysis of Social Participation……...……………………………………..31 4.3 Analysis of Course Design…..……………………………………………...35 CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS……………...................43 5.1 Conclusions………………………………………………………………....43 5.2 Pedagogical Implication.…………………………………………………....44 5.3 Limitations of the Study…………...………………………………………..47 5.4 The Teacher-researcher’s Role and Reflections.………………………...….50 REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………….55 APPENDICES………………………………………………………………………..57 Appendix A……………………………………………………………………...57 Appendix B…………………………………………………………………...…60 Appendix C……………………………………………………………………...64 Appendix D……………………………………………………………………..66. iv.

(6) LIST OF TABLES Table. Page. 1.. The Numbers of the Participants’ Background Information…................ 18. 2.. The Introduction of the Series of Writing Activities……………….…. 24. 3.. Descriptive Statistics of the Students’ Writing Scores before and after 30 the Intervention........................................................................................ 4.. Paired-sample T-test results of the Students’ Scores of Social 32 Participation before and after the Intervention……………...…………. 5.. Paired-sample T-test results of the Students’ Scores of Social Participation before and after the Intervention (Residents in the. 33. Community).......................................................................................... 6.. Paired-sample T-test results of the Students’ Scores of Social Participation before and after the Intervention (Non-residents in the. 34. Community) …………………………………………………………. 7.. The Numbers of Participants’ Preferences for the Five Activities, and the Reasons for Each Dimension…………….……………………….. 37. LIST OF FIGURES Page. Figure. 1.. The Main Features in a Wheel-in-action Diagram in the Official 5 Brochure Published by Ministry of Education…………………...……. 2.. The Time Schedule of the Procedure of the Study……....………….…. 3.. The Diagram of Data Analysis………………………………………… v. 23 27.

(7) CHPATER ONE INTRODUCTION. In view of the trend and the needs of the fast-approaching new 12-year curriculum guidelines, junior and senior high school teachers have to make some changes in order to meet the new teaching guidelines. There are three parts of the new 12-year curriculum guidelines─Spontaneity, Communication and Interaction, and Social Participation (Directions Governing for the 12-year Basic Education Curricula, 2016). In the new guidelines, some teaching principles are mentioned as follows. (1) Be student-centered, and focus on students’ affection; (2) Emphasize the communicative and interactive function of language, and use language as a tool to learn new knowledge; (3) Develop students’ learning autonomy and cultivate habits of life-long English learning ability; (4) Lead students to think independently and use the information correctly; (5) Explore cultures from other countries and think reflectively, enhance social engagement and cultivate junior high school students’ global views; (6) Train students’ logical thinking ability and activate their creativity. According to the new 12-year guidelines, students are encouraged to become active learners who think and learn independently and creatively. Through teachers’ guiding activities, students would develop their personal viewpoints about their community, the city, the country, and even expand to the whole world. To meet these teaching principles and improve students’ English abilities, teachers nowadays have to provide their students with real-life experience materials and help students sharpen their creativity and logical thinking ability. Herrington and Olive (2000) stated that teachers have to provide authentic contexts for students to learn languages. The learning materials allow students to use the knowledge learned in class in their real life scenarios. Teachers have to design 1.

(8) authentic activities which are relevant to students’ life experiences. For the junior high school students in Taipei City, they spend almost ten hours at school. After school, they often go home directly or go to a cram school nearby school or home. Most students spend most of their time staying in their own neighborhood. Therefore, their life experiences are closely connected to their school and the community they live in. Also, how teachers create lessons influences students’ motivation and perception toward social participation (Anderman, 2003). The topics closely related to students’ life experiences are most likely to arise and influence students’ motivation. The topics students might have interest in are about life experiences related to their school and neighborhood (Lin, 2017). Thus, teachers could create the curriculum based on the school activities or the neighborhood issues to arouse students’ awareness of social participation, and even to encourage students to participate in the social events. In Directions Governing for the 12-year Basic Education Curricula (2016), school-based curriculum is also emphasized in order to bring out the unique features of each school and to integrate school’s visions with community resources. In this way, these school-based courses could provide proper resources for students to meet the needs of new 12-year curriculum guidelines. Teachers can design their own courses to train students’ four basic skills to meet the needs of the new 12-year curriculum guidelines. Among the four basic English skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing, the writing exercises on the textbooks are mostly technical drills designed to familiarize students with their learning of sentence patterns. Trying to connect the new curriculum to enhance the social participation, the teacher-researcher designed this course to bridge the gap. In order to provide opportunities for students to practice meaningfully, the teacher-researcher inclines to design series of writing tasks within contexts and situations. The situations refer to school activities that allow students to interact with residents in their 2.

