INCORPORATION OF DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION INTO

82 problems, which was doing more tenses and vocabulary exercises. R FN 1.8 The classroom problems that students formulated as a result of their deliberation were all real. The students agreed that the problems exist in their class were: 1 pronunciation problem; 2 different speed of learning that could make some students difficult to keep up with the others in understanding and memorizing materials; 3 the feeling of diffident which brings a consequence on motivation issues that led some students to low participation. Most of those form ulated problems were in accordance with a number of reports from experts’ studies on heterogeneous ability classes e.g. Ur, 2005, as cited in Faleiros, 2009; Joyce McMillan, 2010; Elizondo, 2013. The solutions that students proposed were practical classroom activities namely book report, storytelling, weekly writing tasks, and frequent speaking practice. In addition, their aspiration indicated that they wanted to learn in a fun, relaxed environment. In fact, some solutions that the students proposed might not correspond to the course goal in some senses. This could happen due to a number of factors, which one of them probably because within such limited time, students could not come up with further aspirations regarding studying in a mixed- competence environment. Therefore, to help students come up with the most appropriate action, the issue of different learning ability was brought into focus on a further discussion, so that an appropriate action could be initiated. When coming to the discussion of how to deal with more and less capable student’s issue, Desta came up with the term ‘togetherness’ translated, R FN 1.9, which was further interpreted by Vino as “learning together among peers in the 83 condition that when one student had better understanding, he would share the knowledge to the students with less understanding ” translated, R FN 1.9. From this idea, all students agreed to work together in order that the course goal could be achieved. In other words, all participants had consented to undertake collaborative learning throughout the course. As action research is an attempt to foster a democratic approach to education Mills, 2013, as cited in Creswell, 2015, p.580, the students as the participants of this action research had to come up with suitable solutions according to the course goal. In this effort, therefore, some knowledge related to teaching learning strategies within the principles of differentiated instruction Tomlinson, 2001, 2014 was explained to the students in the hope that students could see how their proposed ideas corresponded with the respective principles. The following field note portrays the aforementioned process R FN 1.10. Further, Ms. Nora as the teacher collaborator started to explain some alternatives to solve problems in mixed-competence classes according to the expert, while comparing to the result of students’ brainstorming. Ms. Nora explained that their collaboration in learning would be undertaken through working together in different groups composed of different students, so that they could enrich themselves from broader sources. Ms. Nora also emphasized the fact that the uniqueness of each student made them have different learning needs in particular. Therefore, both the lessons and the tasks need to be adjusted according to each students’ needs in terms of difficulty level and topic preferences. R FN 1.10 Based on the field note above, the students were given new insights on the importance of differentiated instruction implementation in their particular classroom. It was explained how the concept of differentiated instruction was highly relevant to the practical solutions that students had proposed. 84 As students had been assisted to understand the relevance of differentiated instruction principles to their desired solutions, they were then asked if they agreed to adopt the learning strategies of differentiated instruction. The moment was captured in the following field note R FN 1.11. Ms. Rina concluded what Ms. Nora had explained and closed the discussion by asking the students one by one whether they agree to adopt the elaborated strategies in their learning. Then, students from Amin to Dony take turn to state their agreement. It turned out that all of them said “agree” to try the offered strategies of differentiated instruction. R FN 1.11 Based on the information in the field note, the students had understood the concept of differentiated instruction and how it was suitable to solve their classroom problems while still maintaining the practical learning strategies they proposed previously. Accordingly, the participants agreed to incorporate differentiated instruction strategies in the action they would committedly take throughout the course period. It was important that all students