National Themes: ‘What Makes Great Pedagogy?’

National Themes: ‘What Makes Great Pedagogy?’ Proposal

A Study of KS4 English students in Cross-Sectoral Online Collaboration.

‘Learning is a social and collaborative activity in which people develop their thinking together.” (James, 2009)

The Teaching Schools initiative (2010) aims to improve standards in education and leadership through school to school support and peer to peer learning. The National College and the Institute of Education are supporting Teaching Schools in this initiative in three research and development (R&D) themes, the first of which is ‘What Makes Great Pedagogy? Nine Strong Claims from Research.’ (Husbands, Pearce, 2012.) The seventh of those claims states that “Effective pedagogies focus on developing higher order thinking and meta-cognition, and make good use of dialogue and questioning in order to do so.”  It is the latter part of this claim, and its focus on dialogue and questioning that I propose to explore with our partner schools.

‘In a 2009 government web cast, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan described summer learning loss as “devastating.”  This is what researchers have often referred to as the “summer slide.”  It is estimated that school summer breaks will cause the average student to lose up to one month of instruction, with disadvantaged students being disproportionately affected (Cooper, 1996).’

Research Question: In what ways does a collaborative summer reading programme impact on student confidence in English and enjoyment of reading.

Rationale: This project seeks to explore the ways in which pupil dialogue and collaboration at KS4 English (language) can improve attainment and affect learning in a virtual space.

Proposal:

Staff will receive an initial training session from Google on how to use their online tools. (This session is now also open to staff across the alliance.) Following this, over the summer a range of C/D borderline year 10 pupils from across our alliance will engage in a 6 week online collaborative reading programme using Google tools. This will not be online tutoring but will feature activities such as reading an extract from a childrens author then having a week of ‘ask the author’ where students can ask questions directly (but safely.) Students will also be expected to write a collaborative story and keep a record of new vocabulary.  

Methodology

The main source of data will be focus group interviews pre and post intervention. In addition, students will sit a standard writing test. This data will then be measured against their final attainment. One person will mark all these myself and will also qualitatively examine pupils’ use of dialogue and questioning on the forum.

The unique nature of this study is in its cross-sectoral dimensions. An additional research question then will be to ask: How do students from different backgrounds communicate in a virtual space?

Participating Schools:

Bulmershe School	Richard Staton	rstaton@bulmershe.wokingham.sch.uk	0118 935 3353
The Holt School	Katy Pearce	k.pearce@holt.wokingham.sch.uk	0118 978 0165
Wellington College	Carl Hendrick	CNEH@wellingtoncollege.org.uk	01344 444000
The Wellington Academy	Rob Wood	RobertWood@thewellingtonacademy.org.uk	01264 405060

Works Cited:

Husbands, Chris; Pearce, Jo ‘‘What Makes Great Pedagogy? Nine Strong Claims from Research.’ ©2012 National College

James, M. ‘Assessment Teaching and Theories of Learning.’ In J. Gardener Assessment and Learning. London: Sage (p.57)

Balsen, Karen ‘The Importance of Summer Reading: Public Library Summer Reading Programs and Learning.’ Research Brief No.1 January 2010 (updated November 2011)