(9) neighborhood. The writing tasks follow the principles and spirits of the new 12-year curriculum guidelines that train students to apply knowledge in their real-life situations, which is the implication of situational writing. According to Hwang, Shadiev, and Huang (2014), in situational writing, students write with familiar authentic materials. Hwang et al. (2014) conducted a study of situational writing on elementary school students in Taiwan. The researchers found that students are more involved in writing tasks within familiar contexts instead of doing separated exercises without context. When reviewing the previous studies, the teacher-researcher couldn’t find other studies about situational writing tasks in Taiwan for junior high school students. Therefore, the teacher-researcher in this study designed a school-based curriculum in writing for junior high school students in Taiwan. The present study aimed at enhancing students’ awareness of social participation and engaging students in community activities by providing students with situational writing tasks through school-based curriculum. The series of situational writing were designed to enhance students’ social participation and writing performance. The English teachers in Taiwan could refer to this study and improve their own curriculum. The following research questions were explored in the study: (1) How do situational writing tasks in the school-based curriculum help students improve their writing ability? (2) How do situational writing tasks in the school-based curriculum help students enhance their awareness of social participation? (3) How do students respond to the situational writing tasks? And how can teachers design and improve the situational writing tasks?. 3.

(10) CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW. 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 principles, models, and writing rubrics were further introduced and elaborated. Last, studies about how situational writing tasks influenced students’ awareness of social participation were provided. 2.1 12-year Curriculum Guidelines In the former 9-year curriculum guidelines, students’ Knowledge, Skills, and Affection, which refer to “basic abilities 基本能力”, are emphasized (Grade 1-9 Curriculum Guidelines, 2007). The objectives of English are to cultivate students’ basic English communicative abilities in real situations, to raise students’ motivation and learning interests, and to arouse students’ respect toward different culture and customs. In addition to the former objectives in the 9-year curriculum guidelines, the objectives of the new 12-year guidelines put more emphasis on learning English actively and autonomously, and using English as a tool to learn the knowledge on other fields. The core concept of the new 12-year guidelines is to cultivate students as lifelong learners who can learn to be spontaneous, be active in social participation, and be communicative and interactive in real-life scenarios. The main features are shown in a wheel-in-action diagram, Figure 1, which is taken from the official brochure published by Ministry of Education.. 4.

(11) Figure1 The Main Features in a Wheel-in-action Diagram in the Official Brochure Published by Ministry of Education. Also, there are three aspects of the new 12-year curriculum guidelines: to take actions actively, to communicate and interact with others, and to pay attention to the society. The three aspects are essential elements for teachers to design courses. Teachers can develop their own courses according to these elements and to help students become independent and active learners. In the new 12-year curriculum guidelines, teachers are encouraged to design their own courses based on textbook materials. Therefore, the teacher-researcher in this study intends to create activities to involve students and arouse their awareness of the society. In the 12-year curriculum guidelines, instead of basic abilities, the guidelines focus on “key competencies 核心素養”, which consist of Knowledge, Skills, and 5.

(12) Attitudes and Values (Directions Governing for the 12-year Basic Education Curricula , 2016). Compared with the basic abilities, key competencies put emphasis on connecting knowledge with real-life context, and taking actions in real-world events (Directions Governing for the 12-year Basic Education Curricula, 2016). Moreover, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, also constructed a framework to show the crucial ability students should have in 2030 (Ramos & Schleicher, 2016). The three crucial abilities mentioned by OECD are Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes and Values. In terms of Knowledge, other than disciplinary knowledge, interdisciplinary and practical knowledge are important. Practical knowledge emphasizes the importance of students putting the knowledge they learn from the textbook into practice in real-life situations. As for Skills, social and practical skills are also emphasized in the framework constructed by OECD, which is closely related to the principles of the 12-year guidelines. According to the report in OECD, Attitudes and Values are about opening students’ horizons to other cultures, teaching students to respect cultural differences, and raising their responsibility on global events. The report of OECD also emphasizes the importance of taking effective and correspondent actions in response to the real-world situations with the knowledge they learned. Under the framework of the 12-year curriculum guidelines, teachers are inclined to design classroom activities and assessment following the principles of key competencies. Lu (2017) stated that the activities and assessment of the new 12-year curriculum guidelines should follow the principles of key competencies under three learning aspects which refer to Spontaneity, Communication and Interaction, and Social Participation. She also stated that teachers are inclined to help students construct knowledge, and design related activities to allow students to use the target knowledge in real situations. Besides, Lin (2017) mentioned that teachers have to 6.

