Providence, R.I.--Students in Providence College's Providence Alliance for Catholic Teachers (PACT) program recently showcased the outcomes of their Action Research Projects.

The result was a diverse and innovative collection of projects from the PACT 7 teachers (members of the seventh two-year PACT class) that included subjects like studying the use of various technologies for student accountability, the effects of background music on performance in tests, the impact of student-developed rubrics on learning, and teaching mathematics to boys.

The poster presentations preceded a Mass celebrated by Rev. Mark D. Nowel, O.P., dean of undergraduate and graduate studies. The Mass was followed by a dinner program, which bid farewell to PACT 7 members, recognized PACT 8 participants, and welcomed the PACT 9 class.

PACT, established at PC in 2001 as an affiliate program with the University of Notre Dame, is a unique postgraduate teaching and education program. Recent college graduates contribute two years of service to young people as teachers in Catholic schools in New England while at the same time studying to earn master's degrees, teacher certification, or both.

The Action Research Projects serve as final presentations for the students. This year, PACT 7 members presented to PACT administrators, faculty, Catholic school principals and superintendents, and parents.

First class to present posters
PACT director Brother Patrick Carey, CFC, Ph.D., said the PACT 7 class took the quality of the program's Action Research Project requirement to a much higher level.

"One noteworthy feature was that this class was the first to present its findings in a poster presentation format," he said.

One project measured students' interest in learning material in a Social Justice course via storytelling, instead of lectures.

Charles Mansour '09G offers his poster presentation.

"There is a lot of research that suggests stories are a very effective and engaging way to convey material that may seem uninteresting or too difficult to comprehend," Mansour said. "I contacted friends who had served or were then presently serving internationally and asked them to write letters to my classes, explaining what they were doing, why they were doing it, what they were learning from it, and how they saw God in the process."

Mansour directed his students to read the letters (which served as stories) and write an open-ended journal response to each one. He noted that the letters elicited emotional responses from the students that challenged them to move into action and apply justice to their own lives.

"It's one thing to report to students the raw data, the numbers, the statistics, the Church teaching, the history and politics of it all," Mansour said, "and then it's something entirely different to put a face to those numbers, to explore the implications of those data, and to humanize and concretize the reality of suffering in the world."

Use of technology in teaching English
Sara Woolf '09G studied the effectiveness of using blogs to improve student motivation--especially in writing--in "Teaching and Learning on the World Wide Web: Blogging in the Middle School Classroom." She conducted her research with her middle school students at St. Francis of Assisi School in Warwick, R.I.

In her research, she found that using blogs resulted in all students (100%) participating in online written discussions.

"Student motivation and interest in the work increased enormously," she said, "with previously reluctant writers becoming enthusiastic daily participants."

Woolf noted one student reported, "I loved blogging as part of this class because it helped the class discuss more ideas than if we were just talking in class, because everyone contributed . . . instead of hearing from just a few."

Woolf said she will continue to use blogging as a teaching tool at Beavercreek High School in Ohio, where she has been hired to teach English this fall.

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