Intellectual Production #8: Attentional Record and Analysis
For context, I teach high school Social Studies and serve as one of two Teacher-Librarians at my school.
My recording was conducted on June 24th, the second day of Review and Completion, a period of 3 days after the conclusion of classes for students who need the extra time to reach a passing grade. I chose this day as I had the ability to be cognizant of my attention, with fewer students in the school there were fewer distractions within the classroom and school. My observation began after arriving at the school and getting settled.
Attentional Record Table:
The table above (click to enlarge) is a record of where my attention, at least consciously, was throughout the 12-hour period of observation. Similar attentional activities throughout the day are colour coded to illustrate frequency, and where appropriate affective experiences are listed beside the object.
Attentional Record Chart:
The chart above (click to enlarge) shows the cumulative amount of time spent on each attentional activity throughout the period, by category.
Analysis
Deep Focus
Report Cards were submitted the day before and one of my first priorities was to go through the Verification Reports I had run to check for any mistakes or changes needing to be made, luckily no misspelling of students names this time but some awkward wording that I felt needed to be cleaned up for the few parents who actually read the report cards. A short turnaround between submission and posting made it much easier to achieve deep attention on this task (Citton, 2017, p. 10). The reduced environmental distractions also made it easier to achieve deep focus on many of my other tasks throughout the day (Citton, 2017, p. 10).
Distractions
One of the most distracting things for me throughout the day, or rather something directing my attention away from what I intended to focus on, was the attentional record itself (Citton, 2017). In paying attention to what I was paying attention to, I would stop to check my watch and write down every time I shifted focus or task. Exemplifying one of the main challenges of observational studies, by observing my attention I changed the very thing I set out to observe.
Another distracting element throughout the day, was the activity in the hallway, someone walking by or a conversation going on around the corner, this was mostly an involuntary attentional act, a momentary filtering for keywords, or my name to see if it required more attentional effort (Citton, 2017, p. 171 & 175). At times evolving into mild levels of frustration at the staff, who seemingly had nothing else to occupy their time with but to hold long conversations in the hallway, did they not have report cards to check, or students coming in for Review and Completion!! At times I was regretting my decision to focus on my report cards and feel better about it later, rather than abandoning the task to join the conversation and be social, a true example of what Citton (2017) describes as opportunity cost (p. 180). I was also frustrated that they didn’t ask me to join in!
Usability
In a tie-in to our first module, the most frustrating part of my day came from a usability issue as I tried to set up the electronic booking calendar for our Library Learning Commons ahead of school start up in September. We are going into our fourth timetable in four years and have a new Teacher-Librarian for next year, so the length of bookings needed to be changed and staff availability needed to be updated. Over an hour of frustration later I ended up giving up and finding a more productive use of my time, and to avoid my laptop becoming a projectile, as I could not seem to find the right setting to make it work the way I wanted, nor could I find a solution online to match my issue. It definitely pointed out some pitfalls to avoid in constructing my own learning tools, in this course and in my practice.
Reflections
One of the things that really stood out for me was the amount of time spent multitasking, on reflection it shouldn’t surprize me as I have always done more than one thing at a time, especially when conducting automatic actions, those conducted in an unconscious manner, like driving, cooking, eating, etc., however seeing it mapped out really made it stand out for me (Citton, 2017, p. 179).
As Citton (2017) points out we are never truly distracted, but rather our attention is elsewhere, either voluntarily or involuntarily (p. 175). This is especially true of our students who have so many different devices and medias calling for their attention when they are in class, we as teachers need to recognize this and plan our instruction so that students choose to pay attention to what we want them to, which requires a lot more attention and thought on our part to plan and execute (Citton, 2017; Jenkins, 2006).
References:
Citton, Y. (2017). The Ecology of Attention. Polity. (Introduction, pp. 1-23 & Conclusion, pp. 171-199)
de Castell, S. & Jenson, J. (2004). Paying Attention to Attention: New Economies for learning. Educational Theory, 54 (4): 381 – 397. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0013-2004.2004.00026.x
Green, C.S., & Bavelier, D. (2012). Learning, Attentional Control, and Action Video Games. Current Biology 22(6), R197–R206. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2012.02.012
Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: where old and new media collide. New York University Press. (Introduction) https://hdl-handle-net.eu1.proxy.openathens.net/2027/heb.05936
University of British Columbia. (n.d.). Foundations of Educational Technology: Attention. https://canvas.ubc.ca/courses/96880/pages/attention?module_item_id=4381924