(13) consider students’ life experiences and learning background, and combine the local resources with authentic tasks and activities when designing and teaching courses. In the present study, in order to design proper activities to involve students in learning activities, the teacher-researcher designed the courses combining the three aspects and the key competencies of the 12-year curriculum guidelines. Among the three aspects, this study mainly focused on social participation. Since the three aspects asked students to take actions actively and communicate with peers to enhance social participation, the teacher-researcher designed courses to arise students’ awareness of social participation through meaningful, communicative, interactive, and authentic situational activities. The activities in this study were designed under the neighborhood and community contexts which are closely related to students’ real-life experiences. For instance, one of unique stores such as Sunny Hills 微熱山丘 that sells special flavor of Taiwanese pineapple cakes is in the neighborhood community. Students were asked to pay a visit there, interviewed the shop owners, and wrote short paragraphs to introduce the store to other people. Under the community context, several principles of the 12-year curriculum guidelines were implemented in the situational writing tasks. Under the topic of neighborhood and community, students could enhance their social awareness and engagement. During the process of conducting the contextualized situational writing tasks, students were provided with more opportunities to use English language as a tool to communicate and interact with others. When students engaged more in situational writing tasks, their awareness of social participation might be aroused. In conclusion, the teacher-researcher of the present study designed situational writing tasks related to students’ real-life experiences. Students were inclined to apply knowledge of language to their daily life authentically.. 7.

(14) 2.2 12-year Curriculum Guidelines and Situational Writing For most students in Taiwan, textbooks are the main materials for them to learn English at school. English textbooks in Taiwan emphasize on linguistic skills such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The writing exercises on the textbooks are mostly limited to drill practices. With limited amount of authentic content related to students’ real-life experiences, students would lack ability to connect knowledge to reality. One of the writing strategies that involve students to use English as a tool in contextualized environment is situational writing (Hwang, 2014). In this section, the researcher defined situational writing and its teaching principles. Adapted from the situational writing principles mentioned above, some situational writing models were developed and further discussed afterwards. After the models, there would be tools to assess writing performance. Therefore, the last point of the situational writing needed to be discussed is writing rubrics. 2.2.1 Definition of Situational Writing There are two major definitions of situational writing. Some researchers stated that situational learning is to learn English with familiar tools such as mobile devices instead of traditional paper-and-pencil assessment (Hwang and Chen, 2013). Others defined situational writing as a learning methodology in which students learn the target knowledge and skills in certain contexts and situations that reflect the way the knowledge is used in real lives (Collins, & Brown, 1988). The present study adopted the second definition. The teacher-researcher designed series of meaningful writing tasks related to students’ real-life experiences and authentic situations to raise students’ awareness of social participation. Herod (2002) stated that situational writing, similar to authentic learning, refers to exposing students to authentic materials and activities in real-world context. Since learners are familiar to the particular context, they might be highly motivated to learn 8.

(15) in a familiar context. Also, Herod believed that teachers providing meaningful materials can make learning activities more concrete and easier for learners to learn. Furthermore, with authentic learning activities, students would be able to apply the ability learned from school into real-life practice (Chang, Lee, Wang, & Chen, 2010). 2.2.2 Principles of Situational Writing Herrington (2008) implemented a study of situational writing in university campuses and proposed guidelines of designing situational writing courses. Some critical principles of situational writing stated by Herrington are further explained as follows. (1) Teachers provide authentic context in real-life setting, with some actual concrete items which are related to certain topics. For instance, when the topic is about pet, teachers can ask students to bring their pets to school for one day. Teachers can even invite the whole class to raise a pet for the whole semester and take turns taking care of it. Students can share their ideas about the pet and can learn under the real-world settings (p. 68). (2) Teachers provide tasks closely related to real-world situations continuously with complex context. Take the pet raising lessons for example, teachers can design activities from lexical items like vocabulary, and move to sentence and paragraph levels to have students write short articles to introduce the pet. Students can keep a journal or diary to record unexpected occasions during the process of raising the pet. This is a way of authentic tasks within authentic context. (3) Teachers provide students with modeling and guiding performance. Teachers can also provide previous and similar tasks for students to model. In pet raising lessons, teachers can introduce students some books about other people’s real experiences to give students clearer and more concrete ideas about pet raising. (4) Teachers design real-world tasks which allow students to play different roles and see things in different perspectives. Teachers can design different tasks for students to experience the roles and view things from different perspectives. For example, students can take turns 9.

