YEARS 7–12 IDEAS
ARTICLES
FOR THE CLASSROOM
Enhancing Adaptability in Grade 9 Boys through Task-Based Learning (continued)
and/or affective adjustment in the face of uncertainty and novelty”
(p. 1). According to this definition, the NGLS is the uncertainty to
which students must adjust.
These key aspects of TBL draw together the specific needs of
boys and take into account the NGLS. Due to this strong link, TBL
is a natural choice of action to take for the project. It is possible
to embed tasks that cater for boys and their different academic
abilities and the manipulation of specific tasks within TBL that
can assist students adapt to the NGLS. Assigning appropriate
tasks teaches boys how to use the space.
A Boys’ School Context
The key aspects relating to a NGLS that intersect with the distinct
needs of boys include boys’ natural physicality, their ability to
adapt, and their diverse range of learning needs. Boys’ natural
physicality has been addressed by Lingard, Martino, and Mills
(2009) through implementation of an activities-based program.
They found that increasing the amount of physical activity
through the program successfully increased the engagement of
boys in the classroom. TBL is flexible enough in nature to include
aspects which account for the physical nature of boys. Amongst
secondary school students, Martin et al. (2013) identified that
low-achieving males are the least likely to be able to adapt. This
places great significance on the project theme of adaptability in
the context of boys’ schools. Given Martin’s findings, it is likely
that, in a class of 18 boys, there will be a number of boys who
need assistance when adapting to the NGLS.
The literature review demonstrates the clear links between core
aspects of the research question. These core aspects include
boys’ learning, NGLS, adaptability and TBL. A synthesis of the
literature demonstrates that TBL has the capacity to help boys
adapt to NGLS.
Research Context
The project was conducted at The Scots College, a high fee-
paying independent boys’ school in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs. It
has a reformed Presbyterian heritage, and draws on its Christian
values to shape and inform practice in the school. Students are
predominantly from a high socioeconomic background, with
many students coming from the Eastern Suburbs and North Shore
of Sydney. There is also a strong representation of boarding
students from rural Australia and overseas. The College has nine
campuses and approximately 2,000 students.
There is a range of pedagogical strategies which caters to
the broader needs of boys in the classroom, including explicit
teaching, hands-on activities, high structure, and success criteria
(Lingard, Martino, & Mills, 2009). Owing to the range of abilities
present in the class, a targeted approach to differentiation
in the task design is essential. TBL presents an opportunity
to plan a range of tasks, with both high and low degrees of
support scaffolding, to allow accessibility to a broad range of
student abilities. The strength of the proposed TBL action is that
it can embed the specific needs of boys into the pedagogical
approach, including their physicality, ability to adapt, and range
of learning needs.
The participants were 18 boys, 14-15 years old, from my Grade
9 Science class. The class met for nine 50-minute classes per
fortnight, and the action occurred during Term 3, a 10-week
teaching term between July and September 2017. The class was
selected because their classes were scheduled in the NGLS.
Permission for students to participate in the project was obtained
from students and parents by having them sign a consent
form. Student names were omitted when reporting findings.
Participation in the research project was entirely voluntary;
students were informed they could withdraw from the study at
any time.
Task-Based Learning as an Action
TBL aims to bring together a range of content delivery methods
(Zheng, 2014) where students choose their learning based on the
set tasks, and classroom activities are designed by the teacher
to meet the learning outcomes. TBL combines the following
aspects into the instruction method:
The Action
Based on the summary of the literature, the action for the project
was to introduce TBL as a teaching strategy to help students
adapt to the NGLS. The expectation was that by implementing
a teaching technique to fit the space, students would respond
positively and have more success in adapting to this exciting,
unfamiliar, and new environment.
• Considers the space in which the task is undertaken (Ling &
Fraser, 2014)
• Allows a degree of freedom in choosing from a range of tasks
to meet a student's ability (Basset, 2014)
The boys received a digital content outline at the beginning of
each week. Each task outlined desired objectives and described
how these objectives were to be achieved by completing
particular tasks. The task outline also specified where each task
was to be completed. At the end of the week, students needed
• Connects tasks with the real world (Zheng, 2013; Basset,
2014)
• Embeds differentiation by the degree of scaffolding (Lingard,
Martino, & Mills, 2009)
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SCIENCE EDUCATIONAL NEWS VOL 67 NO 3