voluntarily participated throughout the whole action research process and make efforts to implement the agreed solutions in the aim of solving their group’s problems. Therefore, at the end of the session the participants signed a consent letter see Appendix D as a remark of their voluntarism. All in all, a series of action taken as the solutions to solve classroom problems is constituted of a number of points. First of all, the practical learning strategies proposed by students were implemented within the fundamental basis of differentiated instruction principles, so that every individual’s need on learning would be fulfilled. Those strategies included the adjustment and diversification of materials, form of exercises, and learning activities according to individual capability. Other than that, flexible ways of grouping the students were applied to PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 85 also fulfill participants’ desire to work together in collaborative learning environment. Based on the aforementioned finding, it was known that students were willing to embrace differences among them and use every opportunity to give and receive support from peers. Therefore, collaborative learning was adopted as the second strategy to enhance the learning process since the students highly desired to study in a collaborative learning environment. Additionally, the students would view their variety of strength and weakness in speaking as a uniqueness that they need to develop, instead of creating competitive atmosphere among them. Finally, fun and enjoyable learning activities were applied to make the learning atmosphere more relaxed and less stressful for the students. The findings above have provided a series of empirical truth to answer the first research question. That is, it was found that the participants agreed to take an action for solving their group’s problems into which differentiated instruction strategies were incorporated. This corroborated the universal notions that to teach the mixed-competence class, a teacher needs to differentiate some instructional aspects Ur, 2005, as cited in Faleiros, 2009; Levy, 2008; Bremner, 2008; Faleiros, 2009; Tomlinson, 2014 as well as learning atmosphere that can arouse learners’ motivation and ensure students’ interest in learning Xanthou Pavlou, 2008; Gurgenize, 2012; Salwa, 2014. In addition to that, students’ commitment to study collaboratively was in accordance with Hall et al. 2003 and Tomlinson’s 2014 suggestion that working in collaborative groups can raise the effectiveness of learners’ knowledge construction during learning processes. In PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 86 short, the overall action consented by the students during the mini workshop session was in accordance with the alternatives proven to be effective in teaching mixed-competence classes, as some educational experts have suggested. After all, as the process of action research is dynamic and never ending Burns, 2010, as cited in Mbato, 2013, it was agreed that further teachinglearning strategies could be proposed anytime during the research cycles according to the necessities and students’ aspiration. This was done in order to continuously refine the set of action taken during the research. Throughout the action research undertakin g, students’ aspirations and suggestions were widely welcomed. They were able to convey whatever aspirations they had in mind through writing in the reflective journals, as well as aspiration cards box. In the classroom, a box containing of blank cards was prepared for the students to write any aspirations anonymously and the teachers would regularly check. Through this, they would be free to convey any ideas without worries. This was one of the efforts to promote democracy among learners. As one of the academicians from Sanata Dharma University, I hold the responsibility for sharing the values promoted by the institution, which is underpinned by Ignatian pedagogy that focuses on “the attainment of academic excellence and humanistic values ” Mbato, 2013, p.4. One of these efforts has been done through the whole process of this action research. The full involvement of students in this research stage was a form of empowering and emancipating students as they could take part in making decisions for determining their future learning. Regarded as valuable participants in the research, students joined the PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 87 process of negotiating the most suitable learning strategies based on their own aspiration, in the pursuit of achieving the course goal. This process was highly relevant to the vision and mission of Sanata Dharma University, which is “participating in the education of young people in the attempt to protect and develop human dignity by integrating academic excellence and humanistic v alues” Mbato, 2013, p.60.