(16) being in charge of walking the pet, cleaning the pet, or feeding the pet. Students can learn from different roles and tasks while taking care of the pet. (5) Teachers create supporting environment for students to work with able peers through collaborative learning environment. Through collaborative activities, students can reflect on their own performances and interaction with peers socially. In pet raising lessons, some students have experiences in how to be pet keepers while others might not. Teachers can group students together and create opportunities for them to give helps and share ideas with each other in a collaborative environment. While raising the pet together, students can also learn from peers and share experience with each other. Learning in group setting, students have chances to interact with other group members naturally. (6) Teachers provide students with opportunities to express themselves on their thoughts formation, development and refinement process. After each writing activity, besides sharing the work, students can learn the process of organizing ideas from able peers. On the other hand, able peers can also construct their writing knowledge of writing skills explicitly. (7) Teachers design authentic assessment within the tasks instead of traditional written tests. Take pet raising lessons for example, teachers can design authentic learning activities such as peer discussion, problem solving tasks, poster designing. After finishing the authentic tasks, students can collect everyone’s work, categorize the writing products, and create portfolios. The works in the portfolio can be revised by peers and teachers many times instead of conducting traditional written tests. Students can have a small presentation sharing for other students and teachers at school. These principles of situational learning from Herrington’s study are closely related to the three aspects of new 12-year curriculum guidelines in Taiwan. The new 12-year curriculum guidelines put emphasis on key competencies and use English as a tool to communicate. Teachers guide students to write within the situations. As a 10.

(17) result, students can apply English in a communicative and interactive way (Herrington, 2008). After several times of practices and implementation of the situational writing activities, students might develop life-long ability to actively use English language outside of the classroom in real world autonomously. With group situational tasks, students can work collaboratively and think reflectively along with teacher’s guide. Besides, since the real-life authentic tasks for students are about their school and neighborhood life, students can develop their awareness of the community and society. 2.2.3 Situational Writing Model Based on the previous principles of situational writing activities, Patton (2004) designed series of situational writing lessons followed by a situational writing model. The steps of Patton’s situational writing model are as follows: (1) Guide students to identify a writing genre; (2) Give a few examples of the genre; (3) Guide students to specify the context and situation in order to assure students won’t misunderstand the topic; (4) Lead students to compose some sample sentences together, and then ask students to apply the sample sentences into their own short and focused paragraphs. This situational writing model from Patton (2004) provides specific steps and concrete examples for novice writers to perform situational writing tasks. The present study applied this writing model to junior high students, and the context was their neighborhood community. The teacher-researcher in Patton’s study (2004) asked college students to write academically to form thesis topics and statements. The first step was to ask students to define thesis and to think what to prepare before writing a thesis. Then she asked students to find some sample sentences, including good ones and bad ones. After reading sample sentences and discussing with peers, students could gain better understanding of how to write thesis statements. Then, teachers would ask students to create correct statements on their own. Last, students were able 11.

(18) to put the sentences into a paragraph on their own. They would have a better idea of the genre under certain situations. While Patton’s model was conducted in college level successfully, the model hasn’t been used for junior high students in Taiwan. In the present study, the teacher-researcher applied Patton’s situational writing model within the context of students’ neighborhood and community. After answering the required questions of the model, students could gain deeper understanding of their own neighborhood and community so that they could have enough background knowledge to compose writing. For example, in the present study, one of the situational writing tasks was to design posters to propagate the importance of not throwing trash on the ground. The guided questions would be “What should be the topic of the poster?”, ”What elements do we need to put on the poster?”, and so on. The discussion of these guided questions helped students create their own posters correctly and creatively. 2.2.4 Situational Writing Rubrics After students finish their writing tasks with situational writing model, assessment tools were used to examine if the students become familiar with situational writing strategy. Accordingly, teachers need to have writing rubrics in order to assess students’ performances. Situational writing performances represent students’ learning process and the changes of their writing progress. In Hwang et al.’s study (2014), they designed a situational writing system to help elementary school students sharpen their writing skills. Their experiment showed that students gained more interests in situational learning scenarios, and they applied the following writing rubrics to assess students’ writing performance. Their writing rubrics contained four dimensions, including Reasoning, Communication, Organization, and Convention. Reasoning refers to the extent how the writing content is connected to the topic. Communication indicated the extent how specific and clear the writing content is. 12.

(19) Organization represents the extent how the ideas for writing are grouped with other. Convention evaluates the numbers of grammar, spelling, and punctuation of the writing products. Hwang’s study shows clear ways to evaluate elementary school students’ writing performance in Taiwan. In the present study, the participants were junior high school students in Taiwan, so Hwang’s existing rubrics were discussed and modified to suit the purpose of the study. 2.3 Situational Writing Tasks and Social Participation 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 13.

(20) 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 14.

(21) 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. 15.

(22) 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.. 16.

