Pupils' Voices on Achievement: An alternative to the standards agenda

Raising achievement has become a public issue, with policy strategies focused on target setting. Pupil performance is seen as an indicator of school success; the pupils' perceptions of school life find little place in the standards discourse. A study of under-achievement included group interviews with pupils in the early years of secondary school in Scotland. School experience emerged as a social rather than a pedagogic experience, with instrumental goals and arbitrary criteria. Comparative monitoring of performance and conformity with peer norms shaped pupils' perceptions of achievement. Relationships with teachers were characterised by the absence of a discourse about learning. The study underlined the importance of listening to the pupil's voice in school in order to focus on learning rather than on performance and 'standards' of achievement.     

How gender influences learners working collaboratively with science simulations

This paper presents an overview of several research projects involving groups working with science simulations, in particular with relation to gender effects on science learning. The groups of learners discussed include: pairs of adults working together on computer simulations at a distance, or side by side, pairs of 15 year-olds working with computer simulations, and larger groups of younger children working co-operatively on combinations of computer simulations and real science experiments. While collaboration may be in many respects a good thing, there is a growing realisation amongst science educators that particular features of the learning experience are altered by the gender composition of the groups. These features range from the way in which conflict is expressed or the task perceived, to differences in the way that dialogue is used. These findings need to be considered together with evidence concerning the barriers which girls experience while learning science. This work is reviewed, together with some research projects involving students working collaboratively with computers on science topics. Gender differences in the most productive way of forming groups to work at the computer on science simulations are considered.     

Minding the gap: Elucidating the disconnect between arts participation metrics and arts engagement within immigrant communities

A growing gap between national metrics of arts participation and the many, evolving ways in which people participate in artistic and aesthetic activities limits the degree to which such data can usefully inform policy decisions. The National Endowment for the Arts’ Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA) is the primary source of arts participation data in the USA, but this instrument inadequately evaluates how members of minority and immigrant communities participate in the arts. As the USA nears a historic demographic shift to being a majority–minority nation – non-Hispanic White individuals will no longer be a demographic majority by about 2041 – obtaining more accurate measures of artistic activities that are meaningful to a more diverse population will be of increasing importance for public policy-making. To better understand the extent to which the SPPA's questions capture the range of artistic activities engaged in by members of immigrant communities, we cognitively tested a subset of the survey's questions with Chinese immigrants to the USA as a pilot case. We found that interviewees participate in a range of culturally specific and non-culturally specific arts activities that they did not report in response to the survey's questions. In this article, we draw upon these interviews to discuss the reasons underpinning the gap and suggest implications for updating research tools and future research. A better understanding of the gap between measured and actual “arts participation” will lead to improved measures and information to support artistic expression and arts more reflective of contemporary society.     

Preparing teachers for inclusive classrooms

Effective teaching skills consist of high levels of student engagement based on good classroom and time management skills; the ability to scaffold learning that is adapted to students' current levels of understanding; cognitively engaging students in higher-order thinking; and encouraging and supporting success. The research reported here suggests that in elementary classrooms, effective teaching skills are effective for all students, both with and without special education needs.     

Personal inquiry: innovations in participatory design and models for inquiry learning

This paper describes a participatory design approach to the development of inquiry‐based learning supported through a technology toolkit. The work is part of an interdisciplinary project – Personal Inquiry (PI). The paper focuses on the approach we adopted, concentrating in particular on the two mediating artefacts we used to guide and frame the design process during two design workshops. The first mediating artefact used was an inquiry framework developed as part of the wider PI project and the second was Kellett’s enquiry research bubbles, which is a framework to guide enquiry‐based thinking processes. The paper reports on data collected during the workshops and reflects on the value of the approach adopted. The paper also explores the PI‐team’s own reflections on the design process and its role in the overall project.     

Boys and their reading: Conceptionsof young people about the successof the full on magazine

ABSTRACT

Design and technology is a relatively new subject in the National Curriculum for England and Wales. This paper presents a theoretical consideration of design and technology and argues that it has the potential to provide a classroom context which encourages critical thinking and analytical competence in pupils. This claim is based on the view that design and technology requires a type of classroom interaction that is different from that most commonly practised in our schools, both primary and secondary. Learning in design and technology depends upon collaboration between teacher and pupils, and between the pupils themselves, and as such is ideally suited to the development of collaborative learning, a method of learning which encourages decision making after a period of critical enquiry and experimentation. We further argue that the successful implementation of the design and technology curriculum hinges upon the development of classroom talk, because talk plays the central role in the development of critical thinking, reflection and evaluation, all important features of design and technology.