B. EFFECTIVENESS OF THE TAKEN ACTION

This section presents the analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data serving as the empirical evidence, which forms the basis for the discussion of the seco nd research question: how effective was ‘the action’ in developing learners’ speaking skills as well as promoting learners’ collaboration skill? There were two focuses underlying the second research problem. The first focus was students’ learning process. This was represented through students’ collaboration skill, which was later followed with learning autonomy. Meanwhile, the second focus was students’ learning achievement, represented through the improvement of their speaking skills. The effectiveness of the taken action was therefore presented in two parts of discussions. The first discussion is based on the qualitative data obtained from the teaching and learning process throughout the action research cycles. Therefore, it is presented chronologically in a way that agrees with the action research sequence. Meanwhile, the second discussion is based on the evidence 88 presented by the quantitative data, i.e. students’ test results and questionnaire responses.

1. Teaching and Learning Process throughout the Action Research Cycles

To display findings and discussions on whether the action could solve problems in mixed-competence English speaking class, this section is organized sequentially based on the action research cycles. The consideration is because every cycle is an important part of both teacher’s professional learning and students’ academic development. In addition, each stage of it provides data to inform and make improvement in the next stage.

a. Action research cycle 1

This section presents the action undertaken during the first action research cycle, which was conducted in three lesson meetings, i.e. session 1, session 2, and session 3. Important findings related to the conduct of action research cycle 1 are elaborated in this section as well. The discussion is distributed into three parts, namely planning, acting observing, and reflecting. 1 Planning This action research is a part of teacher’s professional learning. Therefore, every stage of it was begun with a proper planning performed by the teacher researcher and two teacher collaborators. The planning stage for cycle 1 was based on data obtained during the mini-workshop session in which students had stated their aspirations. All teachers agreed to conduct lesson planning two days PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 89 prior to the teaching day so there was still time to revise. Regarding the learning materials, there have been a set of prepared material in the form of course book, so the teachers just followed this prepared material. What mattered most in each planning stage was how to deliver the materials acceptably with some adjustments for teaching in mixed-competence students environment. In planning for the first cycle, we relied on the deliberation results obtained from the mini workshop session prior to the lessons. From that, we included students’ aspiration to have “fun learning atmosphere” and “extensive speaking practices ” Translated; Ben, Vino, Desta in R FN 1.8. Therefore, games and quizzes were applied at least once in each meeting to maintain the fun learning atmosphere while practicing speaking. Other activities were also prepared to provide students the maximum opportunities to practice speaking as well as to encourage them to speak actively. Those activities included: 1 class group discussion, 2 classgroup brainstorming, 3 individual presentation in group, 4 group presentation in front of the class. In addition to those, the teachers adopted some strategies to differentiate the instruction and at the same time applied collaborative learning principles. First, this cycle applied flexible grouping that was recommended in differentiating instruction Hall et al., 2003; Tomlinson, 2014, p.23. In some lesson sessions, the students were grouped based on competence levels, while in some other sessions they were put in different competence groups. In different lesson sessions, on the other hands, students were also given the opportunity to select their own group mates. The application of homogenous ability grouping was concentrated in the 90 input-reception session intending to ease the knowledge delivery according to students’ level of capability. Understanding students’ different level of initial competence was important so that the teachers could adjust the teaching strategies. Therefore, the information regarding this was obtained from the pre-test result. Based on the pre- test result, students’ initial competences were on three different levels according to CEFR-based scoring see chapter III, section C.2.a. They ranged from A1 to B1. Thus, this information was used to perform the homogenous grouping when necessary, as well as prepare the tiered activities and exercises, which was the second differentiation strategy adopted in this cycle. In this case, the differentiation of learning process was also manifested through giving students tiered level of individual assignments. The tier levels were divided to tier 1 bottom, tier 2 middle, and tier 3 top. The third of all, open-ended form of tasks were given as much as possible. The purpose of this was enabling students to perform their best on the same task, yet at their own pace Xanthou Pavlou, 2008, p.6. 2 Acting and observing Doing action research means undertaking action to improve the situation during teaching and learning while at the same time collecting data Burns, 2010. Practically, the activities of implementing the action acting goes together with seeing how things are going observing, which are often performed hand in hand. Therefore, the reports of the two phases are put together into the same section. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 91 a The effectiveness of games in creating fun learning atmosphere The overall learning activities were wrapped in fun atmosphere through group or classroom games. Thus, the implementation of games in learning is one of the issues that need to discuss. Games were usually applied at every beginning of the class, mostly used to introduce vocabulary before going further to practicing speaking . The idea to use games at the session’s beginning was also aimed to break the ice and raise students’ mood. However, the games turned out not to be always effective to make the new vocabulary linger on every student’s memory because games required speed as well as competitiveness, although in a less serious sense. An episode of researcher’s field note portraying the condition while playing game is presented below R FN 3.7. We played “run grab” vocabulary game. Students’ worked with a partner and their hands were tied. There were new vocabulary related to the text of “Extreme Hobbies” that they were going to read, hung on the wall. Using the projector, the teacher showed a word definition, and as quick as possible students with their hands tied had to run to the word which matches the definition showed at the front. The situation was quite chaotic as students ran here and there trying to grab the correct word. Some students like Yosep and Amin were very competitive as they grabbed any words close to them, although it was not the right word. When one word was matched to the definition, we stopped a while before going to the next definition, to read the word and the definition. After the game, all of the students did the written vocabulary exercises in the books. Even though the words in the vocabulary exercise were the same as the ones they found in the game, not all students remembered all the words meanings as some students still looked at the dictionary, or asked other peers. R FN 3.7 Based on the lesson episode described in the above field note, the selected game was time-consuming, yet ineffective. Therefore, teachers need to think of a more efficient way to introduce vocabulary yet still keeping a fun way. After all, students still enjoy the games and value them as beneficial activities, as it is described in students’ interview result below.