(23) 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. 3.1 Participants A total of 27 eighth graders in a junior high school in Taipei City were invited to participate in this study. 15 of them were male while 12 were female. Among these 27 students, 14 of them live in the school neighborhood community while 13 live outside the region (see Table 1). Most of the students have learned English for at least six years since the third grade from the elementary school. The materials they used were the English textbook along with some worksheets designed by the teacher-researcher. The participants were heterogeneously divided into groups of five or six people. The participants were categorized by their midterm exam in the previous semester. In every heterogeneous group, there was one high achiever, two to three intermediate achievers, and one low-intermediate achiever. So the participants could help each other and discuss collaboratively. (See Table 1.). 17.

(24) Table 1 The Numbers of the Participants’ Background Information N=27. Male. Female. Total. Residents. 6. 8. 14. Non-residents. 9. 4. 13. Total. 15. 12. 27. 3.2 Instruments To examine students’ enhancement on both writing ability and awareness of social participation, four instruments were employed in this study, which are pre- and post-questionnaires, a writing rubric, informal interviews, and teaching materials. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected to answer the three research questions. First, participants were asked to write short stories and two teachers rated the work by using the writing rubric. The quantitative data showed students’ progress in writing ability. Second, to investigate student’ awareness of social participation, pre- and post-questionnaires were conducted quantitatively. In the post-questionnaire, some open-ended questions helped clarify participants’ thoughts. Based on the answers of the open-ended questions, the teacher-researcher conducted semi-structured interviews to get further ideas about the course. Last, some open-ended questions in the post-questionnaires showed participants’ preferences and feedback toward the course design. 3.2.1 Pre- and Post-questionnaires To understand students’ awareness of social participation, the pre- and postquestionnaires were conducted in the study. There were three parts of the questionnaire. The first part was about students’ addresses, the second part investigated students’ sense of social participation (See Appendix A). The last part 18.

(25) showed students’ preferences and reflections of the lesson. The post-questionnaire contained the second part of students’ social participation and the last part about students’ preferences and reflections (See Appendix B). The questionnaire was adopted from Li’s study (2008) to collect participants’ awareness of the neighborhood community they live in. Before the concrete questions of the perceptions, some questions to understand basic information of participants’ living background were essential. The second part of the questionnaire investigating participants’ social participation was modified for several times. The first version of the questionnaire in this present study was from McMillian’s study (1999). The first version has ten questions for the first dimensions while some unsuitable items were deleted to suit teenagers. Two Taiwanese researchers, Liu (2011) and Li (2008), made the second version. Liu and Li designed the questionnaires for adults while the present study was for junior high school students. The participants in the present study filled the gap by conducting research on teenagers in Taiwan. The questions in the second part contained 18 items in total and were divided into three parts, including the awareness of social participation, identification and belongingness, and feelings toward community. To avoid students’ neutral responses, the teacher-researcher applied a four-point Likert-scale instead of a five-point Likert-scale. The questions were presented in a four-point Likert-scale, ranging from 4 for “strongly agree”, 3 for “agree, 2 for “disagree”, to 1 for “strongly disagree”. The third part of the questionnaire was about students’ preferences of the activities of the course and the whole course design. This part was only carried out on the post-test. Besides examining the changes of situational writing abilities and awareness of social participation, the semi open-ended questions offered the teacher-researcher the students’ thoughts. This qualitative data helped the 19.

(26) teacher-researcher understand more about the students’ attitudinal changes on the sense of community. Moreover, the students showed their preferences toward the activities designed by the teacher-researcher. The students could also give the teacher-researcher some insights of designing courses in the future. To enable the participants to express their thoughts in a concise and accurate way, all participants were allowed to answer these questions in Chinese in open-ended questions (See Appendix A). The open-ended questions were about the preferences toward the five situational writing activities. Some representative responses to the questions were translated into English and were analyzed. 3.2.2 A Writing Rating Scale In the present study, the teacher-researcher modified existing writing rubrics from Ministry of Education (2018). There are four dimensions as follows: (1) Reasoning refers to how accurate the key points that writers present in their work. Students have to use supporting sentences to reveal their ideas in organized ways. Therefore, in this study, if the writers compose their work closely in respond to the topics, or accurately connect information and supporting ideas together, they can get credits in this dimension. (2) Organization represents the coherence and cohesion between the paragraphs and the connection between the title and the whole essay. Students should have abilities to group their ideas with conjunctions in a correct order. Therefore, in this study, if the students compose writing consistently, coherently, and organizationally, they get credits in this dimension. (3) Language Use represents the spellings, lexical word usages, grammar points, and overall understanding for the writing products. Therefore, if the writers compose their works with comprehensible language and contain accurate and appropriate word usages along with minor grammatical errors, they get credits in this dimension. 20.

(27) (4) Genre examines students’ ability to apply the correct writing genre to correspondent topic. Therefore, if the writers decided to compose writing in posters to show clear and short slogans, they can get credits in this dimension. To examine how and to what extent the activities impacted the students, the teacher-researcher rated the students’ writing products following the writing rubrics. However, since all of the writing activities in the present study were designed under the topic of community, the students would compose writing with assigned genre and topic. Therefore, the fourth dimension needed not to be examined again. According to the writing rubrics, the teacher-researcher turned the level A to E into scores as 5 to 1. The best scores that students can get would be 15 points. What’s more, in order to rate the work neutrally, another rater was invited in the present study. The rater also taught eighth graders in our school at the time when the present study was conducted The rater used the same writing rubrics to rate the writing work. When encounter inconsistency of scores on the same participants, the teacher-researcher and the rater discussed and then made an agreement on the scores of the work. 3.2.3 Informal Interviews Participants revealing particular interests of their community or feedback of the writing activities on the questionnaires were selected to do further individual informal interviews. Concerning the results of the open-ended questions, the participants with representative responses were chosen to have informal interviews. The informal interviews were conducted to elicit more detailed information from the participants. Considering limitation of implementing time, not every participant was interviewed. Only the students with different answers from others, and the students with special feedback in the questionnaire were chosen as interviewees. Also, to raise the participants’ willingness to share and lessen their anxiety, these questions were phrased in the interviewees’ native language; the interview process was also 21.

(28) conducted in Chinese. 3.2.4 Teaching Materials The teaching materials and activities for this study were designed by the teacher-researcher, following the principles of authenticity and the 12-year curriculum guidelines. With limitation of teaching hours and the tight teaching schedules, this project was defined as supplemental material to the original teaching. The teaching materials and activities were all closely connected to the current curriculum so that the teacher could apply these activities as meaningful exercises to students. There were five activities in the study, which were all focused on community. The five situational writing activities were Picture Describing, Poster Making, Article Writing, Dialogue Creating, and Interviewing. During the class, students were divided into heterogeneous groups and discussed with each other. While the teacher-researcher worked as an adviser to offer suggestions and a facilitator to help students finish the tasks (See Appendix D). 3.3 Research Design and Procedure The implementation phases of the present study lasted approximately for two months, from September 9th to October 29th of 2018, including five situational writing activities. From week one, the participants had a pre-test of writing and questionnaire. From week three to week seven, the participants conducted five situational writing tasks. After two weeks in week nine, the participants had a post-test and finished the post-questionnaire. On week one, the participants wrote a short paragraph as the pre-test of their writing ability while finishing the pre-questionnaire. Two weeks later, the participants started to implement series of situational writing activities from week three to week seven. Another two weeks later on week nine, the participants wrote another short paragraph in the same topic as the post-test in English writing. They also finished the 22.

(29) post-questionnaire about social participation and preferences of course design. Figure 2 shows the time schedule of the study. Figure2 The Time Schedule of the Procedure of the Study. Pre-test of Writing and Pre-questionnaire Week1 Picture Describing. Poster Designing. Article Writing. Dialogue Creating. Week3. Week4. Week5. Week6. Interviewing Week7. Post-test of writing and Post-questionnaire Week9 Pre-test The goal of the pre-test was to investigate students’ background knowledge of their own neighborhood community. The pre-test matched the goal of the study, which was to arouse participants’ awareness of the community and society. Students were asked to search for something that they were interested in about the neighborhood community. The students created a short paragraph about their feelings and thoughts toward the community. In addition, the participants answered the pre-questionnaire to show their awareness of social participation toward the school community. Intervention Two weeks after the pre-test, the during-writing activities were conducted for about five weeks. The teacher-researcher designed series of writing activities about the participants’ neighborhood community. The designed writing activities followed the steps of the situational writing model by Patton (2004). For each situational 23.

(30) writing activity, the teacher-researcher applied these principles to guide students. The steps were as follows. (1) Identify certain writing or editing principle. (2) Give a few examples. (3) Specify a context: when it applies, when it doesn’t apply. (4) Provide a rationale: why it matters (and when it doesn’t). (5) Apply to a list of sentences culled from student papers. (6) Keep it short and focused. For instance, the teacher-researcher led the students to go to the community and asked them to take some interesting pictures. The teacher-researcher used one of the pictures took by the students to guide the students to create sentences with the whole class. After the discussion, the students gather plenty of sample sentences to have a clearer idea how to compose their own work. Following the steps of Patton’s situational writing model, the teacher-researcher designed series of writing activities based on the school neighborhood community. The participants cooperated with each other in groups of five or six with multi-levels. The details of the five situational writing tasks are described below. Table 2 shows the brief introduction of each of the writing activities. Table 2 The Introduction of the Series of Writing Activities Schedule. Activity. Writing Genre. Aim The participants will be able to create a. Week3. Picture Describing. Sentences. Week4. Poster Designing. Slogans. Week5. Article Writing. Paragraphs. Week6. Dialogue Creating. Dialogues 24. short paragraph to introduce the neighborhood community. The participants will be able to design posters with slogans to keep the environment clean. The participants will be able to describe the food and write a short paragraph after they enjoy food in the certain store. The participants will be able to discuss and create dialogues to show the route from our school to the store they.

(31) Week7. Interviewing. Questions Sentences Notes. choose. After they finish composing the dialogue, they will use tablets to take videos. The participants will be able to interview the owner of the store in order to know the history of the store further.. First, the participants gained general picture of the neighborhood community. Therefore, in the first writing activity, the students had to go to the community in person and took some photos in groups. The students were asked to use sentences to describe the scenarios and features of the photos. For instance, the students found a beautiful restaurant when they were walking on the streets in this community. They took photos and made sentences based on the photos. In the second writing activity, besides the simple-sentence making, the participants were required to use another genre to practice writing under the situations of community. After the students walked around the community, they might spot something that needed to be improved. For example, the students observed that some residents threw trash on the ground and decided to create slogans and design posters to remind other pedestrians to tidy up the environment. After general understanding of the environment of the neighborhood community, the participants moved on to do surveys on specific aspect of the community. For instance, the students focused on a certain restaurant and introduced its special dishes in short paragraphs. The students went to the restaurant in person and taste the food there. After they finished the dish, they were required to write a short paragraph to describe the taste, the smell, the look, and the reasons why they wanted to introduce the restaurant. In addition, the participants created a short dialogue to show the direction and 25.

(32) location of the restaurant. The students could show their creativity to design interesting dialogues and a short script for a role play. The topic focused on the direction and location of the restaurant. The students also took videos with tablets and showed the videos to the class. Last, in week 7, the participants had further investigation in the certain store. The students developed questions to interview the restaurant owner. The teacher-researcher facilitated students with some tips of interviewing others. For instance, “Think what the interviewee would answer and what could be good follow-up questions”. This was what students had to prepare before the interview. The teacher-researcher also asked the students to show empathy toward the interviewees and to create a comfortable environment. After designing proper interview questions, the students made an appointment with the restaurant owner and had an interview in person. Because the students were in lack of experience of interviewing, they conducted this activity as a group. Post-test After the five situational writing activities, the participants were required to write another short paragraph about the community. Asking the participants to write in different topics would be a better way to examine their improvement in writing. However, because of the tight learning schedule with only five entries, pre- and post-tests were both in the same topic about the community. After finishing the writing activities and the posttest, the participants shared their work to the whole class. The content consisted of all the work they had finished during the intervention and some suggestions and feedback given from teachers and other classmates. After the post-test and the follow-up sharing event, the participants were required to finish the post-questionnaire.. 26.

(33) 3.4 Data Analysis The results of the study were evaluated both quantitatively and qualitatively. Data analysis diagram is listed below in Figure 3. Figure 3 The Diagram of Data Analysis. For the first and second research questions in the present study, the teacher-researcher used the paired-sample t-tests analysis to analyze quantitative data from the questionnaires. Descriptive statistics were used to explain mean score differences between pre- and post-treatments. In research question 1 for writing ability, three dimensions, Reasoning, Organization, and Language use as well as the total score of the work, were compared with pre-test and post-test scores. In the same questionnaire, there were also questions for students to answer research question 2 of social participation. There were also three dimensions of the pre- and post-questionnaires, which are Awareness of social participation, Identification and 27.

(34) belongingness, and Feelings toward community. In addition, some open-ended questions in the post-questionnaire and participants’ post-writing works were also severed as quantitative data for the study. To answer research question 3, the teacher-researcher designed some open-ended questions for participants to answer in short answer to show their preferences, feelings, and improvements toward the project. The data were categorized and analyzed in order to get more insights into students’ thoughts and to serve as supportive evidence to quantitative data. The qualitative data were read and organized by the teacher-researcher. The students’ responses were categorized based on the open-ended questions and the writing activities from the data. The teacher-researcher read across the responses repeatedly to identify meaningful and representative responses to answer the research questions. The teacher-researcher revisited the analyzation several times to ensure the appropriateness of the interpretations. The teacher-researcher also invited a colleague, who was also the rater of the study, to help look over the results of the qualitative data. She helped confirm whether the results were properly interpreted. She also provided suggestions regarding whether the interpretations of the qualitative data were subjective and should be modified accordingly.. 28.

(35) CHAPTER FOUR RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. The purpose of the study was to examine how the situational writing tasks affected students’ writing ability and awareness of social participation. There are three research questions in the present study, so the results and discussion were also divided into three sections. The three parts were analysis of writing ability, social participation, and course design. The results were discussed and interpreted with both quantitative and qualitative data. These data would provide evidence for the teacher-researcher to evaluate students’ improvement in English writing and sense of social participation. Additionally, the feedback from the participants would give the teacher-researcher some meaningful insights which might help teachers’ professional ability in designing courses. 4.1 Analysis of Writing Ability To examine whether situational writing tasks in the school-based curriculum helped students improve their writing ability, the participants were required to write short stories before and after the course. After collecting the writing works, the teacher-researcher and a colleague rated the works with the same rubrics. Table 3 showed the descriptive statistics from the scores of pre- and post-writing tasks.. 29.

(36) Table 3 Descriptive Statistics of the Students’ Writing Scores Before and After the Intervention. N=27. Pre-test. Post-test. Dimension. M. SD. M. SD. t. df. p. Reasoning. 3.38. 0.90. 3.81. 1.17. -2.28. 26. *.03. Organization. 3.61. 0.98. 3.57. 1.10. 0.96. 26. .85. Language use. 3.58. 1.03. 3.42. 1.13. .941. 26. .36. Total score. 9.85. 2.60. 10.80. 3.20. -2.13. 26. *.044. * Statistically significant difference (p < .05) Table 3 showed that there is significant difference in total score of pre- and post-tests (p-value (0.044) < 0.05). The mean scores of total score in the post-test (mean = 10.80) are higher than that of the pre-test (mean = 9.85). This result implied that students’ writing ability might have been improved after the intervention. As claimed by Herod (2002), the meaningful courses designed by the teacher could provide students with more concrete learning experience. Hwang et al.’s study (2014) also applied the principles to elementary students in Taiwan. In the present study, the results also showed positive feedback from the participants in junior high school students in Taipei City. To less the participants’ anxiety, they used Chinese to express their ideas, and the teacher-researcher translated the responses in the results and discussion into English. In students’ post-questionnaires, many of them also showed positive attitude toward English writing. For example, a student replied that “I think I was bad at English. But I did many exercises in this course. I think I have progress. I am very happy.” (S17, Lin) Another student also stated that “I tried very hard this time. Now I won’t use Chinese grammar to write English sentences.” (S21, Chen) Besides the total score, the numbers of each dimension was worth discussing. 30.

(37) Table 2 indicates that Reasoning has significant difference (p-value (0.031) < 0.05). The mean scores significantly improved from pre-test (mean = 3.38) to post-test (mean = 3.81). Reasoning refers to whether students can accurately connect their sentences to the target topic. The results indicated that students might have gained more information during the course which provided more writing sources and ideas for them to finish the posttest. For instance, a student wrote “I have learned more things about the community from the course, and I will use them to create interesting dialogues.” (S16, Wu) While Reasoning has changed significantly, Organization and Language Use did not show significant difference. The reasons might be lacking in implementation time. With only five situational writing activities, the participants were not easy to have great improvement in Organization and Language Use. Though they have gathered more information about the community, they were able to create sentences with more details about the topic. Similar to Lu’s study (2017), when teacher designed courses which were closely related to students’ real-life experiences, students would apply what they have learned into real scenarios. In the present study, qualitative and quantitative data both showed students’ writing ability might have been improved after the intervention. 4.2 Analysis of Social Participation 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, preand post-questionnaires were conducted before and after the intervention. The 31.

(38) 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. Dimension Awareness of Social Participation Identification and Belongingness Feelings toward Community Total score. Post-test. M. SD. M. SD. t. df. p. 2.87. 0.32. 3.06. 0.50. -2.04. 26. *.05. 3.31. 0.54. 3.19. 0.72. .78. 26. .44. 2.95. 0.60. 2.94. 0.59. .85. 26. .93. 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 postquestionnaires 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 32.

(39) 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. M. SD. M. SD. t. df. p. 3.03. .24. 3.14. .49. -.81. 13. .43. 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. Dimension Awareness of Social Participation Identification and Belongingness. * Statistically significant difference (p < .05). 33.

(40) 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. Dimension Awareness of Social Participation Identification and Belongingness Feelings toward Community Total score. Post-test. M. SD. M. SD. t. df. p. 2.70. .33. 2.98. .51. -2.14. 12. *.053. 3.23. .62. 3.06. .75. .61. 12. .56. 2.85. .74. 2.93. .47. -3.47. 12. .73. 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 34.